This new room that I moved into in was completely different from our old apartment.
It was empty.
And not the “tenting” empty, where it’s just staving off something that’s only right behind the “entrance”, but EMPTY empty. There was nothing there.
I felt the physical improvement on my body from the first night I was there. I was no longer moving around under water. My body was awake and full of energy. Not dragged down, and fighting off the energy drain. I did my workout on the second day there, fully expecting it to be the usual chore. It was always so difficult for me to do the pushups and all that. Like somebody was standing on me.
But now, when I got down and started doing that, I was literally, light as a feather. I was flying up and down, up and down, like I had no weight, like it was nothing. I was stunned, and stopped myself and sat up, not sure what to make of this. Ohhhhhh-kay, I thought. I haven’t done push ups in weeks! This should be difficult! This should be straining me! I shouldn’t be flying up and down, feeling weightless!!!
I did something like 100 push ups, taking advantage of this.
And from that first night, and onwards, I was staying up til 1 am, like it was nothing. There was no way I could’ve made myself go to sleep at 8:30 or 9 even if I’d wanted to. I had too much energy. Even though I was still in the same situation – no car, no money (and REALLY with no money now, after my brother’s jail fiasco, and losing my $1,300 deposit due to being evicted.) I should’ve been depressed. But it was never depression that had been dragging me down. It had been the place I was living. Sucking off of me. Draining my energy. This was the way I should be, I realized. NOT the other way.
I reveled in this new me. Soaked it up. I reveled in the complete lack of white lines, and “entrances” that emit waves of chilly icy air that make your ribs tingle. Reveled at the lack of entities crossing over, at all hours of the day. No sparklies, no white balls, no black circles. No more energy things attaching themselves to me and disrupting my sleep, and no more attacks. No more waking up suddenly in the middle of the night and always finding something there, watching me. No more blasts of heat like an oven in the middle of my room, making my face scrunch up and giving me nausea. No more human ghosty woman, knocking on my headboard, slamming my toilet tank lid around, scritch scratching my back, and sitting on the edge of my bed. No more bluish white blobs of shapeless energy blowing through my room and leaving through the living room, or hovering in the air in the living room, scaring Kitty. And no more cat spazzing out. Kitty was completely calm, every single night that I was there. Not once did she spaz out.
Unfortunately, the roommate situation itself didn’t work out. I ended up fleeing that place after only three weeks, because the landlord lady named Laurie, this middle aged white woman, was a total nightmare. Somebody who liked to take in people who were in vulnerable, down and out situations……so she could exploit them. :/ During the brief time I lived there we had two other females also renting rooms – one 30-something chick going through bad financial difficulties, admitting that she was completely trapped and unable to move out, and a girl who was 17/18 and had “run away” from home, creating a ton of drama that Laurie just ate up and couldn’t get enough of.
The drama centered on the fact that she “ran away” when she was technically underage at 17, but then turned 18 soon after. (That’s why I put “running away” in quotes – she had been on the cusp of being a legal adult.) So now there was nothing her family could do, but they weren’t giving up, and creating lots of drama. Which Laurie absolutely thrived on. This runaway girl became Laurie’s new hobby, basically. Laurie wasn’t somebody who just rented you the room and stayed out of your business. She wanted your business to become her business……so she could get an upperhand and start controlling/manipulating things. Demanding more and more money, all the while getting you to sign “legal contracts” that she would try to hold over your head to force you to stick around and be “under her thumb.”
So Laurie and “runaway girl” were always having big fights because Laurie was completely suffocating her, would not leave her alone, acting like it was her own daughter and she owned her. So I’d frequently hear runaway girl screaming “LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!” and doors slamming, and Laurie standing outside her locked room in the hall, whining and pleading and pestering for her to open the door! Please! Let me in!!
“NO!!! LEAVE ME ALONE!!! GO AWAY!!!” Runaway girl traded her bad homelife for a bad room rental situation that she was now trapped in, with no car and barely any money.
But since Laurie’s exploitation schtick had always worked with the other people (all females) that she’d rented to, all passive and weak and in very bad life situations, it never occurred to her that anybody would ever rebel. I think I was the first. I don’t do “thumbs.” Big fuck you, and abruptly moved out after only three weeks, pretty much daring her to do something about any of it legally. She never did, because guess what…it was all nonsense.
