The New Condo - Pt. 2

**This is part two of a recount of my family's experiences over a few years in a condo we lived in - for background see part 1.**

As time went on, the feelings of being watched turned into being followed around the house very closely - like the person was right behind me, almost stepping on my heels as I walked. It felt child-like in size, only 3-4 feet high.

Whatever was following me didn't feel angry or threatening. But it had a very intense energy, like when someone is intent on you - and only you.

When the feeling of being followed would get too much, I would tell it in my mind very strongly to back off. It would but in a day or two it would be back.

Whenever I felt a presence in that condo, it was always started with the air changing, like a heaviness or thickness would set in. The air somehow had substance, an energy all its own.

Then my body would react - the hairs on my arms or neck would prickle, like when you get goosebumps - or my left forearm would ache (a sensation I would feel again later in life - but more on that in other stories).

One night, I was laying in bed and still awake, trying to fall asleep even though I never felt comfortable in that room.

I started to feel a weight next to me in the bed and began to hear breathing. Thinking it was just my own, I held my breath and waited. Sure enough, the breathing continued beside me. We didn't have the central air on, no fan in the room, or any pets - I couldn't rule out what I was hearing.

Most of the activity in the condo happened to me, but this next incident took away any doubt for my parents.

My parents said up late one night and were sitting in the kitchen talking. I had gone to sleep hours before.

All of a sudden they heard frantic running upstairs, from one end of the condo to the other, multiple times. My dad described it as very heavy feet pounding on the floor, as if someone were running as fast as they could.

Thinking that it was me, my parents raced upstairs, only to find me sound asleep in my bed. None of my blankets were disturbed, and I wasn't breathing heavily (like someone would if they had been running that way).

I've never been a sleep walker, before this incident or after. I'm a heavy sleeper and don't move about or get up in the middle of the night (especially in that house). So my parents had no explanation even though they heard it straight above their heads, clear as day.

As parents recounted this story to me the next morning, I knew it had gotten to them, they both looked so startled. I'd never seen my parents look like that before.

This incident seemed to signal a change in the activity in our home, from here things seem to escalate.

I was laying in my parent's bed and watching a movie since they had a bigger TV in their room. Dad was fixing the sink in the bathroom, Mom was working late.

After a while, my eyes were drawn away from the TV to the entrance of my parent's bedroom. I felt like I was being watched, but it wasn't a child or the man from before, it felt like a woman and she was troubled, almost sad.

The sadness grew more and more intense until it seemed to wash over me. Out of no where I began to cry until I was weeping. For some reason, I was so sad for her, I couldn't stop crying. It was also like she was showing me how she felt or a recording of a moment in her life - I wasn't sure.

Dad came in when he heard my crying getting louder, but him coming in seemed to chase her away. My dad always had a very strong / intense personality, nothing bothered me when he was around.

As we entered the third year in the condo, more incidents happened during the day.

It was the middle of the afternoon and I decided to spend some time in our living room. It was the one place in the house that always seemed calm to me.

The living room was very simple. There was a large gray leather recliner by the windows, a TV on the other wall, and another chair on the same side of the room as the recliner.

Choosing the leather recliner, I put up the foot rest and leaned back. When you put up the foot rest of the recliner, your feet are in line with the bottom of the TV.

It was a lazy summer day, so as I was watching TV, I began to let my guard down and truly relax. It felt good to not be on edge for once.

As time went on I felt an odd sensation, almost like I was weightless. Looking down I was startled to find that the recliner seemed to be off the ground!

My feet were no longer in line with the TV! The edge of the arm of the recliner seemed to be bobbing gently up and down by a few inches.

I immediately looked down and the floor seemed farther away. The recliner kept gently rising and falling by inches, almost in tune with my breathes.

My brain struggled to comprehend how this was happening since the recliner was very heavy (it had taken three movers to get it into our home when we moved in) and I was fully awake. I wasn't dreaming.

This went on for a moment longer before I silently began to think, "down...put me down..."

Gradually the chair lowered and I felt it rest on the floor. As it did I bolted out of the chair and ran outside. This was one of the harder experiences for me to recount or try to explain.

The last two incidents that are the most extreme happened close together.

As I described before, our condo was three floors, each level of course having it's own set of stairs. There were three steps from the kitchen up to small landing that led to the rest of the stairs that led to the third floor where all the bedrooms were.

I remember coming out of the downstairs half bathroom off the kitchen. Wanting something in my room upstairs, I went to begin to climb the stairs. Two steps up, a thick wall of energy seemed to stop me.

Curious and tired of giving into whatever was in my home, I tried to push forward, but it was like running in sand.

