[Recently, I’ve been dipping my toes into memoir writing. This experience happened when I was about ten.]

 Supernatural Snoring

I tossed and turned on my mattress. It’s so hot; not even a puff of sea breeze to cool me. My brother and I had parked our mattresses in the backyard to find cool respite on this hot summer’s night.

I turned to check on my brother.

In the moonlight, his mattress glowed white and empty. I turned away from him, glad that I had a brief window of opportunity to fall asleep undisturbed by his incessant snoring.

Rustling woke me.

Then, his snoring was back.

Peeved, I moved towards my brother to whack him on the arm and stop the constant rumbling. However, shadowy figures by the Hills Hoist clothesline caught my attention.

A young woman and a little boy were standing watching us. They were dressed in mid-nineteenth-century garb.

She wore a dark full-length dress, a white lace scarf with frills, and a hooded cape. He was dressed in a navy-blue outfit, like a sailor suit. The girl showed the boy a medallion. It looked like a fob watch or perhaps a compass.

I leaned up on one elbow to examine them. They seemed unaware I was watching them. The girl was absorbed in gazing at the device.

I wanted to say something to them, to call out, to get their attention, but my voice failed me; as if I were in a glass vacuum, and my words had no sound.

They seemed unperturbed by my brother and me sleeping there in the middle of the backyard on a hot night.

I turned back to my brother and nudged him. ‘Hey! Wake up! Look!’

Brother snorted with a start. ‘Wh-what? Huh?’

 I shook my brother. ‘There’s people standing by the clothesline.’

 He stared past me. ‘What? What’s by the clothesline? I don’t see anything. You must be hallucinating.’

 ‘But I saw them! They were right there!’ I screamed.

 ‘Well, they are not there now,’ my brother grunted, then rolled over and resumed snoring.

 ‘But I did! I saw them!’ I jumped up from the mattress and, in the moonlight, hunted around the clothesline for evidence.

I found nothing. Except for a few stray clothes pegs and a heat-stiffened rag.

 A light went on in the kitchen.

‘Is everything alright?’ Mum called from inside.

 ‘Yes, Mum!’ we replied in unison.

Still, the visitors to our backyard had disturbed me. I packed up my bedding and ran inside to sleep in the safety of my room. Didn’t care my room was boiling.

At least there’d be no ghosts.

And no snoring.

© Lee-Anne Marie Kling 2026

Feature Photo: Backyard sleepers © C.D. Trudinger circa 1973

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The T-Team With Mr. B: Central Australian Safari 1977

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