So I’d hopped online to the Pennysaver website, and I found a new place within one day of deciding I wanted out. It was only a few blocks away, on El Toro Road. Mike gave me a lift over there to check it out and meet with the guy Dominic who was renting the room. It was another beat up old house, with crazy roommates, but, whatever. The bedroom itself was twice the size of the one I’d just been renting, for the same price. $500 a month rent, $100 a month flat rate for utilities. It was more than fair for the size room I was getting, with a/c, and a fireplace, and even came with a couch. Right on.
My new roommates were Dominic, who was the landlord, and was usually never home. One of three Leos living there at the time. Italian, over 6 feet tall with black hair and dark skin. And as I would gradually come to discover…..not “all there” mentally. When I was first moving in he warned me with regards to Kitty to be careful, because of his dogs in the backyard. He had these empty cage enclosures set up in the backyard and a “Beware of Dog” sign on the fence gate leading to the backyard. But…….there were no dogs. And hadn’t been in who knows how long. Yet he would sometimes make reference to them in the present tense as if they were actually out there. That was just the tip of the iceberg of his mentally off-ness. O.o
Then there was Todd, 32, and going through a divorce, with two boys who would visit every other weekend. (This was the second time in life I had a roommate named Todd. The other one was mentioned earlier, whom was one of the roommates with me, Mike and Steve.) Todd was over 6 foot as well, with meat on his bones, a shaved head, tats and a boyish face. I came to discover he was a compulsive liar, and most of his personal story was…..greatly embellished, or completely fabricated. Another Leo, and who had a loud, boisterous, self absorbed extroverted personality, loved to be involved in everybody’s business, creating drama and mayhem (harmless, but still annoying), and in general acted like a little boy in a kid’s body. He liked to be social, so was always knocking on doors to see who wanted to hang out. We weren’t actual friends-friends, but I could get along with him because he was so friendly and talkative, and so we did hang out a lot. (I didn’t really have much choice anyway…..didn’t have a car, couldn’t go anywhere.) Todd liked Kitty, and there were times when he’d knock on my door and be like, “I’m not here for you, I just want to see your cat.” :D Only Todd could get away with that. Kitty in turn liked him and seemed to find him interesting.
Todd’s four year old son Connor was a total mini-me replica of him in terms of looks, but personality-wise he was like an old soul adult in a kid’s body, so their roles were reversed. It was funny to watch. Todd would be going on in his boisterous voice, “BLAH! BLAH! BLAH!” about who knows what, and meanwhile Connor would be sitting there staring at Todd’s TV with an annoyed old man’s look on his face, trying to tune him out in a quietly exasperated way. Todd was playing the role of the loud obnoxious kid always looking for attention, while Connor was the annoyed parent, wishing for some peace and quiet. Connor was a cute kid who could be a kid, but also had moments of acting like a wise old parent in my experiences with him. Like the time Kitty’s bowl of crunchy cat food accidentally got knocked over, so I started picking the pieces up off the carpet and putting them back in the bowl. Connor squatted down next to me to help, but then in a nice, but “correcting” parental tone and with a facial expression that conveyed “We know better….” he said “We should throw them away and put new food in the bowl.” I was just like “uh…..okay…..sure…..” nodding with wide eyes. O.o He was four!!!! :D It was wild.
Then there was Marilyn from Brazil who was also of Italian descent with dark hair and skin. And she was also a Leo, with the fiery, feisty, crazy personality, a lot of angry energy for whatever reason, could get riled up about anything, and who carried herself as if she were a Queen. (Three crazy Leos under one roof…..yikes…..) She was 40 but looked fantastic for her age. She had learned English by watching TV she said, and had a funny way of pronouncing words. She always pronounced the “ed” at the end of words. Walk-ed, talk-ed, etc. By the time I moved out of that place half my silverware had gone missing, and I was 100% positive Marilyn’s the one who stole it all since she had a table and chairs, mini fridge and dishes in her room. oh well.
And then there was Denise, who was 37. She definitely had mental issues, including an inability to handle any amount of stress as she told me. So she was relegated to working at Burlington Coat Factory, as a greeter, because she admitted that it was pretty much all she could handle. She said she wished she could have a job like mine, working in an office, being an admin assistant and all that, but again….said she wouldn’t be able to handle the stress of it. She couldn’t multi-task or handle too much coming at her….which is what being an admin assistant is all about. Doing things for multiple people in the office at any given point, being given responsibilities that the bosses trust you will handle without them needing to keep an eye on things…..deadlines…… So, yeah. She was short, slightly overweight, with long fluffy light brown hair and huge pale blue eyes that had a perpetual “deer caught in the headlights” blank/shell shocked look. Something not right there. She had a daughter with her ex husband that she married solely to help him get his green card, but she didn’t have any custody. When women in our mother-biased society don’t have even part time custody then you know the situation is bad.
