The event that set off the family's reactions occurred when James Thurber was a young man still living at home. One night he heard what he describes in his essay as "a rhythmic, quick-cadenced walking around the dining-room table." Thurber specifies that the date was November 17, 1915, so he would have been nearly twenty-one. He woke his brother Herman to listen to the footsteps. But there was only silence. Then:
"Instantly the steps began again, circled the dining-room table like a man running, and started up the stairs toward us, heavily, two at a time.
Herman retreated to his room and slammed the door. James slammed another door at the top of the stairs and held his knee against it. The slamming of the doors woke their mother, who thought the house was being invaded by burglars. Thurber's mother summoned the police, who only added to the confusion and panic.
Thurber never tries to explain the cause of all the sounds of footsteps in the dining-room and up the stairs. In an old wooden two-story house it is very common for the beams and boards to make noises as they expand and contract. The lumber will pull on the nails, making eerie creaking sounds. It is also very common for people to interpret those noises as burglars or even ghosts.
Thurber and his family seem like the kind of people who would spook very easily. He writes more about his family in the personal essays collected in My Life and Hard Times (1933). Thurber once defined humor as follows:
Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.
Thurber is alluding to a famous statement by the great English poet William Wordsworth in his "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" (1800):
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.
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