Le 419

Back in the 1980's my lover and I moved from parkdale in Toronto to 419 sherboune. It was an apartment on the 3rd floor, the door to our apartment was on the 2nd floor. We moved in with 3 cats and a dog. It was a large one bedroom with the bedroom at the top of the stairs across from the kitchen, it had a long hall way with the bathroom 3/4 of the way down the hall and the living room at the end. The building was old and the living room had a kitchen sink in a small room type area behind a wooden book shelf. I was told that they use to rent each room out, a rooming house kind of thing.

The first time I thought that something strange was when we came back from London and found a wooden cross that was on the wall on the floor and one of our cats in the bathroom on the windows seemed frightened, our two siamese were under our bed. It was strange as they always came out to greet us, especially after we were away over night.

The door to our apt was on the second floor, there was about a 6 inches between the door when it was closed and the first step. The steps had a carpet but the cats discovered the carpet under the first step could be pushed back and they could get into the walls. I put a small window screen between the step and the door to keep the cats out of the walls. My lover worked in a beauty supply shop and closed the store at 6:00pm every night. On several occasion I would hear what sounded like our apartment door being opened and someone coming up the stairs, but only to the third step, the dog would hear it too, and would go to look with me but no one was there.

One evening I heard the door open and someone come up 3 steps then stop, when I went to look there was no one there but the screen from the bottom step was laying on the 3rd step. I mentioned this to my lover who just laughed it off and said it was my imagination. One evening a friend of his came to visit at around 4:30pm and we had a coffee and talked waiting for my lover to come home. My dog was in the living room laying facing the hall. Our friend and I heard the door open and someone come up 3 steps. I looked at the clock and it was just 6:00pm so I knew it wasn't my lover. I looked at my dog who was looking down the hall and had just started to wag her tail when she suddenly jump to her feet and started to bark and growl, every hair on her back was standing up. Our friend grabbed my big ashtray for a weapon as we thought someone had just broken into the apartment. We rushed to look down the hallway but my dog kept blocking me and would not let me enter the hall, all the time she had her eyes fixed and appeared to be looking at something about 6 feet from the floor, all the while growling and barking. My friend and I could not see anything.

We searched the apartment and found the cats on the bed with their tail all fluffed up and eyes as big as saucers. After searching the apartment with me, our friend left, asking me to have my lover phone him as soon as he came home. I took my dog and sat outside till my lover came home and asked him to call our friend right away. Our friend told him what happened and we wrote a notice to our landlord saying we were moving out.

As soon as we got the keys to our new apartment I took our cats over, usually when cats are taken to a strange place they hide, but this time our cats ran around and played. I went back once after moving our stuff out to check the mail, I took the dog with me but when I reach the steps to the building she refused to go up.