When I was 18 I lived in an apartment building in
the middle of the city. The building was a 3 story brick
building and was built in the late 1800s. My apartment was
on the 3rd floor. The building was set up so that there
was a front entrance on the west side of the building and
one on the east side of the building. The only way to get
to an apartment on the east side of the building from the
west side of the building would be to go outside and go to
the entrance for that side or go down to the basement that
ran the length of the entire building and then come up on
that side of the building.
The basement is where the real story begins.
There was a large open space in the center of the basement that
served as the laundry facility. On the east side there was
a door to go upstairs and then past that was the boiler
room that heated the entire building. On the north side of
the open area in the basement were old dilapidated storage
closets. On the west side of the basement was a dark
doorway that was gated off, the stairs to go up to the west
end apartments and two doors that led to what were once
used as basement level apartments. These doors were also
barricaded and padlocked from the outside.
When doing laundry in the basement most people
would take their laundry down put it in the wash and go
right back upstairs. It was rare that anyone would spend
any time in the basement. When you were in the basement it
was cold and damp and it felt like you were being watched
from all sides.
One afternoon I went down to do my laundry and
noticed that the door was open by about a foot to one of
the old basement apartments. The apartment was pitch black
and just inside the door where the light from the laundry
room shone in you could see that there was about 2 feet of
rubble. Torn and broken sheet rock, shredded vinyl
flooring, etc. covering the floor. I decided that I would
put in my laundry and go back upstairs to my apartment and
get my flashlight and roommate and go exploring.
We got down to the basement, we quietly tip-toed,
huddled together, to the open apartment. When we got to
the door it could not be opened any further so we had to
squeeze inside while climbing through the debris. We shone
our flashlight around the entry way. There were markings and holes in the walls. There were old torn
couch cushions with the stuffing hanging out thrown about.
We had climbed about three quarters of the way through the
entry way and were just about to get to the living area
when it got suddenly cold enough that I could see my breath
in the beam of the flashlight. The hairs on every part of
my body were standing on end. As my roommate started to
shine the flashlight around the room we heard something
move from one end of the living space to the back corner.
We were both frozen with fear. Then there was a low
gutteral growl. It echoed through the room and a foul
stench lingered in the air. It was then that we were able
to turn and run. The thing came stomping after us
laughing a high pitched hysterical cackle that haunts me
still. I was sure that we would never be able to squeeze
back out of that door in time but I slid through and my
roommate was just a second behind.
We ran as fast as we could all the way up to our
3rd floor apartment and did not stop until we were safely
locked inside.
Later my boyfriend got home and we followed him (with a baseball bat and a bent golf club that was in
the apartment when we moved in) down to get my laundry we
found that it had been taken out of the washing machine and
thrown around the basement all over the floor. We were
very relieved to see that the door to the apartment
was again shut, padlocked and barricaded as it had always
been before.
We took our laundry to the laundry mat from then
on. We did not go to the basement in the building for any
reason for the rest of the time that we lived there.
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