I also learned that she was a bit of a compulsive liar as well, so between her and Todd it was really screwball. They would get exactly like Julie and Mike, with the finger pointing he-said she-said, both insisting up and down and back and forth that they were telling the truth and that the other one was lying. And with total passion and conviction too, even yelling and screaming, so you couldn’t tell who was the liar. It was nuts. Then there was how Marilyn and Denise would get together in Marilyn’s room every night and talk for hours about all of their personal problems and woes, complaining and co-miserating. And both of them as I learned could, and would, turn on you on a dime. One minute they were your friend, trying to engage in you long winded heart to heart female chats, then the next…..switcharoo. o.O Total backstabbing attack mode.
One night a couple of months down the line they pulled a sudden attack mode right after I’d just brewed myself a little pot of green tea and was carrying it back to my room, about to watch a movie. (With a really nice TV and VCR that Mike gave me that he didn’t need anymore. I didn’t have cable hookup though, and wasn’t interested in that. I just used the setup to watch movies.) I found myself suddenly cornered by Denise and Marilyn outside my door, holding my pot of tea. Inventing some nonsense to pretend to be mad at me about they started in with a tag team attack….that I fell for. Instead of saying “Whatever…..” and continuing into my room and locking the door the way I should have I stupidly started engaging with them, trying to understand wtf they were talking about and defending myself……..and that proceeded to go on for another full hour.
It was completely cliche “girl world nonsense” that so many females engage in, finding stupid shit to pick a fight about, then sucking you into a round and round….and round and round and round and round…..that never ends, has no point, and keeps spinning off onto 5,000 other things. The point is that there is no point. It’s just straight up energy vampire feeding. Same shit Julie pulled with Dave, as mentioned. Same shit my previous landlord Laurie used to pull with everybody she rented to in the house. Same shit my mom used to pull with me on the regular. The me back then hadn’t realized some things yet about this reality, so again I stupidly fell for it, allowing myself to get sucked in, not realizing that it was “the fight to nowhere.” But that’s why I used to LOVE living with guy roommates………. lack of drama. Straight forward. Uncomplicated. Honest, blunt, to the point. No “pst pst pst!” gossip and two facing, no games, no energy vampire round and round nonsense. And I fit right in with that, which is why we all lived together for as long as we did. It was very compatible, and we just had fun going places and doing stuff together, and just being.
But after I’d finally managed to extricate myself from the situation I was sitting in my room, completely wound up now and frazzled, unable to proceed with watching my movie as originally planned, wanting to GTFO, ASAP. But of course realizing there was no place for me to go…..because I didn’t have a car yet. I was still in the process of saving. So all I could do was just sit there, angry, frazzled, frustrated and trapped.
And within a couple of minutes of sitting there feeling these intense frazzled feelings it’s suddenly “DING DONG!” Front doorbell rings. Curious I got up and left my room to answer it. Opened the front door and who should be standing there out of nowhere at like 10:00 at night, with a knowing smirk on his face? Mike.
“Oh my God…..you have NO idea how glad I am to see you…..I just had this big fight with Denise and Marilyn….” I started to explain in a lowered, intense voice.
He nodded knowingly, still smiling. “Yup, I know. Come on. Let’s get atta here.” He looked over my shoulder at Marilyn and Denise who had emerged behind me in the hall to see who was at the door. I went back to my room to grab my backpack and close up my room, taking off with Mike out into the night, just SO happy to be getting out of there. Later on when I asked him how did he know?!? He said he’d been on his way home, driving down El Toro Road, but wasn’t quite ready to call it a night just yet. Decided to tune into me, see what I was up to, whether I was still up and would want to hang out and go anywhere. Then completely felt the angry, frustrated, panicked, trapped “HELP!!!!” vibes coming off of me, sensing that some sort of big fight had just happened with the roommmates. Then was like, “Welp…..time for a detour…..” and immediately headed over to the house.
So yeah, once again…..Mike and his “psychic ear” saved the day. And there were several more incidents besides the ones already mentioned here that have happened over the years.
