[Colofornian]

Second, the scratches on the author's face were due to his hysterical response to the knocking on the door. What kind of man pulls the covers over his face when faced with a scary situation.

Certainly, possibly.

Note the article:

"I darted to the bathroom mirror and to my horror, I had THREE very long scratches on the right side of my face that ran from the top of my forehead to the bottom of my chin

I've seen some of the YouTube "Ghost Adventures Crew" stuff...they've had at least two, maybe three, shows with people getting scratch marks...in each case the # of scratch marks was "three"...supposedly to be some demonic representation of an anti-Trinity stance.

[RoosterRedux]

Well, scratches are of course regularly part of demonic interference and this may well have been such an incident.

That said, I usually look to practical answers to mysteries like this and upon finding that there are NO practical answers begin to consider something highly impractical or even supernatural.

[StormPrepper]

Don't rats have 3 toes with 3 claws.

3rd world setting... a rat in the apartment (common)... 3 claw marks on their exposed skin...

/yawn