The Ghost in the Basement

When I was a newly wed at 18, my ex-husband and I lived in the basement of a triplex apartment building (there were 2 other units above us). Soon after we moved in, our friends Chad and Liberty moved into the top unit and the occupants of the second story were unknown to us.

I am a sleep worshipper. I can sleep like a rock through almost anything. When my mother stood us in the corner (for hours at a time) I would just kill the time by sleeping and she'd have to some smack me awake screaming "you are the ONLY person I know who could sleep standing up!" Anyway, this just gives you an idea of my normal sleep patterns. From the first day Eric and I moved into that apartment (even though I was sooo happy because it was our first place of our own together) I couldn't sleep a wink.

Insomnia was a new thing to me. It started out with just a strange restlessness and a buzzing in my head <like hyper-alterness> would keep me awake until 3:00a.m. I'd get 2 or 3 hours of fitful sleep and then drudge through my day. Day after day. Just as I start putting it out of my mind, and getting some half-way descent sleep, I then started being awakened by loud thumps in the bathroom. It was a long hallway of a bathroom, with a regular bedroom closet all along one wall and a stall shower at the end. I would hear clunking and banging around in the bathroom and thought someone was in the apartment, so I would wake Eric up and make him go check it out and nothing! There was never anything there - but it was almost a nightly occurrence.

When I was there alone, I felt watched and "followed around". I felt like something there didn't like me. One morning, I was getting ready to go out. I was half dressed (in jeans and my robe) and doing my hair in the bathroom, when I started noticing a strange noise coming from my bedroom. It sounded like a low growl or rough breathing. At first I thought there was a truck ideling in the alleyway outside, but when I checked there was nothing there but I could tell that the noise wasn't coming from outside, or even from near the window, it was coming from under the bed. I backed out of the room slowly and went to the kitchen for a knife. When I came back, I knelt down and lifted the bedskirt with the tip of the knife and instantly the noise shifted. It was a noticable shift as if it flew to the upper part of my closet which was open. Even though I couldn't see it I could HEAR it loud as day.

Just then my friend and upstairs neighbor Chad came down and I was like "Thank God you're here! Tell me I'm crazy - what is this noise???" He came into the room with me and by now it was above the window in the acoustic ceiling. Still clutching the knife, I poke a tile up and the noise got extemely loud and frantic like we trapped a wild animal. Chad and I looked terrified at each other and he said "holy s**t what was that?" I said "I don't know - but first it was under the bed, then it was in the closet and now it's up there." Chad and I both kind of freaked out and decided to just get out of the apartment. We went up to his apartment to chill out. [Oddly he and Lib never experienced any strangeness on the 3rd floor]

Eric was completley freaked out when he heard about it. He decided to call his clairvoyant friend "Lennie" to see if he could tell us what it was and how to get rid of it. "Lennie" had an uncanny ability to go into a super-meditative trance state where he would turn white as a sheet and be able to tell you things about people and history of places. We gathered all the friends and "Lennie" went to work. He hit his zone, but he couldn't tell us anything except that it was strong and old and was "blocking" him from getting a read on it. I never saw "Lennie" get scared of anything before and while he was the least scared of us all, I saw a fear in his eyes, I'd never seen before (like for the first time, he was dealing with something he didn't know how to handle).

Eric and I toughed it out while we looked for another place to move. One morning a week or so later, I was in the bathroom doing my hair and all the guys were hanging out in the livingroom watching football. All of the sudden the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I felt a strong presence standing so close to me. I turned to look (toward the shower) where I felt it - and I saw it. It was a skinny short wild haired "Indian" (Native American) - his aura was brownish-green and his eyes were not kind. He was angry with me and I didn't know why. I screamed, threw my curling iron at him and ran from the bathroom. All the boys freaked out with me. We HAD HAD ENUF! All of our nerves were frazzled. We stayed a few nights with friends and then a few days later we found out that the second floor apartment was being vacated. Eric and I jumped on it (to stay close to Chad & Lib).

From the first night on the 2nd floor - I slept like a baby. We were completely unaffected on the 2nd floor. The laundry for the entire building was in the basement, though, and I continued to get creeped out everytime I had to do laundry.

Our skeptical friend John decided to move into the basement so all the friends could rule the building. We advised him not to and he knew all the stories, but there was no talking him out of it and the idea of having all 3 apartments filled with one group of friends was a teen-age dream. After living there for less than 2 weeks, we found John one night, curled up in the corner, mumbling about suicide. John was the kind of happy-go-lucky, always cheerful kind of guy. This was soooo unlike him. We made him come live upstairs with us until he could find another place.

Six months later, we all moved out for different reasons. That was the scariest place I have ever lived.

It made me see things a little differently and incited me to explore the unknown.