Ghosts Making Themselves Known

After I graduated college, my friends and I were a bit tapped out (we had little money) but we lived in Buffalo where there were many very old apartments that rented rather cheaply. A friend and his new wife were looking for someplace to live and I accompanied them to look at an apartment they were considering renting. I don't recall much of what the apartment looked like but I remember going into the living room and having to leave right away. I felt something unnatural in there. I was sure that the apartment was haunted. I never said anything to my friends because I thought they would think I was nuts and I didn't want to put a negative spin on a place that they had settled on as their next place of residency. After they moved in, we were at a mutual friend's house and they jokingly said "I think our apartment is haunted". This piqued my attention. They proceeded to tell of weird things that happened - such as one night when they were sleeping, they woke up because the bedroom light just turned itself on. (That's the one I remember but they told about other things.) I knew that the apartment was haunted and then told them so.

When living in Buffalo, I moved into a very nice 3 bedroom apartment in the North End. As I was unpacking I heard something crash in a cupboard in the bathroom. I looked to see what had shifted or fallen only to find that there were only towels in the cupboard and they were sitting as I had put them in there, neatly folded and undisturbed - and the noise I heard could not have come from towels! The landlord and his wife lived downstairs (it was a two family house) and next that I saw them I jokingly I said "I didn't know I'd be sharing the apartment with a ghost." I expected them to laugh or ask "what do you mean?" but instead they looked at each other rather strangely then said "oh, he's up there now?" I asked what they meant and they told me that they had experienced strange happenings themselves. They told me of a time when, having a pool table in the basement and a rack with the pool sticks on it, all the pool sticks simultaneously fell off the rack at one time. There were other stories as well.

I remember that there was a coat closet in the living room (where my TV was located). Any time I would leave the room and come back in, the closet door was opened. I made sure when I closed it that it would "click" so that I would be assured that it was indeed closed yet every time I would leave the room and come back, the closet door was open. I was sure that the ghost was a friendly one. He would do things that were just annoying and sometimes funny. One time when I was vacuuming, the vacuum just turned itself off. I mean the switch to turn it on, turned off. I used to talk to him and this time said "stop it, I am busy and I don't appreciate your jokes right now."

One time when my brother and SIL came to visit, my landlords, me, my bro, SIL and the next door neighbors were having a BBQ and we were telling stories about our ghostly experiences. The neighbors said that the people that lived there before also attested to the house being haunted. My cigarettes were sitting on the table with the matches, with the cover closed, were laying on top of the pack. All of a sudden the matches all lit up on fire - nothing had touched them. I said "oh I think our ghosts don't want us talking about them". Now, the landlord's young son had reoccurring nightmares about the house burning down, and that's when and how I quit smoking. I promised the ghosts that I would stop smoking if they would promise not to play with matches anymore and surprisingly, their son stopped having the nightmares - and I stopped smoking.

I have since moved from Buffalo and live in newer townhouses and have not had any ghostly visitors. I do believe that old places have lingering spirits.