The story I am about to share is of the many experiences my fiancé and I shared in an apartment we used to rent. For the sake of privacy and out of respect to the owners of the apartment, I will not use any real names. These experiences are retold as they happened.
When my fiancé William had called to let me know that he had found the perfect apartment for us, I couldn't have been happier. I was an idealistic college sophomore, about to move to a new state, transferring at a new college, and excited for what the future had in store. Naturally, once I had arrived to the new city, all I wanted to do was drive straight to our new home and break it in.
Once the car pulled into our new driveway, I practically flew out of the car and to the door. Once William unlocked the door, my heart skipped a beat; it really was perfect. Small, charming, and perfect for a young couple; it had been built in the mid 20th-century and been home to many more before us. In spite of this, it felt like the type of place you could really get comfortable.
I took a grand tour of the place, finally settling in the bedroom. William remained at the bedroom door, as I got ready to take a nap and collapse in the bed.
"Hey, would you mind if we slept on the sofa bed in the living room instead?" William asked, much to my surprise.
"Sure," I answered, "but why? I'm sure this bed is more comfortable."
"I just don't like it as much." He answered sharply. Shrugging it off as his sometimes finicky ways, I followed him and we dozed off on the living room sofa, where he insisted we sleep for a good 4 months. In fact, we hardly ever used the bed in the bedroom. Later, William would admit that the reason he had not wanted to sleep in the bedroom was that for some reason, every time he had tried to sleep in there before, he felt an incredible weight pushed down on him.
Then, when he tried to get up, he'd find his arms and legs would fall asleep. This happened often and disturbed him enough that he had no desire whatsoever to use that bed. Knowing William to be in good health, with perfectly fine blood circulation, I shrugged this off as a problem with the mattress. Besides, the sofa bed was more comfortable.
It wasn't until my own experience in the bedroom that I'd ever given the bed issue a second thought: William was watching a movie in the living room and I had an exam early the next morning. Not wanting to demand he turn off the movie, I decided I would just sleep in the perfectly usable bedroom. Exhausted, I crawled into bed and began to doze off. Then, I felt a light pressing around my neck, collar and breasts. I began to feel the sensation William had described: being pressed down, and my arms and legs falling asleep.
It was definitely scary, simply by the quickness and obvious way the sensation manifested itself. However, I wrote it off again as a problem with the mattress. I tried to fall asleep, being incredibly tired, when all of a sudden I began to think uncharacteristically sad thoughts. The strange thing about these thoughts was that these things had never crossed my mind before-- I found myself terrified of things I was never scared of before, I was nervous, anxious and jittery for no apparent reason. I did eventually manage to fall asleep, but like William, I decided I was not entirely comfortable sleeping in that bed.
Finally, the 3rd experience regarding the bed happened to my good friend Abby. Abby was spending a week with us for spring break. I gave her the bed to sleep in because we thought it allowed her to have her own space, and at this point we were not confident there was anything wrong with the bed, so had no issue letting Abby stay there. One morning, Abby woke me up and asked, slightly confused:
"Have you ever seen someone at the foot of that bed before? Like a tall man?" I hadn't, but I sat up and asked her if anything else had happened in there.
"I don't think so... But that room made me feel really sad for some reason. I feel much better in here."
Hearing those words shook me; it wasn't just William and I who had experienced the feelings of despair and depression that room brought. It was with those words that I concluded there was something going on with that bedroom.
However, the events were not limited to the confines of the bedroom. Three months into living in the apartment, William had found a job and I found myself alone in the apartment more often. Things had been relatively calm and normal (save for the experience in the bedroom) until one December day, we hired a handyman to come do some work. He had not done a fantastic job and in some ways left the place in worse shape than before.
As ridiculous as it may sound, the apartment seemed to retaliate after this: I was sitting at my computer, when a heavy book nearly fell on my head, followed by another, then some folders, and next thing I knew, everything was just falling off the shelves. Nothing else had been shaken up like that in the apartment, so I checked the shelf for mice. No mice could be seen, and there certainly had not been any seismic activity strong enough to send textbooks flying down at me. This scared me, but had hoped it was just some weird geological or engineering fluke. Nevertheless, that event marked the first of many strange occurrences that would happen within our apartment.
