I was a grad student at the time and I had been living in this nice little old house for 4-5 years already. I really loved that house. I had the whole first floor to myself, it was spacious with large windows, hardwood floors, big porch, affordable, and with friendly and considerate upstairs neighbours. With that said there had already been instances in the past when this house would give off some weird creepy vibes. Most notably I had several episodes of sleep paralysis and the house had this weird habit of attracting squirrels who would sneak in and come die in the basement. I used that basement quite regularly since that's where the washer and dryer were, yet I always stumbled onto their corpse or skeleton and could never catch them alive in time to help and release them. They just kind of...appeared out of nowhere and at various stages of decomposition. Happened four times. Anyway, that's not the story. It's late morning around 11am with typical boring grey Illinois October weather outside. I'm working from home on my laptop, not doing anything special. At some point I notice a faint smell of burning charcoal. I think it's a weird time of the year and of the day for someone to be BBQing outside but whatever, they have their reasons. Maybe 10 minutes later I realize the smell is getting stronger and it's a little bit hazy in the living room. I freak out and start running around the house trying to find the fire. After a few seconds I wise-up, think charcoal, and make a bee line for the kitchen. The kitchen had a door that would give access to a small vestibule on the left side of the house with a thin door to the outside that would connect my floor and the basement. We used that vestibule to store rakes, snow shovels, some cleaning products, and in my case a couple BBQ items including a bag of charcoal. I open the door and see the bag visibly belching smoke, but no flame yet. I pick up the bag with my bare hands, bring it outside, and drown it with water using the garden hose. With this disaster averted and coming back to my senses, I notice someone in the corner of my eye, their back to me. Looks like a young boy. We're on the left side of the house and he's walking away, turning the corner leading the the front lawn. In that moment a thought pops in my head: "the side door to the vestibule is left unlocked, did this young boy just attempted arson?" I run inside to try and catch up with him at the front door (why not directly after him I don't know). From inside I can see through my large front windows that he's lurking along the porch behind the fence. He stops and we lock eyes. I'm standing inside and he's looking at me through the fence posts, holding two of them. He has this incredibly sad look on his face. He looks about 12. He's completely bald. I can tell he's black, but he looks very pale, actually grey like he's been dipped in ashes from head to toe. I run to the front door and onto the porch to confront him. I was angry and shaken and I don't remember exactly what I said, but it was along the lines of "what the hell are you doing, did you just try to set fire to my house?" He's looking at me, no reaction, completely silent, still with this sad look on his face. He slowly walks along the porch, passes in front of me, and turns the corner to the right side of the house. I'm a little dumbfounded, but after a second I go after him. I turn the corner, and no one is there. There are nothing on side of the house, nowhere to hide. No door, no tree, no bush. The house is on the corner of two streets that make a T, so there's just a 10-15 foot wide band of grass, a sidewalk, and a street. It's all in the open. Even if he started running after turning the corner he couldn't have made it more than half the length of the house in front of me. He just disappeared out of thin air. I've had weird stuff happen to me in my life, but never this blatant and in broad daylight. I was fully conscious, awake, fed, hydrated, well rested, healthy. I could have reached out and touched him. He was there, in the flesh, a few feet in front of me. And then he wasn't.