It all started back in 2001. I had been looking for a place in the center of town, closer to work and favorite hangouts. My sister had also recently moved to town and we were going to be roommates to try to save some cash. We were having trouble, however, because earlier in the year Tropical Storm Allison came through and flooded the city. Apartments were in short supply while people were having their houses repaired. But, I eventually found a realtor that dealt in independent leasing and she showed us the place.
It was perfect. It was the whole bottom floor of a HUGE duplex built back in the 20’s. The area of Houston I was looking in had been the ultra-rich suburbs when the house was built, and you could tell this had once been very nice digs. It was 1000 square feet with dark hardwood floors and trim, large bedrooms, a butler’s pantry, a dining room, a den, and very high ceilings. It also had a yard with a garage and a huge front patio. All for $825 a month!
We began moving in the next day…
I used to work nights, often getting home around 3 or 4 in the morning. On this night I happened to get off early so I decided to go to the new apartment and sort boxes and maybe unpack a little. All the lights were on as I moved from room to room putting things into closets and shuffling boxes around.
I was in what would be my room putting my bed frame together when I heard a loud SNAP and the kitchen light went out. Assuming a burnt-out bulb, and not having any around I got up, walked to the kitchen, and tried the switch. On came the light.
“Ok,” I thought, “that was weird.” But the house was old and the switches were the type that were a little hard to move and snapped loudly whenever flipped, so I guessed one of them had just been stuck halfway or something and finally just let go. I grabbed a beer from the fridge and went back to my work.
As soon as I sat down, SNAP-kitchen light off. SNAP-kitchen light on. SNAP-kitchen light off again!!!
I was out the door and on the road in no time, on my way to sleep on the floor of my old apartment on the other side of town.
My courage came back the next day. I was off from work to finish the move and get everything squared away with the old place. And despite the scare I had had the night before, I was still very excited for the new house. It just had a bit of menace now was all.
So I spent the day there. My sister wasn’t going to be staying there until the weekend so I was going to be alone for at least the first two nights. I have to admit I got a couple butterflies thinking about coming home to that house in the middle of the night. The place was dark, even in the middle of the day. It was all that dark wood in the floors and trim. It also had storm shutters that cut out even more light. I hadn’t noticed before, but it was sort of spooky.
“Well, what the hell?” I thought. I’d always loved dark and mysterious things and always boasted that if given a chance, I would totally live in a haunted house. So, bring it on, ghost. Bring it on.
And the ghost brought it.
Every time I took a shower I would swear I heard people talking and doors opening and shutting. No, not muffled sounds like would mistake in the water for something, but literally, a door slamming and a deep male voice saying, “Anybody home?” Other times, mostly during the day, I would hear doors opening and shutting, knocking on the front and back doors, and bits of garbled conversation.
I decided I didn’t want to tell my sister. I would let her figure it out for herself and see what she thought.
What she thought was that I was being loud and obnoxious and/or that the neighbor needed to get yelled at for being loud and obnoxious.
The upstairs neighbor was this old lady who dealt in antiques. She would load her trailer and go to auctions and trade shows and she was mostly not home, well, just about ever. She would just close up the upstairs and drive away, sometimes for weeks. In that first week there, after I was thinking ghost and my sister said neighbor, I saw her pull up in the driveway. It was the first time I had met her and she informed me that she had been out of town for two weeks and that nobody should have been in her unit.
Well, it wasn’t the neighbor and my sister was getting annoying telling me to stop banging around when she was trying to sleep. So I decided to tell Sis what was up.
“There’s no ghost. You’re just imagining things.” She said right before SNAP! Only this time it came from her bedroom. The lights had been off already so it wasn’t the switch. I turned them on. “Oh my God!” she said.
A mirror on the wall hung swinging from its nail; its wooden frame had been broken. It just swung there, letting us know that there was, in fact, a ghost.
After the mirror stopped swinging we went out for a drink and discussed the whole haunted apartment situation. We decided it was actually pretty cool and that whatever it was didn’t seem dangerous. Besides, look at the enviable piece of real-estate we stumbled into. I wasn’t about to break that lease.
After that the ghost bugged me pretty regularly and left my sister pretty much alone. It mostly liked to open and close doors. One time near Christmas I was testing some lights. I plugged in a string near an open closet door and went off to answer the phone. When I came back the closet door was closed. I knew it was open before because it was always open. There was a slight slope to the floor so that if you didn’t push up on the door and make sure that it latched, it would swing open. Besides, my box of lights was in that closet.
So, I opened the door and went about checking and untangling lights. The phone rang again, so I dropped the tangle of lights and used them to prop the already easily-opened door open and went off to answer the phone again. When I came back the door was closed and latched and the lights were pushed up against it as if to hold it closed.
Eventually the activity slowed down and after a long while it pretty much went away. We used to tell visitors about the ghost in our house but I doubt many people believed us. But when people would come to visit or stay for more than a couple of nights they would ask about why the neighbor vacuumed her apartment or moved furniture around in the middle of the night (when she wasn’t home).
I asked the neighbor if she’d ever had ghostly activity or anything and she said she hadn’t, but that every tenant of our apartment had asked her the same thing and she had lived there for a long time and seen many tenants.
I’m very nostalgic now after writing this. I lived in that place for a little over four years. It was my old haunted apartment and I miss it.
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