On to Something

I have always had a connection in my family with the paranormal. My grandmother was sensitive and my family lived in a haunted house for several years in the '90s. Recently, I had an overt encounter with an unexplainable human-like force. Since then, I have felt more aware and tuned-in to a supernatural undercurrent. I believe now that the more alert you are, the more you may see or feel. For example...

I live in an apartment in Brooklyn, New York. I moved in to this place in the spring of 2002. I lived on the 1st floor and would experience strange things. Often, I would be sitting on the couch there when I would feel something lightly tap the top of my skull. Once, I felt a brush of cool air immediately before being tapped. I told me roommates about it, but they are both scientists and refused to believe me. After these run-ins with skepticism, I kept things to myself. However, on a few occasions, they shared encounters with me.

Often, when I'd be getting ready for bed, I would turn off the TV and then the stereo and walk across the room to the stairs to go up to bed. The second that my foot would touch the first stair, the TV and/or stereo would go back on--sometimes together, sometimes only one of the two. I would then walk back across the room and turn them off. One time I did this and had to go back twice to turn off the TV. Each time, the appliances would turn themselves on as soon as my foot touched the first stair, as if I was being toyed with. One of my roommates saw this happen once and, while he found it difficult to explain, would still not believe our house was haunted. I, too, was not entirely convinced thinking I could chalk up these experiences to nerves and electrical malfunctions.

One night while sleeping in this apartment, I had a disturbing dream. I dreamt that there was a door within my room to a "new room" that isn't really there. There was incredible light blasting through the cracks around the door and frame. In this dream, an overpowering force was pulling me up out of my bed towards the door. This was not a good feeling, in fact, it was terrifying for some reason. When I awoke from this dream, I was sitting halfway up in bed as if I really was being pulled by my chest out of the bed. It was like I was awoken in the middle of a sit-up. To know what I mean, try laying flat on the floor and then sit up without employing any muscles or limbs except for your abdominal muscles. You will see that this is quite difficult unless you're in excellent shape. So anyway, I awoke and immediately fell back down into the bed as if I was a marionette and my strings had been suddenly severed. I found my pillows laying underneath the windowsill across the room. I felt as though the house itself was trying to communicate with me or something, that a dialogue had opened between myself and something unseen.

I moved out of this apartment in 2005 to live in Manhattan for a few years. This past October, after my incident with a ghost in Europe, I moved back into the same apartment building serendipitously, but into the fourth floor unit instead of the first. My old roommates still live in the first floor apartment, which is cool because it's easy for us to hang out after work--just like college! Anyway, one night when I was up in my place alone, I felt something tap me on top of my head. Immediately, I remembered how I was often tapped in this building the first time I lived there. I tried to brush it off and occupy my thoughts with something else.

Later that week, while standing in about the same place preparing the sheets for my bed for the night, I felt a light tap on top of my head again. Again, I tried to brush it off. After about ten seconds, as I was draping a blanket across my mattress, I felt an undeniably harder, more resolute tap on top of my head again. This time, I froze in mid-movement with my arms outstretched as I was tossing the blanket to the far side of my bed. I was petrified like that for about two whole minutes when I finally worked-up the courage to say, "Please don't do that again, it really, really scares me. Thanks..." I heeded advice I gleaned directly from this site and was polite, yet direct. I have not been tapped since then.

However, the most scary thing happened one Sunday afternoon while I was getting ready to shower and go watch some football. I was sitting on the futon upstairs alone working on the computer which was sitting next to me on the futon. I got up to go to the bathroom to prepare the shower. I turned on the water, but forgot my slippers in my room. I left the bathroom and walked back through the living room towards my bedroom. Before I got there, however, I noticed that a chair that had been in the kitchen fifteen seconds before, was now pressed up flush against the futon so that I could not sit down again where I had been sitting working on the computer. I had been in the bathroom for only a minute when this happened. I was pretty scared, but pushed it out of mind and went back to getting ready to leave. This in itself was not too alarming until I spoke with the tenant who lives directly below me on the third floor.

He came up to my apartment one night at about midnight asking if I had been banging on his door. My friends and I were hanging out and told him that we hadn't banged on his door, but that maybe he heard us stomping around. There are only 3 units in this four-floor building and all were accounted for at that time. He insisted that he most definitely heard someone banging loudly right on his front door for five or six bangs. Bewildered he went back downstairs. Later, I asked him about it again. Fearing rejection, I breached the subject carefully, "Um, do you think per chance this building might be haunted?" I was sure he'd laugh, but he just looked at me and said, "Probably..." He said his cat acts really strange sometimes and seems to follow invisible things about the room. I related the story about the chair to him and he grew pale. His girlfriend used to live in my current apartment (I know, small world, such is the micro-culture of Brooklyn youth) and he said she always pulled a chair up flush against their couch (which was positioned in the same place as my futon is now) to use as a makeshift desk on which to place her laptop. We both arrived at the same conclusion: this ghost might have thought it was helping me out by providing a platform for my computer. We have both been very aware and are looking out for things like this since then, but have experienced no repeat performances.

Some nights when I'm upstairs alone I love my apartment; sometimes, I feel very nervous and uncomfortable and I know I'm not alone. I love that place because it's so big and airy and clean, but on some nights, it has an undeniably sinister feel to it. I am ready and waiting.