So with all of those roommates, plus me, that made five people living in the house. Too many people. Dominic converted the garage into a little living quarters/room for himself, and that’s where he crashed when he did come home. Though as I discovered when he was home he would often hide out in the garage writing these long, crazy rambling notes to Todd threatening to evict him and for all the reasons why, but never following through. Todd had all these pages of handwritten rambling notes saved and showed them to me once. The way Dominic wrote was like gibberish. English words strung together, but they didn’t formulate coherent sentences. Another time when it was just me and Dominic that were home, Dominic showed me the latest note he was putting together for Todd consisting of more rambling gibberish. His eyes were glazed over and nobody was home as he rambled on and on about all his complaints about Todd. I just listened and nodded my head. O.o
There was an incident towards the end of my time there where Dominic and Todd totally got into it while I was at work. During that big fight/argument Dominic told Todd that all the roommates, including me, hated his kids, and were always complaining to him about them. O.o When Todd relayed that to me and Denise it was the only time I’d ever seen him show genuinely hurt feelings. For starters I’d never heard anybody there complain about Todd’s kids, and for me especially nothing could have been further from the truth. I liked both of his boys, they were genuinely good kids. But Connor in particular was my favorite, just because he was like this wise, 80 year old dude trapped in a kid’s body. :D There were times towards the end when it was Todd’s weekend to have his kids and they’d burst through the front door, full of energy, and make a beeline right for my door, knocking excitedly, wanting to see me and Kitty. But especially Kitty, whom they liked to play with. Another time right after they’d gotten there Todd was distracted in his room, then realized…..where was Connor?? as he later relayed to me. Couldn’t find him in the house, then rushed outside, worried….and found me helping a happy Connor ride his bike down the sidewalk. Todd told me that made his day to see that.
So yeah….that was a real asshole move from Dominic to say something like that. He knew what he was doing though, going for a below-the-belt attack using innocent kids as the weapon. Before I thought he was just harmless crazy, but after that I realized there was darkness going on there. It was also the same nonsense tactics that so many snake-in-the-grass pot stirrer females engage in. Very un-guy like behavior. So between all the rambling gibberish letters and the imaginary dogs in the backyard and making up low blow lies to start shit between the roommates he was just beyond. Also interestingly enough…..Dominic was the only one in the house who wasn’t interested in Kitty, at all. Just ignored her. That also kind of revealed his core/soul.
Annnnddd….that was the roommates situation. As Felicity even noted to me, people of their ages, renting a room? “Something is wrong with people like that. You’re in your 20s, so that’s okay. But by the time you reach their ages you’re not supposed to still be renting a room.” True. Todd was going through a divorce and no longer living with his wife. Denise admitted to having mental problems and didn’t have even part time custody of her daughter. Dominic clearly demonstrated mental problems. And Marilyn was an English second language immigrant who was full of inexplicable anger and stole things. They all had problems and no money.
Interestingly enough, towards the end of my time there I was on friendly terms with Denise and Marilyn, despite their big Attack Fight they’d cornered me into towards the beginning. To the point where Denise was even loaning me her Mazda 323 to run errands, without me asking. Her offer/insistence. And Marilyn was also offering to give me rides here and there in her VW Cabriolet convertible. But the big reason for that seemed to be because of the way I handled the situation. After that night I just……stayed away from them/avoided them. But didn’t engage in any negative retaliation shenanigans, which as it turns out, Denise was completely expecting as she relayed to me, after having gone through that with another female roommate. (Seems she had a habit of fighting with female roommates.) But I just kept to myself and did my own thing, staying away, like we were ships passing in the night. After that they apparently realized I was alright, so hey…..let’s all get along! What a novel idea! :/ Denise offering to loan me her car, completely entrusting me with her sole source of transportation, was the ultimate olive branch though.
(On a side note – Kitty would wind up being very popular with the house. Like the time Marilyn had some friends visiting, and she stopped by my room to see if I could show them Kitty and let them pet her. :D Kitty was a really good looking cat, one of the cutest cat faces I’ve ever seen, always getting compliments about her looks. And she was very comfortable and friendly with people, as most black cats are. Her breed was the Bombay as I’d come to figure out, a cross between a black American shorthair and a Burmese, and she had all the physical traits from head to toe, and every single personality trait on the checklist. So she wasn’t just “a black cat.” Bombays are very intelligent, curious, friendly, sociable, and lack the usual fear/skittishness that most cats typically have….hence why they’re so sociable with people and curious. They’re also talkative, and athletic/active, which Kitty definitely was. So in a lot of ways they’re “dog cats,” as I’ve described them. The kind that can play fetch, and will wait for you by the door every day like a dog. Later on Tom verified that Kitty would always get up from her naps when I’d be on my way home from work. She always knew. So when I’d arrive home she’d be there waiting for me next to the front door. :) The thing about Kitty is she knew she was “one of us,” because right from the beginning Joe and I always treated her as such. I was constantly talking to her and interacting with her like she was a person (or human child, would be more like it), never ignored her, and anytime Joe and I were hanging out, talking, she would always be right there with us – sitting between us with her little feeties tucked underneath her, looking back and forth between us as we talked, all perky and curious. Later on with Tom and I it was always the same thing – always situated next to us, listening and just “hangin’ with her peeps.” Always, that was her deal. She was one of us. But this is definitely why everybody gravitated towards her. She wasn’t like a normal cat. She had tons of personality and expression in her face. Just the way she looked at people….it was like people energy. Just really alert and curious and open, and letting people pet her and fawn over her. She was a cuddle junkie. :D And it drew people in. To me she was just the coolest cat there ever was.)
