I moved to Los Angeles in 2000. I had a boyfriend here who lived in a small 1 bedroom apt in Studio City that was way over priced and we decided to look for a cheaper, bigger place for the both of us. We went to a cute place over in Sherman Oaks, a 1 bed 1 bath, built in the 20's with cute built in cabinets in the dining room and just tons a character. Immediately upon walking in, my Boyfriend Eric said he just didn't like the place at all and wouldn't even bother to look at the rest of the place. Despite the unit being only $600/mo and in a nice area, he was adamant he would not live there.
Fast forward 6 months, Eric and I were doomed from the start. He was a total loser and had a severe drinking problem. We had moved far far away to Woodland Hills and the drive into town was draining as was our relationship. I managed to talk my way out of the lease due to his drinking problem and began my search for my very own place. I had a very small budget and asked around the workplace is anyone knew of anything. I was temping at a Real Estate Investment company and my supervisor June, said she owned a building in Sherman Oaks with a 1+1 for rent for $625/mo. She gave me the address and I was shocked when I drove up and realized it was the exact same unit Eric and I had viewed 6 months earlier. The lease was 1year long, but at the time I didn't put two and two together to realize that it meant either the unit had sat empty for 6 months or someone broke the lease. I loved the place and moved in.
All was fine for the 1st year. I was barely ever home, going down to San Diego every other weekend to dance as a go-go dancer at club Ultra and On Broadway, and the other weekends my daughter Sierra, would come down from Fresno to have her weekends with me. At the time she was living temporarily with her dad so I could get settled and it was summer, and he had her for summer vacation. Anyway, probably about a year after moving in, strange things started happening. Around this time I was staying home more, and not driving to SD every other weekend.
The first incident was a blatant, in your face event. I was on the phone with a guy I was dating, it was the middle of the day and I had these two framed pictures on the dining room wall over the dining table. They were about 6 inches apart and were hung with 2 nails on either side of the picture frame and had those alligator type hooks on the back that secure the nail head so they don't slip off. All of the sudden both pictures literally flew off the wall. I immediately thought we had just had an earthquake and asked my boyfriend if he had felt anything. He said no, and I noticed nothing else was shaking or swaying. I went over to the pictures expecting to find the nails had come out of the wall or the hooks on the back had come undone-but neither was the case. All 4 nails were firmly in the wall and all 4 hooks were attached to the picture frames. I put the pictures back on the wall and stood there for a while trying to make one picture fall off the wall, I couldn't get one, let alone both at the same exact time come off. I was perplexed but brushed it aside as a weird coincidence.
About a week later, I came home at night to a dark house and walked over to the floor lamp and as I reached for the knob, the light came on. I again brushed it off as a wiring issue or the weight of my foot moved the floorboards and the bulb was maybe loose and it jarred it on. Little things kept happening; my remote control for my bedroom TV went missing and never resurfaced even when we moved out. My hairbrush also disappeared never to return, just little stupid things anyone could brush off.
But then it all changed. My daughter was little, about 5 years old, it was Christmas time and I had a new job as a research scientist for UCLA Center for Sleep Research. I worked long hours and didn't have time to go shopping for her gifts so I decided to shop online from KBToys. I got her this Cinderella Castle that lit up and had music and dancing mini figurines of Cinderella and Prince Charming. The package came a week later and I put the box at the foot of my bed and went to sleep. Around 3am I was woken up by loud music and flashing lights coming from the foot of my bed. The castle was playing over and over and I couldn't get it to turn off. I took it out to the kitchen, shut the kitchen door, shut the hallway door and my bedroom door and put the pillow over my head and tried to ignore the loud noise and get to sleep. The next day I checked it and it was off, so I again figured that perhaps something happened during shipping and it was another wiring issue had made the castle come to life. I wrapped it up and on Christmas morning Sierra opened it and was elated. I said to her, "Oh and look what it does" and pressed the button to start the music and lights. Nothing happened. That is when Sierra pointed to the front of the box and said, "Mommy look, it says 4 AA batteries required". I cannot describe the chill that went up my spine, I told her we would have to return this one and get her a new one, and we did.
Later that month I went to put Sierra to bed one night and she kept fussing and saying she wanted to keep the light on in her room. I refused and told her to get to sleep. No more than 15 minutes later a scream came from her room, I ran in and she was white as a ghost and said, "Mommy Mommy the old lady pulled my blankets off me!" Her blankets were piled on the floor at the foot of the bed. I didn't believe her and scolded her for telling tales and made her go back to bed. I would regret this and get my just desserts very shortly.
