When I was young and scrappy, I lived in a lovely, large home in North Portland's historically "redlined" Dekum neighborhood. I have no clue when the home was built, or who lived there before I shared the house in the early 2000's.
All six-eight housemates were artists or activists of some sort, and there were usually lots of people in and out of our place. The other roomies had lived there a couple of years before me. Now the whole neighborhood is gentrified beyond recognition. This home has been fixed up very posh, as well, but I am sure the backyard will always be full of bottle tops.
We often had travelers overnight, and hosted rock shows in our basement. It was mostly good fun, if crowded and noisy sometimes. Everyone was welcome. In fact, I am not sure if I ever had or needed a key. The housemates joked about a ghost which had said hello once, but I figured that they were fronting to prove who was toughest. I also felt that there was often enough partying involved to count on anyone having clearly recalled or experienced anything. Our many cats would fixate on walls, or seem to avoid a certain stairway, but cats are weird, so-meh. I had no incidents or issues, of my own, directly.
My friend "Max" came over one festive Rosh Hosana. We spent most of the evening downstairs, in my room, splitting a bottle with another pal. Although his Marine Corps training usually came through, Max was wobbling as he tried to get out the front door. So the friend and I decided to stagger several blocks to his home, one on each side. As I lifted up his arm over my shoulder, he looked at me all drunk and serious, and said "Who is the kid on the stairs, staring, with the curly hair?"
I looked and said, "No one is there now." The house was full of people I did not know, dancing and celebrating, so it could have been anyone.
Max sighed and said all matter-of-fact "I mean the ghost. The ghost of the kid, right there, staring." That night was one for the drunken fool record books so I dismissed what he said. In normal daylight, sober, he does not talk about "silly things" like ghosts, or answer my questions if he remembers.
When my biggest, toughest brother was 17 he came to visit. One day while I was at work he saw the cats "acting funny like a ghost came into the living room." Any hint of which I had specifically not mentioned to him, as he was himself a fraidycat and very likely not to visit. So I was not sure what to give his "cat experience" up to, although he at least was sober. I told him it was his imagination. I was never afraid or weirded out in that home, but afterward he refused to be alone there.
The house had three floors. The space I rented was one area of the basement. On principal, and as usual, when I moved in I "claimed" my little space and neutral intentions out loud. I also negotiated what I hoped was a truce with the enormous deadly spiders. "Mikey" had the opposite basement portion, and the larger open area was laundry and band staging for shows or practices.
Mikey was a drummer and had some things there, but lots of bands came through to practice or perform, and each brought their own gear and instruments. This involved getting everything down the basement steps, so for big drums or speakers a couple people would have to help, even with a handcart, on the steps.
One average grey Friday afternoon, a noisy band of fashionable roughs arrived from out of town. They said their hellos and began moving instruments and gear downstairs to set up. I was in the living room on the main floor, sitting on the sofa. The familiar smell of rainy leather and loose tobacco filled the house. I went on about my sitting. Mikey and his friend, Nacho, were helping the band maneuver a very large, expensive speaker into place downstairs.
Suddenly those six sturdy, armed, young punks came tripping and yelling over each other, running lickety split up the stairs like cartoons. One of them kept running right on out the front door. Nacho was just gibbering all wild-eyed. One dude (also fully tattooed, wearing spikes) kept saying "I don't even care if we dropped it- I don't even effing care" over and over. Mikey was actually bent with his hands on his knees, like he had run a race, glasses askew. They were all talking at once, freaked out, hands flapping like a church choir. It took a minute to sort what had actually happened. They had dropped the amp. Everyone had dashed pell mell upstairs, shouting and basically pissing themselves.
While downstairs, four of them were holding the largest speaker (which was off/unplugged) when all of them heard an amplified male voice come through it, saying calmly "I just wanted you to know, you're not alone down here."
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