The Apartment

by Perry Jones

This is about an apartment I lived in in Spokane, Washington that had a series of odd happenings. It was a half underground place (the living room looked out glass doors into a sort of partly enclosed pool courtyard. The rest of the place was below groundlevel and you had to go down a stairway to get to the main door.) I lived in the place with my sister and our friend Monica, and two cats. My room was on one side of the living room, and the girls were down a hallway on the other side. I spent a lot of time in my sister's room though, because our computers were all networked to a cable modem there (this was in the late 90's I think).

One day, I had gotten off of work early, and was on the computer, when I heard my roomate (I thought) come in, walk down the hallway singing (I thought it was her because of the voice, and the long black hair which was all I really saw out the corner of my eye. My chair was right next to the hallway, but I was paying attention to the computer) and go into her room at the end of the hall. I called out "Someone is sure in a good mood" because of the singing, but didnt get an answer. I got up and went to talk to her, but there was no one in her room. I checked the whole place, which was empty, and checked the door (down at the other end of the hall and across the living room, the only way a person could have gotten out was passed me down the hall) and no one was there, the door was still locked. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the living room until she got home, a little nervous about the whole thing.

The second thing that happened was in the same room/hallway. We had recently gotten a box of pots and pans from my parents, and they were in a big heavy box in the living room, next to the hall entrance (also next to the kitchen entrance). This was at night, and the girls were in the living room watching tv. I was in the bedroom on my computer. The cats came in, and without really thinking about it I thought they were pushing the box of pans in. Also, the noise and motion of it had been sort of odd. It kind of shuffled into the room corner by corner, like you might move something too heavy to push all at once. Again I wasnt really paying attention until that struck me as odd, the box was HEAVY, and the cats actually walked in AHEAD of it. I called out to see if one of the girls had pushed it in, they both answered from the couch but came running when I called. We were all a bit nervous (I had told them about the "ghost Monica" and we moved the box back to the kitchen and all watched tv for a while. In the morning, the box was back in the bedroom.

Not too long after, I got up one saturday morning and headed for the kitchen, and seeing Monica wearing a dress on the couch reading said something to the effect of "Aren't you all dressed up today" Monica usually got up early Saturdays to go to church with her family, but usually not that early and she very rarely wore dresses. Again, I mostly just saw the long hair and assumed it was her. She was wearing a light colored floral print dress. I came back out to talk, and the book was lying on the couch, open. I had a bit of a chill go down my spine and went to check. Sure enough, Monica was still in bed in her room, asleep and in pajamas.

We mentioned these things to my parents when they came for a visit, and my mom and dad both told us stories of having seen a girl down the hall during visits that they had thought was Monica, when she was not in the place.

The last part of the story came when I had come home for lunch on a day near the end of our time in that apartment. I had been there for about a week on my own, my sister had moved out months before, and Monica the week before. I was looking for a ladle I had used that morning, which I knew should be somewhere in the kitchen, but couldnt find it. The girl walked right past me and down the hallway and gave me the only full on look I had had of her. Still, all I could really see was the long black hair, and that she was wearing a dress (dark this time) and she pushed right into Monica's room. I freaked out a little bit, grabbed the phone and tried to call my parents (their phone was busy) I wound up calling some friends at work, and kept them on the phone while I went into the room. The cat ran ahead of me and started making a big fuss, running in a circle and rubbing on the walls. I found the missing label on a shelf in the closet there, but otherwise the room was empty.

I dont know what any of it means, or if it was a ghost or something else odd happening, but it was definatly a spooky (if never really threatening) brush with something odd