But anyway, once I was settled into my new room I realized within the first 24 hours…..Houston, we have a problem.
Not a problem like with our old apartment. But, we still have a problem.
After settling in, I realize that this new room felt like I was sort of underwater again. It was back to “that” feeling. I felt drained. Low energy. I felt like the vibe in my room was heavy, thick, intense. I was now more psychically attuned to sense such things, versus the old me from a year before. I was already a different person now due to everything we’d gone through. My mindset was neutral and curious and observant. I no longer spent loads of time second guessing and doubting and going in circles. Now, I knew.
Then immediately, the “banging around” started. Something banging around into things, into everything. Getting Kitty’s attention too, when it would happen.
Oddly enough though, she never spazzed.
But I just knew, there was something going on. What, I wasn’t sure.
One late afternoon I was laying on my bed, sleeping. I woke up when it was nearly dark out, and just lay there, on my mattress, staring up into the air. I kept swearing I could see these white things appearing and disappearing around the air. Naaaa…couldn’t be, I thought. This room can’t have something going on in it too. That would just be NUTS!
Still, I lay there, languidly, no fear, convinced that I was definitely seeing something. Figured it must be a trick of the eye…but wishing I could see one long enough to get a good enough look at it. And then I did. One of them appeared and stayed there for a good second. It was shaped like a white “Y”, but a bubble Y, not a thin stick Y.
“There you are!” I said to myself. Bingo.
And it disappeared again. A few more popped up here and there. I was a little excited, but apprehensive, wondering what this meant. Did it mean it was going to turn into an all out bad situation like the other place?! I hoped not. I couldn’t even deal with another repeat.
I decided to get up and go out. I turned on my light, and got myself ready. And when I was slipping on my shoes, and grabbing my backpack, I heard something crash into my framed Andromeda poster that wasn’t yet hanging up, and was leaning against the wall.
Kitty jerked her head up and looked at it too, from where she was sitting next to me. We were across the room, by my door.
Okay, I thought, as both of us watched that area, looking for something. Didn’t see anything though.
So I left.
After that I had a few incidents here and there. For starters, like I said, the air was definitely “thick” in this room, or, as Mike put it, “I feel like my energy gets drained when I’m in your room. It’s like being underwater. It’s just a different medium, that’s all.”
He’s the one who gave me the “underwater” phrase, btw.
But just to check something, I asked him,
“You remember the last place I was in, right, where I lived for three weeks?”
“Yes.”
“You were in that room, hanging out with me. Do you remember how it felt?”
He thought about it. “Yes.”
“Did it feel the same way?”
He thought about it again. “No. There was nothing in that room.”
“Bingo.”
He nailed it exactly, and confirmed to me the same thing. That room was empty, and “light.” This room was heavy, and drained your energy.
Shortly thereafter, I was laying on my air mattress on the floor, after work one day. Feeling unmotivated and drained, as I usually did in this new room. I wasn’t asleep, just laying there with my eyes closed, awake. I’d only just lied down, and had only been laying there for a minute, at max. And then I felt the distinctive feel of a person kicking the foot of my mattress. I felt a FOOT, dammit. My mattress shook with the kick.
I lay there, eyes squeezed shut. I knew what that was. And I didn’t want to look.
Still…could be the cat, I reasoned.
I opened my eyes to check.
Kitty was next to the mattress, on the floor to the left. Sitting calmly and quietly. Not at the foot of my mattress where the kick came from. And she was looking up at something I couldn’t see, following it with her eyes, as whatever it was apparently moved away from my mattress to the other side of the room.
Calmly sat there, watching it.
That’s it, I’m atta here. I got up and grabbed my stuff together and bailed out, went somewhere else to go hang out.
