My boyfriend lives in a two story apartment above an Italian restaurant that has been run by the same family for
about 100 years. Shortly after he moved in, we were alone in the apartment for the night. Around 2:30 a.m., I was
awakened by strange sounds from the restaurant below. I lay still and listened for a few minutes. It sounded like
someone was running water and moving furniture. Puzzled, I got up and looked out at the parking lot. The only car
there was my boyfriend's. (for the sake of the story let's call him Al). Thinking that perhaps someone had broken in,
I woke Al up -- no small task -- and told him what had been going on. "It's probably nothing," he grumbled. "I
wouldn't worry about it." There was nothing for me to do
but go back to bed and think of possible explanations.
After about a half hour the noises stopped. Rodents? The
old place settling? My imagination? Automated cleaning
systems? I really couldn't figure it out. In the morning
I brought it up again with Al. He worked as a bartender at
that restaurant -- maybe he knew something I didn't. But
again, he told me to ignore it and quickly changed the
subject. Maybe it was rats or something, he said.
My curiosity grew stronger as the weeks went by and the
noises continued almost every night. They came at odd
hours, the middle of the night when the restaurant couldn't
possibly be open or still housing a few workers. There
were never any cars outside besides those of the other four
roommates, and the noises were too bizarre to be explained
away. Besides water running and furniture moving, I heard
banging on the pipes, breaking glass, doors slamming, and
sometimes a woman singing. I eventually convinced Al to
talk to the owner about it -- at this point I thought
perhaps a vagrant was somehow sneaking in every night, or
worse, hiding somewhere in the building while the
restaurant was open and coming out at night. Farfetched as
that seemed, it was all I could come up with. He said he'd
talk to Delia (the owner) about it and that she would
investigate.
As the months went by, other odd things started to happen.
One night I was in the apartment with Al's roommate,
Jamie. It was after midnight, and we were waiting for Al
and the other roommates to get back from a party. We were
in the computer room, which is directly down the hall from
the apartment's only door, at the opposite end of the
building. There was a loud knock on the door, and we
paused in our conversation. We hadn't heard anyone come up
the outside steps. It is actually quite impossible to come
up the steps without making a lot of noise, as they are
rickety old metal fire-escape style stairs. "Did you hear
a knock?" asked Jamie. "Yeah, did you?" I asked
back. "Yeah," he said. We weren't hearing things. Then
there was another knock. We were a bit unnerved -- it was
late, we hadn't heard anyone on the stairs, any friends who
might be dropping by would walk right in rather than knock
as the door is never locked. We went down the hall
together and Jamie opened the door. There was no one
there. Now, it is quite impossible to get up the stairs
without being heard, and even less possible to get down
them, especially as quickly as you would have to to avoid
being seen, and make no noise. And we had heard no one go
downstairs. There is no place to hide on that landing --
there simply was no one there. We decided to tell each
other we had imagined it and went back to the computer
room.
Another time, Al, Jamie, and I were in the living room
watching a movie. It was around 2:00 a.m. Al remembered
that he hadn't brought the CDs in from his car for the
night and went outside to retrieve them. Moments later, he
came (loudly) up the outside stairs and began rattling and
knocking at the door. I finally got up to see what the
fuss was about and found the door to be locked. I turned
back the dead bolt and let him in. "Very funny," he said to
us. "It's cold out there, you know." Jamie and I
exchanged puzzled looks. "What are you talking about?" I
asked. "Oh cut the crap! Locking me out. Real original
guys!" He was more amused than irate. "O stop." I
said. "YOu know you locked yourself out." "No I didn't,"
Al returned. "I didn't take my keys." I looked
incredulous. "They're right there!" he pointed to the
living room table, 10 feet away. I went to look, and there
they were. His house key was on the ring. Now I was really
confused. "Al, what's going on? I swear to you we did not
lock you out. Jamie and I were sitting right here the
whole time." Jamie nodded in agreement. Al could see we
weren't lying. Even so, I expected him to dispute the
point. Instead, he looked around for a minute and then
said that it must have been some wierd fluke with the
locking mechanism. Then we all sat down and kept watching
the movie. There was no more discussion of the incident,
until it happened again when another roommate was bringing
groceries in one night. This time Al and I were in his
room. No one else was home besides Neal, who was busy
making trips between the kitchen and his car. After one
such trip, we heard him pounding at the door and yelling to
be let in. We got up to see what the problem was and found
the dead bolt was thrown. We unlocked the door, and Neal
laughingly accused us of playing a lame joke on him. We
responded that he must have accidentally locked himself
out, and he showed us his keys, lying on the kitchen
counter. It was all very odd, and I started to
say, "Remember that time..." when Al cut me off and changed
the subject.
