This past Friday, I was talking to an old friend about some of the stories and things that I've personally experienced. We somehow got to the topic of haunted homes and things we had encountered and she made me remember some stories that I don't really talk about often.
When I was younger, my family and I lived in a small 2 bedroom apartment in a suburb of Dallas. I shared a room with my 2 brothers and for the most part, it wasn't really all that bad.
My parents started going to church with our neighbors and things were actually going pretty well. We weren't ever really the religious type, but somehow, this church felt different and I myself really liked to attend. I even became a Sunday school teacher for 1st graders and I really enjoyed it. It made me feel at peace, and my family just seemed to be happier around that time. The reason I bring this up is because some believe that this somehow plays a part in some of the incidents that happened while we lived in that apartment.
One Sunday, I woke up and I just wasn't feeling well. I remember getting into a little argument with my younger brother because he thought I was playing hooky. He didn't want to be alone at church with my parents but I honestly felt like shit. I had made up my mind. My older brother and I stayed home and my parents pretty much dragged my little brother along with them. I remember that it was a pretty quiet day and I was just laying around watching my brother play video games. Our room was set up to where the back of the TV faced the doorway, so if you were watching TV you could still see out into the hallway. As I was watching him play, I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye. I didn't really think anything of it at first because I was actually really into whatever game he was playing but after a while, I was forced to pay attention. I remember this so vividly because it was the first time in my life that I actually saw something that others couldn't see.
As I looked up, I saw the figure of a man peeking into the room. I could only see half of him as the other half was hiding but I remember what he looked like. He had spiked up, messy hair, jagged teeth and his eyes were a really light color. I distinctly remember that we met eyes and he smiled at me revealing these jagged, sharp looking teeth. Then I realized that I could see the bathroom which would have been impossible because his body would have blocked the view. He was transparent. The weird thing is that he actually had a slight color to him even though he was see through. It was a peachy kind of color, but I could still see everything through him. The whole time, between me seeing him, us meeting eyes and him smiling probably lasted a few seconds, but I remember it so well. I immediately buried my face into a pillow and I whispered to my brother "someone's here." He probably looked at me really confused because he paused his game and all I could do was repeat myself with my face still shoved against the pillow. He quickly got up and retrieved a knife he always kept under his bed.
He cautiously walked out into the hallway and I followed. I was terrified and I didn't want to be left alone. Honestly, my immediate thought wasn't 'oh, I just saw a ghost!', I legitimately thought that someone had managed to somehow break into our apartment while we weren't paying attention. We looked in the other bedroom across the hall, then in the bathroom and then finally walked into the kitchen and living room to check the front door. Everything was locked, even the chain lock. He looked kinda pissed. "What exactly did you see? There's nobody here." he asked me. "Dude..I swear, there was a guy peeking at us from the doorway." He basically called bullshit and left it at that, but I know what I saw. Once the initial scare had gone away, I knew that what I saw wasn't human. I didn't tell my parents and I made sure not to tell my younger brother so I wouldn't scare him.
Flash forward a few years. We moved into a house in another city about 10 miles away. My brothers and I started talking about spooky stuff trying to scare each other in the new house. Since my younger brother was now in middle school, I decided it was time to finally tell him the story. I didn't describe the apparition in detail, I basically just said that I had seen a guy at the apartment. His facial expressions changed and he tilted his head and asked "did he have spiky hair?" I remember I felt my heart drop and the mood immediately changed. "Uh.. yeah." I said, I looked at him waiting for a reply, and I'll never forget how casually he answered with "I've seen him too."
We lived in those apartments for a number of years, and we had a few things happen there. Remember I mentioned church and all that? Well, the reason why I think that's relevant is due to the following incidents.
Every Summer my brothers and I would stay up as late as possible playing flash games, looking for ghost videos and chatting with friends online. We would wait until our parents would go to bed and then immediately turn on our computers and begin our nightly ritual. One night, my mom had fallen asleep in the living room reading the bible. It wasn't really common for that to happen but for some reason, this particular night, she decided to just sleep on the couch. We weren't aware that she had fallen asleep out there so we weren't as quiet as we should have been. The living room and our room shared a wall, so I'm sure she heard us. We heard a knock at our door and we immediately got quiet. My mom came in and she looked a little worried. "Guys, I think you should go to sleep. It's really late." she said. "It's fine. We're not tired. Plus, it's Summer and we're not really being loud or anything." I said. She gave me a look and repeated herself "seriously, I think you all need to sleep." "Why?" I asked a little curious due to her tone. "Why? Because it's late. I've been seeing shadows in the kitchen. I fell asleep and I heard whispering and I thought you guys were standing in the dark, but there's nobody there. I'm just saying, your grandma always said the spirits came out around this time." My brothers and I looked at each other with excitement at the thought of having our very own ghost investigation. Just then, we heard what sounded like a spoon fall into the sink. We all kinda jumped and my mom took the opportunity to add the extra creep factor by jokingly saying "maybe it's the devil". As soon as she said that, I kid you not, we heard the loudest sound come from the kitchen. It sounded like a few pots and pans had made their way out of their storage and had hit the ground full force. It startled all of us. Our faces immediately changed and my mom legitimately looked scared. We all went out to the kitchen and not a single dish was out of place. It was freaky.
Aside from that incident, there were times that my mom would go to work and leave my older brother and I in charge of tiding up the house. I didn't like going into her room alone because she had a wind-up music box and it freaked me out. My dad had given it to her for her birthday. It played 'Happy Birthday' and a little doll held a basket or something that said her birth month on it and he just happened to find that at a thrift store. That doll had a habit of playing on her own. Sometimes I would be in her room and literally nobody ever touched that doll, and somehow it still managed to play the creepiest rendition of what's supposed to be a happy song. I also often heard breathing behind me and every time I would turn around, it would stop. My mom also had the TV turn on by itself a few times, but we chalked it up to a malfunction. Regardless, after all of these things I stopped going in there by myself.
I don't know what to attribute those incidents to. My mother seemed to think that it somehow had something to do with our newfound faith. She had brought up a few of the weird things that happened to our neighbor and they were quick to say that whenever the devil feels as though it's losing someone to "the good side", he will send demons to disturb the peace out of anger. I don't really know how true that all is. Like I said, we aren't the religious type, or at least not anymore.
I do know those apartments had a few deaths occur on the property, but not in our specific unit. We sometimes think it could have been the furniture that my mom bought at thrift stores and antique places. It's often said that spirits can sometimes become attached to things they loved in their lifetime. All I know is that some of that furniture continued to be at the center of strange happenings even after we moved from that apartment.
In my next post, I'll be sharing a few stories from the home we moved to after living in those apartments.
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