Every single night I was now being woken up out of my dreams by the sudden, alarming feeling that somebody was in the room with me at the foot of my bed. I could feel somebody – a distinct he/male energy – standing there, staring at me, pissed off. I’d always refuse to look though. Didn’t want to see. Don’t want to know. I can’t handle it. Not again. I’d lay there, under the covers, eyes squeezed shut, scared, until I’d drift off to sleep again. I’d experienced a lot of different phenomenon in our previous apartment, and a few random anomalous things when I was a kid, but never that specific type of incident – feeling like there’s somebody actually standing at the foot of my bed, watching me, pissed off. And this went on every-single-night, waking me up with a sudden “!!” start from a restful sleep.
But yet despite that it didn’t actually register right away that this was going on. Because after a year in our old apartment, there were certain things that I had just grown so accustomed to that I learned to tune stuff out. Or put it out of my head. Only after a solid three weeks of this, and after the kick, did it register that there was a real, true problem here that actually needs to be full on “dealt with.” That this isn’t normal, healthy stuff. It needed to be stopped.
So I had to do another one of the Meditation things.
This one was a whole lot less formal than the one that Mike and I did. I had a much easier time with it, and was able to focus clearly on what I wanted. And once again, it was like I was picking up speed, rolling down down a mountain. What I did with this one was to envision that protective bubble, and to demand that anything with any sort of bad vibes, negative intentions, etc. were to stay away from me. Stay out of my space, stay away from my cat, leave us alone. No bad vibes or negative energy is allowed near me, or my room, or my cat.
But I didn’t flat out ask “it” or “they” to leave. I didn’t have the heart to. It didn’t seem like it was anything close to what we’d been experiencing at our old apartment, so it didn’t seem like there was a need to banish it. I mean, it can still be here in the house…Just not around ME.
I thought that was a fair compromise.
I felt like a million dollars after I was done. Completely protected, and light and free. It was awesome.
However, it didn’t go away. Not entirely.
There was the night I was coming home and just as I hit the front door, pulling out my keys, the outside light clicked off. Not burned out. But clicked off. I hurriedly opened the door, expecting to see a roommate there walking away from the light switch.
But no. Everybody was tucked away in their rooms. Nobody was anywhere near the door.
Okay, I thought. Whatever. And like I guessed, it wasn’t the bulb burning out, it was the switch being shut off. That’s small beans though to me, compared to what I’ve been through.
Then a few nights later Todd came home at 2:30 am, and found the front door wide fricking open. Even though I distinctly remember closing it earlier. And the door sticks too, so, when it’s closed, it sticks closed. No drifting open again. But it was wide open. Todd mentioned this to me the next night, when I looked into his room to say hi. His door was open, and he was watching T.V.
After he mentioned it, I said,
“You KNOW that we have a ghost here…don’t you? I mean, you KNOW that, right?”
He just stared at me, silently, from his lounge chair.
“We have something going on here. And I’ve noticed it from the very first day I moved in. I’ve already done a little something in my room to keep it from bothering me anymore, but, we’ll see how that goes.”
He kept staring at me. I figured he thought I was insane. I giggled a little.
“You’re kidding, right?” he said, dead pan.
“No. We have something in this house. I’m not exactly sure yet what it is, but there’s something here.”
“No, see, because I’ve never told anybody this, but I’ve had all kinds of weird shit happen to me in this place. No, you don’t understand, I’m serious, I’ve had some FREAKY-SHIT happen here. Some FREAKY-ASS-SHIT, okay?” Todd looked at me, serious and intense.
It’s amazing what happens when somebody has the balls to come forward and be the first to admit something. Then it’s like the floodgates open, and everybody starts crawling out from under their rock!
Todd told me his stories, about the noises he hears which scare him because he can’t tell where they’re coming from. He described hearing footsteps…walking on the roof, and also of getting the feeling that somebody is outside his window, watching him. Which is the same story I later heard from Denise, that she was freaked out, so sure she could feel that somebody was outside her window, staring in. And he told me how whatever it is has done things to fuck around with him, like mess with his laundry…when nobody else is home, so he knows it’s not one of the roommates doing it….
“Yup…and playing with the door, leaving it open, and turning out the outside light when I’m standing in the doorway, and kicking my bed, and standing at the foot of my bed, watching me, in the middle of the night…Uh huh, I know ALL about it…” I said, smiling knowingly. Sounding like Joe now. Now I was the Old Pro Expert know-it-all. And Todd was the Newbie.
“So…what then, did somebody die in this house? Isn’t that how you get a ghost? Doesn’t somebody have to die?”
