815 Bowe

When my fiancé? Tony and I moved from Florida to Richmond, VA we experienced some problems with locating an apartment due to some credit problems.
After months of living out of a hotel you can imagine how relieved we were to receive an offer from a friend who was moving out of her place. We agreed to take over the lease for three months since she was ending early and sign our own at the time of her departure. We never thought to ask why she was leaving early and jubilantly moved our things into the two bedroom apartment.

Both my fiancé? and I were immediately taken with the décor of the apartment with its fireplace and exposed brick walls. Being from a small town in Florida I fancied myself quite the Northerner since I was now living in someplace that has stairs.

Shortly after moving in we discovered that I was pregnant with our first child. Both of us were overjoyed at our new addition and began to prepare the spare bedroom for her arrival. About two months after moving in I began to see and feel a presence in the room that would be the baby's. I attributed this to hormones and a new mother's paranoia and dismissed it. Tony never mentioned anything so I figured that I was the only one seeing things. I would see the occasional white streak, which I have now determined to be a cat, run across the kitchen and into our laundry room. It would always run from the front of our house towards the back and it always seemed to have a happy bounce in its step so I was not bothered by it. I happily went about my life assuming that our furry specter was the only other roommate we had.

As my pregnancy progressed I began to hear what sounded like a dying animal coming from the baby's room. I was disturbed by the noise and would always get up to go see if maybe something had gotten stuck in the walls. Since our apartment is very old I knew that there may be spaces that an animal could get stuck.

One night I was home alone watching my favorite television show when the noise started again. I got up and walked into the room. The noise sounded like a low growling that would make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. As I got closer to the doorway the noise got louder, instead of quieting the way it usually did. I have always had a love of the paranormal and used to see things as a child so this peaked my curiosity. As I entered the room I determined that the noise was coming from the small nook where we had placed the baby's crib. The closer I got the louder it was. About halfway across the room I lost my nerve and backed out. When Tony returned home that night I told him, in detail, what I had heard that evening. Tony jokingly told me that he was not surprised that my senses were getting stronger, especially since both of us have a history of a "6th sense" and I was now pregnant. The noise continued nightly and stopped only after I had my daughter.

When I was about 8 months pregnant I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like I was being watched. When I looked into our bedroom doorway I saw the outline of what looked to be a child. I blinked a few times and the figure did not move. As the sleep cleared out of my head I began to notice details about the figure. He, and I feel that it is a he, had his head slightly cocked to the left side, almost meeting the left shoulder at an unnatural angle. He was not short, but rather crouched down like a baseball catcher. The whole figure was naked and completely hairless. There were no features in his face, no eyes, no nose, no mouth, and no ears. As my gaze moved down his body I saw that both arms were positioned in front of his body. They seemed to be fused together at the elbow, creating a solid limb to the wrist. The entire form was covered in what looked like black soot and had patches of open soars covering the arms. I began to shake, feeling and intense hatred from him. Images of a man trapped in a burning building began to flash through my head. I closed my eyes tightly against the images and began to shake Tony furiously. Once he woke the figure disappeared and the images stopped.

When we woke the next morning I began to closely inspect the carpeting near our bedroom doorway. The area was much colder than the rest of the house and I found that the area was covered in a thin layer of black dust. The carpet had somehow frayed overnight, leaving long thin lines running into our room.

A few weeks later I woke in the middle of the night again with the images again flashing through my head. I knew without looking that he was watching me. This time I was overwhelmed by the feelings of anger and desperation that washed through me and felt as if he was directing his aggression at my baby. I began to pray for protection and tried to assure myself that the baby was ok. When I again opened my eyes the figure had moved to the side of my bed and was standing next to my swollen belly. At this point I began to scream bloody murder, waking Tony. The next day I became violently ill, which caused me to start having contractions.

Since I brought our daughter home I have occasionally felt his presence but have not seen the figure. I have since discovered that the building I am living in used to be a slave tenement in the early 1800s and that parts of it burned down, trapping 3 men and 2 children inside. The current owner had renovated the building, exposing the brick walls of the original structure, which are still laced with scorch marks.