Last night was shaping up to be a pretty dull Halloween. My son wasn't feeling well (probably just teething) and with the rain and temperature dropping, we decided to not go out for trick or treat. At this age, he wasn't looking forward to it, so it's not like he even noticed.

Then, at 8pm, we heard two gunshots outside our house. They were 5 or 7 seconds apart. After the first one, I thought it might have been a backfire from the state route just on the other side of our neighbor's house. But the second gunshot convinced me of what they were. I tried calling the neighbor whose house was in the direction of the gunshot, but got no answer. His lights weren't on and we suspect that he might even be out of town. Our neighbor on the other side heard the gunshots too, and agreed that they were gunshots, not something else.

I called 911 and the police showed up about 8:17pm. The first officer parked in our driveway and approached our front door with his hand on his gun, still holstered. There was a second police cruiser on the road that stopped in front of our house. I opened the front door and told the officer what we heard, but stayed inside. The officer said that they'd go check out the neighbor's property, and he took off across my front lawn. The other officer stayed in his cruiser and drove over to in front of the neighbors house.

They searched the neighbor's property, the first officer on foot, and the second using the spotlight on his cruiser. About 5 or 6 minutes later the first officer came back to say that they didn't find anything. The neighbor's house was secure and they didn't find any bullet holes in the windows or walls of the house. The officer also verified that the cars parked in the neighbor's driveway were ones that I'd expect to be there. There was nothing else for them to do at that point and the officer told me not to hesitate calling 911 if anything else happened. The officers then hurried away. I got the impression that they were probably pretty busy on a Halloween night.

All in all, I think the police showed up fairly quickly and did a good job investigating the incident. I don't like not knowing what actually happened, but at this point I don't think I'll ever know. My wife thinks that it might have been someone just shooting out of their car as they drove by, but I don't think that was what happened because the shots were too far apart to be coming from a moving car and not sound differently. I still haven't gotten a call back from the neighbor whose house the shots sounded like they came from, but maybe that will provide more insight.

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