Long Beach Home

From 2000-2003, I lived in a beautiful, studio-sized, guest house located in a very nice part of Long Beach, CA. The three years I lived there, I experienced some bizarre events that were never explained.

The first event occurred after I lived there for a couple of months. This was a closet door which opened by itself. I was sitting on my bed reading The Devil's Advocate (which is not a scary book), and I heard something that sounded like a door "popping" open. When I looked at the closet door, it was cracked open, and I knew that I did not leave it open, nor was anyone else around who could've left it open. I was pretty scared, but tried to ignore it. Throughout the three years I lived there, I would come home and, periodically, the closet door would be cracked or wide open.

The next event could be "logically" explained, but it only occurred twice. One night I was waiting for a friend to come over and my doorbell rang. I opened the door and there was no one there. Since I lived behind another house and I had a motion sensor light, I knew that if someone had been there, I would've been able to see them leave and the motion light would've been set off. But it was dark outside and no one was there. I called my friend to make sure he wasn't trying to scare me, and he was still at home, getting ready to leave. About a month later, I had a group of friends over for my birthday and the doorbell rang by itself again. This time the front door was open, and since my little guest house was so small, my friends and I could see that no one had been at the door. One of my friends exclaimed that it was like "a bad horror movie," and we all laughed about it. The doorbell never rang again by itself and it was wierd, because if it had been a mechanical problem, it probably would've happened quite often.

The final "event" had occurred a couple of months before I had planned to move out. I was sleeping, cuddled with my cat, and we both awoke to scratching noises that sounded like they came from the attic. It was close to 4:00 a.m. and I was very scared. When I turned on the lamp, the noises stopped, but when I turned the light off, the noises resumed after a short while. I was certain it was a squirrel or some animal, but it continued and I couldn't sleep. I kept listening and I thought I heard a screen pop off of my window, so I got up to call the police, thinking it could be a burglar. When I tried to use my phone, I didn't get a dial tone, which completely frightened me, so shaking, I found my cell phone, called the police, found a baseball bat, and waited for the police to arrive. By the time the cops came, I was shaking uncontrollably with fear. The cops searched around the house, they didn't see/find anything, and they noted that my screen was intact. They asked me to try my land line phone again, and it was working. I was embarrassed, but relieved. The next morning I called my landlord and told him what had happened, and he said that he would check the attic with an exterminator to make sure there wasn't anything nesting up there. I spoke to him when I came home from work and he told me that he and the exterminator checked the attic out, nothing was up there, and it was impossible for anything to get in there because the attic was completely sealed off. That night, the scratching began again, but I put a pillow over my head and eventually went back to sleep. It continued for another day or two, but I turned on the TV and tried to ignore it. It eventually stopped and 3-4 months later, I moved out because I got married.

I loved living in that house, despite the occasional wierd experiences that occurred there. I still wonder whether it could all be scientifically explained or if there really was a presence.

Thanks for reading my story.