Then there's the bathroom. One night I got up to use the
bathroom around 3:30 and was surprised to see no light in
the hallway emanating from the bathroom, as it's usually
left on at night. I continued down the dark hall, but when
I rounded the corner I saw that indeed the light was on,
but the door was closed. Not wanting to disturb anyone, I
went back to Al's room and waited for the sounds of someone
exiting the bathroom. After about 20 minutes I had heard
nothing -- no water running or toilet flushing, or anyone
opening the door -- and I went to check again, thinking
something might be wrong. I knocked quietly, got no
response, knocked more loudly, and eventually began talking
to whoever was in there asking if they were alright. There
was nothing but silence from the bathroom. A bit worried, I
tried the door. It was locked. Although there is a
keyhole on the outside of the bathroom door, the key has
been lost since long before anyone we knew lived in that
apartment and the owner never bothered to have a
replacement made. The only way to see what was going on in
there was to either break down the door or somehow get in
through the window. I was quite worried -- whoever it was
had locked themselves in and might be in some kind of
trouble -- and I went to wake Al. After talking the
situation over, he went, knocked, tried the door, and
decided he had better try to get in at the window. This
was fairly easy, since there is a flat roof over the
restaurant kitchen that extends from the bathroom of the
apartment to the kitchen of the apartment, and is easily
accessible through the kitchen window. I waited outside
the bathroom door while he went outside. He made quite a
bit of noise getting the window open, and attracted the
attention of the rest of the housemates. By the time he
got in and unlocked the door, I had been joined by everyone
except Neal. We got a considerable shock when Al opened
the door on an empty bathroom. OUr exclamations finally
awakened Neal, who came groggily out of his room. We could
find no logical explanation for the locked door. AFter
lots of head scratching we all went back to bed, telling
ourselves it must have been some trick of the locking
mechanism.
The weirdest incident happened one night around 10:30. We
heard footsteps on the stairs, and then a rap on the door.
Neal opened it to find two police officers standing there.
They asked politely to see the back room, which was the
computer room described earlier. Confused and a bit
worried, Neal led them down the hall to where Jamie was
sitting at the computer. The cops poked around, asked a
few odd questions, and then told us this story. They had
received a phone call from a neighbor across the street.
The neighbor had reported an apparent suicide in that
room. She had seen a body hanging in front of the picture
window, as if whoever it was had hung themselves. She at
first thought her eyes were playing tricks on her, but as
the evening wore on and she still distinctly saw the form,
which she had never seen before, she decided to call the
police, just to be on the safe side. There was nothing
there that resembled a hung body, but we decided her eyes
must have been playing tricks on her. What else could it
have been?
I was not satisfied, though. I finally cornered Al and
asked him if he'd ever talked to the owner about the
noises. They were still going on almost every night, and I
had heard nothing about an investigation of their origin.
There were too many wierd happenings to ignore. I wanted
to know what he knew.
"Alright." he said. "I didn't want to tell you this,
because I didn't want to scare you. And you can't talk
about it with the other roommates, because they don't know,
and I don't want to scare them either. But downstairs,
everyone at the restaurant knows this place is haunted.
Delia's family used to live in this apartment. But then in
the 40s something happened with her grandmother -- I think
the grandfather was cheating or something -- and she hung
herself in the back room while everyone was away. That's
when they started renting the place out. After that, wierd
things started happening. Like in the restaurant, everyone
would leave for the night, and in the morning when they
came back to open it up, all the furniture would be
rearranged or stacked up in a corner. And people would get
locked in the basement when they went down to get extra
wine bottles and things like that. Some people even say
they've seen her. I haven't, but you know. There are
stories. I really don't think much has happened in the
apartment. It's mostly in the restaurant. Delia told me
that nothing has happened here in about ten years, and no
one has ever walked out on the lease. I think the thing
that happened in the apartment was that they always heard
someone singing in one of the bedrooms, but they could
never find the source. And they one night one of the
tenants was asleep, and they felt a pressure on thier
back. They woke up and looked behind them and saw this
woman's face, right there in front of them, and they turned
on the light and it disappeared. I really didn't want to
say anything about it, because I didn't want to scare
anyone. Don't worry about it. It's not going to hurt you."
"Hey, Al? Tell me honestly. What bedroom did this ghost
stuff happen in?"
"Ok. Just promise me you won't get scared and stop coming
here."
"I can't promise that. Just tell me what room it was." He
didn't say anything. "Okay. If I guess the right room on
the first guess, will you tell me yes or no?"
"OK." he said, after a long pause.
"Was it your room?"
He nodded.
THE END!
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