“No, not always. Presences can be brought in. They’re attracted to negative energy. And this house is crawling with it. Between Dominic, and Marilyn, and Denise, with all their problems, and the way all three of them sit around brooding about their life, and complaining, and all the other whack job roommates you guys have had that you were telling me about [including one girl that Todd said used meth on the regular] this place is prime for it. I don’t think anybody ever died here. I think it was drawn in to the negative energy. They feed off of it.”
“What??” he was confused. Never heard of such a thing. He was new to this stuff. Wasn’t aware of “windows” and “feeders” and things like crossing over from one plane of existence to another. He was spooked out and mystified. This was all brand new to him.
Then there was the candlestick incident not too long after that. I was on my way out the door, had my headphones in my ears, and was rummaging through my desk, looking for something before I left. And I heard a loud crashing noise, coming from behind me. I could hear that over my music.
I hesitated, half turning around to look. Kitty was sitting on the floor next to me, startled from the crash bang whatever it was. I couldn’t tell what made the noise, and didn’t want to. I knew it was the “it”, whatever it was.
Then, I watched as the candlestick and candle on my television flew off and landed on the floor in the middle of the room.
Okay, I’m ATTA here, I thought, as it hit the floor. I didn’t even try to pick it up, I just left it there and bailed. That was probably the most sensationalistic ghost/paranormal happening I’ve witnessed involving the manipulation of an object. Whatever this thing was, he was all about the manipulation of objects. Kicking the bed, throwing stuff around, turning lights off, opening doors, and even messing with Todd’s laundry apparently, if Todd wasn’t lying about that. He behaved as if he were a real physical human, only, invisible.
Then I actually saw him, it, whatever it is, for the first time. Todd and I were hanging out late at night in the kitchen, eating and talking. His bedroom door was open down the hall, and his T.V. was on, blaring, as usual. Kitty was roaming around free, and at that moment she had been in Todd’s room……had been, until it looked like she was being chased out of his room.
I looked up from the kitchen counter where I was leaning. I was facing in the direction of the hallway and bedroom doors, and something had just gotten my attention. It was Kitty scampering out of Todd’s room. Except she kept fearfully looking over her shoulder. Run a few steps, pause and look back, jerk forward again for a few steps, stop, look back over her shoulder, then jerk forward again. Like she was only reluctantly leaving his room, because she was being forced/scared into leaving his room.
And then…a black shadowy looking figure (the size of a human) appeared in the doorway – stood there, like it was looking down the hall to make sure my cat was leaving. Kind of like, “Yeah, that’s right, you better go.” I saw the head, and the whole right side of his body – shoulder, arm, torso and leg – as he stood there, watching my cat leave, not seeming amused, at all. And then he slowly turned and retreated back into Todd’s room. No wonder Kitty was scared.
I watched this happening, my mouth opening a little. My end of the conversation halted. Eyes big.
Then I grinned. There’s really nothing else you can do in a situation like that. Just go with it. Have fun. It had all become one big joke by that point, a game. So enjoy it and go along for the ride.
“Wow,” I said.
“What?” Todd asked, looking up in mid bite.
“There’s something in your room right now.”
“NO there’s not,” he tried to blow it off. Put the spoonful of mac and cheese in his mouth and chewed.
“Uh, YEAH there is. I just watched whatever it is chase my cat out of your room.” And I described to him what I just saw. Only he wouldn’t listen. Tuned me out, kept changing the subject. Todd’s like that though. He totally hates this possible ghost stuff, and waivers back and forth from saying stuff like, “We have ghosts, don’t we?” being serious. To which I’ll go, “Yeah. Well, we’ve got SOMETHING, anyway.” To then going the other direction and saying, “NO we don’t…” “We don’t have GHOSTS…” “NOOOOO…” Then sometimes being in the middle, going, “Well, if we have a ghost, then what does it want? Is it a dead person??? What if it tries to hurt somebody??” Sounding like he’s genuinely nervous. It all depends on the mood he’s in. When he’s in a confident mood, like when he’s on his way out the door to work, well then shit like that doesn’t exist. But when he’s tired, beaten down, maybe bummed out or whatever, then it probably does exist…and it kind of makes him nervous.
