I had a sort-of reverse of this once. As a volunteer, I did the book-keeping for a political organization I belonged to. Sometimes I used to do this at odd hours--since I had a key to the place it made no difference when I went there. Often when I'd work at night, I'd get sleepy around 1 am and go home to bed then.

One June night I was doing the end-of-the-fiscal-year balances. On this particular night, I had loads of energy, and my brain was crunching the numbers very clearly (with the help of the calculator!) I really wanted to get the balances finished, because our annual meeting was coming up. So I just stayed at it, past 2, 3, 4 am, finally going home around dawn.

When I got home to the large twin house I shared with 5 or 6 other adults, and a couple of small children, there was a police car parked outside, but that was not TOO unusual, in our somewhat rough neighborhood. I went in and went to my room, which was on the ground floor, right in the front, with a window next to my bed that looked out onto the porch we shared with the tenants on the other side of the twin. Shortly after I was trying to catch up on my lost zzzzz's.

A couple hours later, my housemate Rosy came to my room, with something she needed to tell me. There had been a disturbance on the other side of the twin during the night. Apparently there was a mother with a young child that lived there, and she was estranged from the child's father. He apparently used to come by at inappropriate times, like the middle of the night, (possibly under the influence), to see his child, and perhaps to argue with, or try to extract sexual favors from the child's mother. This young mother apparently had a new friend, and they did not appreciate these nocturnal visits.

On this particular night, apparently the young mother's friend was prepared to respond to these unwanted visits in a very forceful way. When the father came to the door of the building, apparently the friend shot him to death on the porch, right outside my bedroom window! I'll always feel that some protective spirit kept me safe at the office, crunching numbers, so I didn't suffer the trauma of waking up to a murder a few feet from my bed!!!

Marymac