Sierra was with her dad on summer break again and I was all alone. My friends Jeana and Ashley were coming over. Jeana got there first and I told her what had been happening over the past few months. To my surprise, Jeana didn't laugh; she told me that she too had had weird experiences while babysitting at my house in the past. Ashley came over and asked to use the bathroom, we had said nothing to her about the weird happenings, and she walked into the hallway and stopped short, and came back out and said, "Oh Anna, something is not right, something is off in your house, and there is a bad energy in your hallway". That scared me so badly, I hadn't ever mentioned anything to Ashley, and she had been to my house many times but now even she noticed the change in the energy. Later, Jeana and Ashley were in the bathroom getting ready to go out. Suddenly I heard them both scream. The came running out and said my bathroom window had just shut of its own volition. I didn't see this but I definitely believed them, they looked very upset.
More and more stuff began to happen. I had a constant problem with flies, no matter what I did; I would come home to 20-30 flies in my living room, only in the living room. I had the manager check the windows, crawlspace and spray for bugs and even then, flies and more flies. The other thing was the freezing temp of my house. Even in summer the living room was ice cold. I had space heaters and the actual heating unit for the apt but no matter what, it was always icy cold, but it wasn't the kind of cold I was used to, it was bone chilling cold. It was all starting to make me wonder, but I didn't believe in ghosts or hauntings, so I never once thought any of these incidents were due to a ghost in my house until one night.
I went to bed around 2am and for some reason I consciously thought to myself that I was going to turn off all the lights, and close both the hallway door and my bedroom door. I don't know why I thought this to myself as my usual routine was to leave both open and the kitchen light on. But this night I turned everything off and closed the doors. I was lying in bed praying out loud for my daughter and started to hear what I thought was my upstairs nieghbour banging around. My neighbor was an elderly lady in a wheelchair, so this was strange to me. I stopped praying to listen and it stopped. I began my prayers again, the banging began again, I decided to just ignore it and as I did, it got louder and louder and louder until it was apparent it was not coming from upstairs. My bedroom door was violently shaking, as if someone was trying to get inside a door that was locked. My door had no lock, yet it was rattling in the door jam so violently that I was frozen with fear thinking someone had broken into my house and was going to come in and hurt me. I somehow got up the courage to jump out of bed, switch on the light, and fling open the door while screaming at the top of my lungs in an attempt to scare away whoever was on the other side of my bedroom door no one.
The hallway door was wide open, every single light in my house was now on, the TV was on to static, the computer was on, the stereo was on to static, every single electronic and light was on, and the doors I had closed only 20 minutes prior were all wide open. I stood breathless in the doorway of my hall and living room, and now my windows were rattling. I screamed, "Stop it stop it stop it!" I was jolted by a loud knock on my front door. It was the manager who lived across the hall. I opened the door and she asked if I was ok, she had heard my screams. I told her what happened. To my horror she said, "Oh, I thought you weren't having any of the problems Carlos had". I asked who Carlos was and what was she talking about.
Carlos had rented the unit back when Eric and I had 1st seen the apt in 2000, he signed a 1yr lease, 5 months in, he fled in the middle of the night stating the house was haunted and he refused to live there and broke the lease. The rent was so low because no one would stay longer than 6 months or so. I had been there nearly 2 years.
I left that night and stayed at my boyfriends. I went to the lab for work and my boss, a renowned Sleep doctor called me into his office and asked me what was wrong- I wear my emotions on my face loudly. I told him he was going to think I was crazy, I might be crazy, but here is what happened. He said he believed me and said I should talk to his wife Wendy, who knew about this stuff and could help me. She was a psychologist-Great I thought, he does think I'm nuts. Wendy came at lunch and told me she too believed me and I needed to "take my house back" and told me I needed to get some sage and salt water, go in the daytime open the windows and tell the spirit to either leave me and my daughter alone, or get out. I felt like an idiot talking to myself with a burning sage stick. But it worked. I stayed for another 8months until my current fiancé moved us over to West Hollywood to be nearer to him.
I wondered so much about the apt, I looked it up and found 2 deaths, one was a natural death of an elderly woman (the woman who pulled my daughters blankets off?) and a young man who committed suicide in the detached garage. My daughter told me after we moved out that she had many other things happen to her but didn't want to scare me-she was like 5-8yrs old and didn't want to scare ME! I still feel badly that I didn't believe her the night she screamed for me, but I definitely got mine.
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