An real incident with ghost!!!

Back in 1995 or 1998. I was a high school student. I was into heavily playing wargames and chess and was friends with a guy who ran a chess studio and also liked wargames. I’ll call him John because that was his name. At the time this particular incident happened, the chess studio was on the third floor of an old wooden building. John had told me that the studio was haunted, that he’d heard footsteps on the stairs, and, my memory is shaky here, but I think he mentioned having felt a presence at times. Nothing really scary, at least he seemed comfortable with it, but he'd sensed enough that he really believed it.

Anyway, we had wrapped up our wargame for the night, which I believe he had won (he usually did). We'd gone down the stairs and had just exiting the building when we both heard someone was whistling "This Old Man". This was not some unearthly sound, nor was it weak and far away. It was good, loud strong whistling. Although it would have been unlike him to pull a trick to freak me out, I watched his lips. It wasn’t him. It was nighttime and raining out, but there was plenty of light from streetlights to see by and there was no one about. It must have been 10:30 or 11:30 in the evening and this town was dead by then if you’ll pardon the pun. He mentioned the ghost and I asked him "Why "Whistle Man"?" (I had the name of the tune wrong, but hey, I was a little rattled.) He said he didn’t know. By this time we were by his car, the whistling was continuing, and it was CLOSE and no one in sight! And he had spoken while we heard the whistling, I had still suspected a trick and had watched him speak feeling sure that the whistling would stop when he answered me.

The whistling stopped as we both looked around to see if we could see anyone. He went back up the stairs to see if there was someone hiding inside and I went around the closest corner of the building. Neither of us saw anyone or found anything. That was it, end of the show. John drove me home and now that it was all over I found my legs were shaking.

It could still have been someone playing a joke. Although someone laying for us in the rain late at night seems kind of loony, people can be strange at times, and we didn’t check the roof, for example. But it was loud and so close sounding I don’t know where anyone could have hidden. I did ask him a few years later if he remembered this and if he had perchance pulled a fast one on me somehow. I figured if he denied it had happened I would have known I’d misremembered somehow or maybe dreamed it, and he was a good enough friend to have felt comfortable revealing any trickery knowing I would have enjoyed knowing how it was done. He remembered the incident and no he hadn’t fooled me.

It wasn't really that I mistrusted him , by the way, trickery would have been very unlike him. I just believe in ruling out any other explaination before I resort to saying I saw or, in this case, heard a ghost.

The building is still there (I checked a couple of months ago). Someday I want to interview the current occupants to see if anything strange has happened to them, but I’m not sure how to go about it. Most people just are not going to open up about things like that. I would appreciate suggestions on that.