In the summer of 2004, I moved with my husband and 2-year-old daughter from Wyoming to Pocatello, Idaho. The apartment we moved into was actually a house that was built sometime in the 1920's and had been converted into three apartments. We lived in the downstairs apartment on the left-hand side. We had only been there for a few weeks when weird things started happening.
At first, they were pretty benign and easily explained away, such as objects disappearing inexplicably only to reappear in the exact location I had left them. There were also strange noises, especially at night. I would hear the sound of children laughing and running in the upstairs apartment, when I knew for a fact that the only children who lived in the apartment were my own and my neighbor did not have any visitors.
Most of the time, when I heard these sounds, my neighbor wasn't even home. I have always had a fascination with the paranormal so it wasn't difficult for me to believe that "spirits" were responsible, but my husband is a very practical person and continued to insist that there were "perfectly logical" explanations for everything.
His opinion changed a few months later when he witnessed the first of many physical manifestations. We would often return home to find an entire roll of toilet paper had been unraveled from the roll and was lying on the floor. At first, my husband blamed our dog, but I knew there was no way our five-pound chihuahua could reach the toilet paper roll.
This went on for some time and was very frustrating, as no scientific explanation could be given for it. Then one day, my husband was shaving in the bathroom when the roll began to spin on its own. He watched, dumbfounded, as it went round and round and the toilet paper piled up on the floor. It was after this incident that we began to suspect that the spirit in our apartment was a mischievous child. This seemed even more probable after our friend Samantha brought over one of her acquaintances who just happened to be psychic sensitive. He had no previous knowledge of the apartment or of the strange goings-on that had been occurring, but he nevertheless informed me that he saw a little girl with dark hair and a "filly" blue dress standing in the corner of our living room. He seemed very un-nerved by the whole experience and was anxious to leave. I myself never saw a visual specter, but had felt a "presence" on numerous occasions.
The child ghost didn't bother us much, aside from the occasional mischievous unraveling of a toilet-paper roll, but there was another presence in the house that was very different. I perceived it to be male and not very friendly. It only seemed to bother me, for some reason, and always when my husband was not in the room.
One night, I was lying in bed, half-asleep. My husband was in the living room, playing video games. My eyes were closed, but I clearly heard heavy footsteps moving through the kitchen. They stopped at the doorway of our bedroom and I heard my husband's voice say my name. "What?" I said, without opening my eyes. There was no answer, so I rolled over and sat up and looked towards the doorway. There was no one there, but there was something there. Even in the dark, I could make out a shadowy form that appeared to be leaning against the doorway. I knew then that it was not my husband and became very frightened. I told the thing to go away and leave me alone, and it vanished abruptly. I ran into the living room to find my husband sitting on the couch, as he had been during the entire incident. He had not heard the footsteps or seen anything unusual, but he saw how scared I was and knew better than to tell me it was just my imagination.
It disturbed me that the "spirit" knew my name and had spoken to me using my husband's voice, as if it were trying to trick me. A friend suggested that perhaps the shadowy form might have been my "spirit guide", but I rejected that explanation. Whatever it was, I did not get a good feeling from it. I started looking for another place to live shortly thereafter.
After we had found a suitable apartment, we began packing to leave. The spirits made it very clear that they were not happy to see us go. On the final day that we lived there, I was packing my book collection into boxes in the living room when a curtain rod was ripped loose from the wall and came hurtling down at my head. Luckily, I wasn't hurt, but I easily could have been as the screw that fastened it to the wall was still jutting out of it. My husband examined both the rod and the hole in the wall and confirmed that it had been pulled out of the wall, rather than merely "coming loose" and falling.
That was that. We finished packing and left as quickly as we could, but not before I said a prayer for the spirits that we were leaving behind.
Loading comments....