As I got farther up the stairs, the energy only seemed to get thicker and harder to walk through.

There was a railing on the stairs that I began to cling to and use to pull myself forward.

All around me there seemed to be a fog forming. It was bright, almost golden in hue. Half way up the stairs, I found it hard to breathe.

Through the fog, a surge of energy came straight for me, then through me. Gasping for air and falling to my knees, it was as if for a brief moment I was the same as whatever had run through me. I felt like I was transparent.

I don't remember much happening after that. It was almost as if it settled the house for a while. I'd wondered if that incident took all the energy from the home.

Life went on and the house seemed to be ours again. My family actually began to relax and look forward to spending time in what had been my mother's dream home.

Living in the rainy suburbs of Portland, I was used to having allergies in the Spring, and we all braced for the flu season. But I remember this particular Fall/Winter had been a rough one, and I'd come down with a virus that had made me weak with a fever.

It kept me out of school for a week. My mom stayed home to take care of me while my dad went to work. So on this particular day my dad wasn't there. It was just my mom and I.

I had started feeling a little better and was able to move about the house a bit. I was at a point where I no longer had my guard up, it had been weeks since anything remotely out of the ordinary had happened.

Before, I would've stayed downstairs with my mom. But by now I was tired of being afraid, and being young, I didn't understand that letting my guard down in that house wasn't a good idea. I honestly thought whatever had been happening was probably over.

I went upstairs to wash my face. I was even so bold (or dumb) to leave the light off in the bathroom. As a side note, I got into the habit of always turning on a light in every room I was in, it just seemed to make me feel safe.

So here I was standing in this semi-dark bathroom, the only light being a night light my parents put in a while back. The shower curtain was closed and I could hear my mom downstairs doing the dishes.

Bending over the sink to splash water of my face, it felt so cool and refreshing after having a fever for days before.

As I straightened, I dried my face then looked in the mirror. Two faces looked back at me, my own, and a young blond woman.

Her head was right over my shoulder. She seemed to be in her late teens, wearing a pink pioneer era looking bonnet over her hair.

Her skin was very pale. Her eyes were expressionless, but her lips were grim and in one thin straight line.

I didn't turn around to look at the rest of her. I ran as fast as I could down the stairs to my very startled mom, I probably screamed.

This was the first and only time I've seen a spirit (?) with my own eyes. I've felt so many different presences in that condo, and later in life have had visions, but this experience was one of the most memorable.

If I'm honest, I'd be fine if I never saw another spirit in person again. But at the same time, it was extraordinary to me. She was as clear as day, and I'll never forget her.

Soon life changed dramatically for my family. The economy in Oregon took a down turn, both my parents lost their jobs.

The activity in our house was replaced with my parent's sadness, especially my dad's, at loosing his job. At that time there were no jobs in the state. Eventually, my parents decided to sell the condo and move out of state to California to start over.

It took some time, but we were lucky to find a buyer for the condo, a young woman who was looking for her first home. We needed ample time to pack up since we were moving out of state, but the woman changed her mind and wanted us out as soon as possible or she'd pull her offer. She was very anxious to move in.

Naturally this didn't sit well with my parents, but we knew our family would fall on even harder times if we couldn't sell the condo.

The last day of packing suddenly the small presence that used to follow me around came back stronger than ever. I remember literally throwing things into boxes in my room as quickly as I could.

No matter how strongly I told it to leave me alone, the presence clung to my heels and followed as close behind as possible.

We were loading up the last of our belongings, thinking we had until the evening to get things wrapped up. But the young woman who bought the condo came in early, with all her family, her moving team and vans of stuff, telling us to get out of her house.

I could tell my parents were tired, conflicted, and frustrated. As we were loading up in our large moving van, the young woman followed my dad to the driver door telling him that she was angry with that we were delaying her move.

In that moment my dad made the decision not to tell her that the condo was in his words "haunted". Being a kid at the time I wasn't involved in this decision. And I sensed that my parents were barely hanging onto our finances with a thread, if she wanted the home so badly, we'd gladly hand it over to her.

To the best of my knowledge, we never heard from her again. I've never been back to the condo, but I've always wondered what exactly was going on there, and what caused all that activity?

I hope you enjoyed reading about these experiences. I've been hesitant to talk about this time in my life because I wasn't sure that anyone would believe me, much less understand. Or that it would be one big joke to them.

To this day, I still am amazed by some of things I witnessed in that condo. I have had other experiences since then that were also intense, but since I lived in the condo, I can easily say that this was the most active place I've ever been.

Please feel free to leave your thoughts below. It's felt freeing to share them here, I've held onto these experiences long enough.

Thanks for reading!