But after that happened I had a realization about the colors of entities. I wonder if the reason I saw the something in Todd’s room as a black shadowy fuzzy form is because it’s negative and bitter. I could never see the female one in our old place, no matter how hard I tried. She was completely invisible to me. And – she wasn’t negative in any way. And the other one that I called Velcro Critter, which was like a happy puppy dog – it was invisible. And the other stuff that was blowing through our apartment on their way to bigger and better things? All of which never hurt us or did anything negative? Usually all bluish white. And the energy remnants that looked like sparkles? Bright orange-y yellow, or glittery gold. And then the thing that attacked me…….it was pitch black. Seems to be something to the color thing. Black seems to be equated with something that has a bad vibe, or hostile intentions, obviously. Blue, white, blueish white, invisible, sparkly gold, all seem to be connected to neutral entities just off doing their own thing.
Later on after this incident, there was one more biggie that happened. It was the middle of the night and I was curled up in bed with Kitty, under my trusty purple Christmas lights, when I became aware of the sound of something moving about my room. Picking things up on both of my desk tables, then putting them back down again. Just poking about, exploring, looking at my stuff. I could hear the objects and papers being quietly picked up and rummaged with.
Kitty tensed up, flicking her tail wildly from underneath my sleeping bag. I laid there, a bit frozen…..but no longer full of the old paralyzing fear that I used to have. There was an incident identical to this that had happened to me as a kid, when I was about nine, back in Connecticut, where something was in my room rummaging through my stuff. And I failed miserably during that incident with my level of terrorized fear. My back had been faced toward my room during that incident, I couldn’t see anything, because I was paralyzed from fear, unable to turn around. But I listened as whatever it was moved about my room, poking through the things on my desk and my dresser, including this tin I had full of push pins, and the distinct noise that made when picked up and jiggled, and then put back down again. I’ll never forget that.
This time, I laid there, eyes open. Actually facing my room, where this was happening, although my sleeping bag was blocking my view of the room. My eyes were focused on Kitty.
I heard it quietly moving across the room, then approach my air mattress bed.
There was an orange juice container next to my air mattress on the carpet, and I heard the distinct sound of the cardboard juice container squeeze in….then out again…..as if being squeezed by a hand.
And then I felt it, him, just standing there, over me, looking at me and Kitty.
That’s when Kitty completely froze. Her tail stopped in mid whip, and her eyes bugged out as she looked upwards at it. Paralyzed. She was positioned in such a way that she could see beyond the sleeping bag cover. She was looking directly at him.
I was brave enough to hold my ground…but not brave enough to glance up and see if I could see him. :) The sleeping bag was over my head, and I didn’t try to see beyond. Then again……..I didn’t need to. I’d already seen him before, that one night when me and Todd were hanging out in the kitchen, and this ghost thing had chased Kitty out of Todd’s room. I knew what he looked like. An all black “shadow person.” The same form as a human adult male, but, all black in color.
There was a few seconds of silence. I didn’t feel any hostility from him though at that moment. Not like when I first moved in, and I’d keep waking up, night after night, for weeks, feeling an angry presense staring at me from the foot of my bed. The same angry presense that Todd described, and Denise. And which Marilyn probably also experienced, but didn’t want to talk about.
This time though the vibe was completely neutral.
He just stood there. Finally I said “Hey…” acknowledging it. The same as that one incident back in 1996, mentioned earlier, when Mike had to knock on my door and intervene, get me out of my room when “something” showed up in my room when I was drunk and listening to NIN, and where I also said a matter-of-fact “Hey…..” to. O.o But I felt like I should say hi at least. You know….since he was standing there. :D
More silence. Then I heard it walk away and fade out.
In retrospect I look back and realize that whatever he was, his attitude towards me changed at the end, just before I moved out. Gone were the days of random crash bang noises all around my room, kicking the bed, throwing a candlestick and staring angrily over me as I lay in bed. Now he was calm. At least with me. Maybe because I acknowledged him when nobody else would. The more he did to get the roommates’ attention, the more scared they got, and the more they refused to acknowledge any of what was happening. I’m not saying he was a good manifestation – he was black in color, versus white/blue/gold/etc. like other neutral/harmless manifestations I’ve experienced. And dude obviously had some issues. Nobody kicks beds and throws candlesticks unless they’re pissed. ;D But I can have some sympathy for whatever he was, and whatever his situation was. He acted like the house was his and that WE were the intruders. And he kept trying to get our attention, and nobody would give that to him. Then I show up like, Yeah, we have a ghost here, didn’t you know? I’ve tried talking to him, yeah, you know, he throws stuff around and kicks the bed and stuff…hey look, there he is in your doorway Todd! Wow! haha! Hey ghost, you can hang around any place you want in the house, just don’t bother me and my cat, okay? ;D Must have been unusual after all that time of being ignored.
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