The Old Boarding House

This happened about three years ago, my friend Jessica had called and wanted to hang out for awhile watch a few scary movies because it was a stormy day and she is just kind of cliche like that. I instantly got a warning gut felling that said I should wait a little bit but I was bored and didn't want to wait around for the rain to let up so I went anyway. I decided to stop by the store and grab a few snacks because she rarely kept food in the house and I didn't feel like going back out so I called Jess found out what she wanted and was just about to turn in to the parking lot when a pick up truck slammed into my car causing it to spin.

Thankfully I paid attention in drivers ed and was able to stop without hitting the person in front of me, While I was OK other than ticked off and a little shaken my car most certainly was not. I talked to the guy exchanged insurance info called a tow truck and then Jessica telling her everything that happened. She was there in a flash fussing and begging me to stay the night with her since I refused to go get checked out. To give her some peace of mind I agreed. We settled in cooked dinner and started a movie. We didn't make it half way through when Jessica got a call from her sister asking if she could keep her niece over night because she had a date. Jess agreed and her sister brought her over.

We played with her, fed and changed her before laying her in a rocking bassinet and decided to go ahead and watch a few scary movies because she was only a few months old and sleeping well like a baby.

So we continued our movie and teased each other as one or the other jumped in certain scenes when all of a sudden the bassinet started gently rocking on its own. Mind You neither one of us was close to it, she was next to the couch where Jessica was sitting but not in arms reach and her niece was laying still. Even if she was wiggling up a storm she wasn't going to be able to make that bassinet rock like that. We looked at each other kind of freaked out, Jess got up stopped the rocking and went back to her seat shocked.

Jessica gets spooked easily so I quickly told her not to worry about it, unexplained things happen all the time. She moved the bassinet between the couch and the chair I was sitting in and we decided to watch something else. While we were flipping through the channels the bassinet started rocking again, now I was curious. This time I stopped the rocking and moved her to the packing play that her sister had brought over for her to sleep in that night.

I decided to step out on the porch for some air and to call my boyfriend to check in when I saw a tall burly Hispanic guy in a navy blue work uniform coming down the old steps from the second floor. I waved trying to be polite when he started to come over. I hung up the phone and asked if he was looking for Jessica, he said no and asked me if I had a match I looked at him kind of funny and shook my head no. He pulled a cigarette from behind his ear and chuckled," You don't smoke do you?"

Only on occasion I replied, I asked him to hold on a second and I went inside and grabbed a lighter off the mantle where Jessica kept her cigarettes grabbed myself one and went back out only to find that the guy had left. I shrugged assuming he had to leave considering he was in uniform and decided to go back inside.

After watching a couple of sitcoms and feeding her niece one more time we decided to call it a night. Now before I go much further let me explain a few things to you about the house, the original owners husband had built the house in the 1940's I think. It use to be a two story home, it is said that the owner never remarried after her husband died of a heart attack. She had no children and decided to let people stay there for a night or more like a boarding house to make some money, apparently it was a common place that people would stay until the woman died of cancer. Later it was divided off into two sections and built on to so it could be turned into a two story apartment building but a lot of the original house wasn't changed.

Jessica lived on the ground floor and in her guest bedroom was a door that went up to the second floor, it was locked by the landlord and he was the only one who had a key to it. Anyway, I was just about to fall asleep when I heard muffled arguing and heavy footsteps going back and forth as if someone was pacing, while I couldn't hear word for word what was being said I could hear them clearly enough to know that they were speaking Spanish. That guy must have come home in a bad mood I thought to myself as I threw a pillow over my head trying to drown them out, everything stopped for awhile when I suddenly heard screaming and the female yell something about a baby. It was quickly followed by the sound of someone falling and there was a loud slam against the opposite side of the door. I ran into Jessica's room after I got the baby, to my surprise she was still asleep.

I woke her up and told her she needed to call the police her neighbors were fighting and it sounded like someone got hurt and they mentioned the baby. She told me to calm down and that there was nobody that lived in the upstairs apartment. I insisted that she call her landlord and have him see if someone had broken in after I told her about the guy that I had saw earlier that day. He came over and looked but the front door was locked, he even let me follow him up so he could show me the place was empty other than the furniture that came with it. I turned the door knob that went to the staircase between floors and to the landlord's shock it was unlocked but nobody was in there. He went to get the key since he lived two houses down from Jessica to lock the staircase when I heard a faint female whisper run, She wasn't going to have to tell me twice.

When I went back down the landlord was talking to Jessica in the drive way, looked my way shook his head in what looked like confusion and motioned me over. "What exactly did You hear", he said sounding rather miffed, I repeated to him what I told Jessica. His eyes got huge and he looked like he was about to say something and stopped, "next time make sure that there is something there before You go calling people in the middle of the night." He went back upstairs to lock up as we went inside, I stayed with her the rest of the night but it was the last time. Jess told me that she saw and heard a few things before she moved but nothing to that extreme.

I am not sure what happened there but whatever it was, had to be very bad. I still have to pass the place every now and then when I go through the older part of town to go to the park and it still creeps me out. I heard that the house has been condemned due to mold in the walls and a small electrical fire that was thankfully stopped by the tenant. Honestly its probably a good thing.