During the first of the two years we spent in the apartment, occurrences seemed daily but smaller scale than the monumental event that first December evening. These occurrences seemed to manifest themselves in subtler, psychological ways. For example, many people who used our shower (William and I included) described seeing a particular image when they closed their eyes. Always described as: "It's like there's this girl with dark hair standing there. She just stands right in your face and stares."
Another of these occurrences was sudden, inexplicable feelings of depression, despair and anxiety. This was felt nearly two to three times a week by William and I, and many houseguests experienced it as well. This happened most often in the bedroom or by the computer area.
Finally, William often complained of having "nightmares" in which he was being physically threatened by someone at knifepoint, or being verbally abused. The quotations around "nightmare" are on account of the fact that this happened almost nightly, but he could have sworn he was actually awake when these occurrences happened.
Perhaps they were lucid dreams, but in light of the other occurrences that were described by several houseguests, who had never met each other, that coincided so perfectly with one-another, as well as my own experiences, I can only assume that something strange really had happened to William while he slept. Whatever was happening had some sort of psychological power.
It took about a year before the obvious "ghostly" things began. First, noises began. Usually, very faint piano music could be heard very late at night (around 4 AM) in the living room. Also, a young woman's giggles and cries could be heard from time to time between 4-6 in the morning, sporadically.
This could not have been from the neighbors; first, because the sound was loud enough that the young woman (always the same one) would either have to be in the room with us, or close enough to the window that she would have to be talking in through the windows (which was very unlikely, especially at such early morning hours).
Items began falling much more frequently off shelves, and other surface areas. Also, the negative energy felt in the bedroom became so strong that simply entering it made people who entered it nervous, particularly near the closet (the closet made us all so nervous, we could hardly stand to look at it.)
Then, I actually saw what I firmly believe are "ghosts". This happened twice. The first was when I was standing outside one evening and noticed, just for an instant, the flash of a little girl running behind a tree and then disappear.
Again, this happened in the very early morning hours, so it is unlikely that a live little girl would be out playing in the trees, especially not dressed the way the girl I saw was dressed.
Nevertheless, I could not believe what I had seen, and know I have seen it as it replays in my mind exactly as it happened. It is a memory firmly implanted in my mind as I believe I have actually seen a "ghost".
The second occurrence of this nature happened outside again, also in the early morning hours (2-3 AM): I was talking to William when he moved to go back inside the apartment. Then, for a flash again, I saw a mustached man standing immediately behind where William had been standing. The man wore a three-piece suit; he was slim, elderly, and simply stood there for a second. Both these figures appeared as flashes, almost exactly like when taking a picture. The image is suddenly imprinted, but if I looked again where they had been, there was nothing there.
In the end, William and I opted not to fight or resist any occurrences that happened. We had lived in the apartment 2 years, and we were moving by the end of the 2nd year. We learned to grow used to the sudden pangs of deep, uncharacteristic emotions; the images we'd get in the shower; and the sudden drop of objects. By the time I was packing up our things, ready to move, I had no more doubt that the place was a site for paranormal activity.
Finally, the last occurrence I experience was when I was packing the bedroom. I noticed my clothes move on the hangers exactly as though someone was brushing their hands across the garments. There were no open windows, fans, or breeze of any kind.
William's last occurrence had been after I had left (he stayed to pack up last minute things for a week or so after I had moved out): Much like my first experience, William was sitting in the living room, when the television kept turning on and off; items flew off the shelf; and doors would shake. When we both left the apartment, we both wondered if the experiences we had were because something was happening with the apartment, or if something was wrong with us-- mentally and emotionally.
Well, I am pleased to say that now we are living happily, no strange occurrences, visions or uncharacteristic emotions. These all stopped immediately after we moved.
Because of all these experiences, I am fairly certain I had the great (mis) fortune to live in a genuinely haunted house.
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