Context:
This story was told to me by my friend during a hangout in their dorm a few weeks before finals. They recalled a childhood storybook about Perry and connected it to knocks they heard during their summer family visits to their lake house. The memory remained vivid because of how long the noises continued and how closely they seemed tied to the story.
IL:
“So every summer, my family would go up to our lake house in the mountains for a few weeks. We’d been doing it ever since I was a kid, and I always stayed in the same room upstairs. It was kind of old and creaky, but I loved it.
One summer when I was ten, I got there and noticed there was this new book on the bookshelf in my room. I swear it hadn’t been there before. It was this children’s storybook about a ghost named Perry. The cover was creepy as hell, like this little white ghost smiling in front of a bedroom door.
My mom read me the book before I went to bed, and the story was about Perry going around at night knocking on doors and hiding under beds. And in the book, it said that if you heard three knocks in the middle of the night, you’d know Perry was there.
That absolutely freaked me out, but I kept going anyway. I think because I wanted to know what happened. And then, like two nights later, I woke up in the middle of the night and heard it.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Three knocks. Slow and spaced out. Right on my bedroom door.
I literally froze. I just stared at the door and pulled the covers over my head. I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I was so scared it was actually Perry.
The next morning I asked my parents if they had knocked on my door, and they were like, no? Why would we do that? And I didn’t even tell them why because I felt stupid.
But then it kept happening. Not every night, but for like a week that summer.
Always three knocks.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
And it was always late. Like after everyone was asleep. I remember lying there waiting for it because I was so scared, and every tiny noise in that house started freaking me out.
One night I finally got brave enough to open the door right after I heard it, and there was nobody there. The hallway was empty. My parents’ room was down the hall and their door was shut. My little brother was asleep. There was just… nothing.
After that week, it stopped. Completely. No more knocks for the rest of the summer.
And the weirdest part is, the next year when we went back, the Perry book was gone. I looked for it because I wanted to prove to myself it was real, and it just wasn’t there anymore.
So yeah, logically it was probably just the house settling or something because it was old, but… hearing three knocks exactly like in the story for a week straight? That still creeps me out.”
Interviewer:
“Do you think reading the book made you notice sounds you normally wouldn’t?”
IL:
“Probably. I mean, I was ten and terrified. My brain was probably connecting everything to Perry. But the fact that it was always three knocks is what gets me. Like if it had just been random noises, whatever. But three? Exactly how the book said? That’s weird.”
Interviewer:
“Would you read the book again if you found it?”
IL:
“Absolutely not. No shot. I am not risking hearing three knocks again.”
The Informant’s Thoughts:
He finds this story unsettling not because he truly believes a ghost was knocking on his door, but because of how perfectly the events lined up with the book. At ten years old, hearing exactly three knocks, the same warning described in the story, felt too specific to dismiss in the moment. Even now, he recognizes there was probably a logical explanation, like the house settling or tree branches hitting the walls, but the timing still lingers in his mind.
What disturbs him most is the strange appearance and disappearance of the Perry book itself. He remembers finding it on the shelf that summer as if it had always been there, only to never see it again the next year. Looking back, he wonders if he simply forgot what the cover looked like or imagined parts of it through fear, but he cannot shake the vividness of the memory.
To him, the experience feels like one of those childhood moments where imagination and reality became tangled together. He does not fully believe it was supernatural, but he also cannot hear three knocks in a row without immediately thinking of Perry.
My Thoughts:
I think the setting contributes significantly to the story’s believability. A mountain lake house in the summer already feels isolated and unfamiliar compared to everyday life. Old houses make noises, hallways seem darker, and the quiet of the mountains amplifies every sound. In that environment, the line between natural and supernatural becomes easier to blur.
The disappearing book adds another layer of mystery. Whether it was misplaced, thrown away, or simply forgotten, its absence transforms the memory into something harder to verify. Without the physical object, the story becomes less about evidence and more about memory, what was real, what was imagined, and what fear may have altered over time.
As a piece of folklore, this story is fascinating because it demonstrates how ghost stories can create their own “evidence.” After IL learned the rule of Perry’s three knocks, every similar sound became part of the legend. In that way, the story itself almost functions like a haunting, shaping the way reality is interpreted long after the book is gone.