Ghost Stories

Amie's Apartment

A few years ago, Ileft grad school in New Mexico and returned to Oklahoma. I stayedwith my mom for a while, then Mom said she was tired of the 3bedroom house she'd rented for about 10 years, so I roused myselffrom my funk and found a furnished apartment in a somewhat seedypart of town. It was cheap, and I had next to nothing, havingmoved back to Tulsa with all my possessions crammed into my car,so I moved in. I was at the time part of a Wiccan coven, and twoof my fellow coveners lived downstairs, so that was part of thereason I chose that building, besides it being cheap and thelandlord being pretty decent.

I didn't really feel too unsafe there at first despite the factthat the apartments across the street were home to a nest of drugdealers, but as they kept a low profile I figured as long as Ileft them alone...anyway, a month or so after I moved in, an oldfriend from college called, needing a place to stay, since he'djust gotten a job in town. Well, in a couple of months he and Iwere an item...bear with me, this does have some bearing on thestory!

During this time I became aware of a vague feeling of discomfortwhen I was alone in the apartment. I had a rather large ficustree in the living room, and every so often when I would pass byit on the way to the bedroom, I saw movement, sometimes glimpsesof a hand and a face out of the corner of my eye. Kris (myboyfriend) said that the place made him uncomfortable also, so itwas just as well that we weren't spending a moment apart anyway,since being alone at night there was kind of unnerving.

Kris was at the time very interested in the Black Dahlia murdercase. (She was a drifter named Elizabeth Short whose mutilatedand sawed-in-half body was found in a vacant lot in 1947 in LA.To this day, no one knows for sure who killed her. For more info,check out http://www.bethshort.com) One night we were lying inbed, with a few candles burning in the room, talking about thisand that, with the stereo on and the door to the bedroom open.Suddenly we were both quiet. Both of us felt someone or somethingenter the room and stand just inside the doorway. I sat up in bedand was overcome by a feeling of awful grief. I began to cry. Aswe looked, there was a shadowy form against the off-white wall ofthe bedroom. I could see something like a hand moving. Krissuddenly grabbed my arm. Both of us noticed, with a shock ofhorror, that some of the clothing lying on the floor waspositioned in the shape of a body, with a line between thedifferent-colored clothes just where it would be if that body hadbeen sawed in half -- closely resembling the pictures we'd seenof Elizabeth Short's body as it was found in 1947. We were,pardon my French, scared shitless, and immediately threwourselves into bed with the covers over our heads, after firstdestroying the "image" by shoving the clothes into arandom pile.

Later, we discovered a penny, dated 1962, in the entry to thebedroom. At the time, Kris was reading a book entitled _Daddy Wasthe Black Dahlia Killer_ written by a woman who claims that herfather killed Short. According to the book, this man died in acar accident -- in Claremore, Oklahoma, about 30 miles from Tulsa-- in 1962. Kris had cleaned the apartment that day, and pickedup all the loose pennies lying around on the carpet (we tended todrop pennies here and there and miss them in the dark color ofthe rug) and he swore to me that there was no penny there before.We still have it.

I don't know if the presence we felt there was the ghost of theBlack Dahlia, but I will never forget that night. We began towonder if there wasn't some other entity attached to the place,one that we might have believed was Elizabeth Short. We went tothe library and searched for information about the building; allwe found was that the apartment had been built sometime in the '70s.Lots of things could have happened in that time.

There were other times when we would be talking or sleeping, andwould awaken or stop talking to notice that we were definitelynot alone. Not to toot my own horn, but I am sort of sensitive tothose kinds of things, and Kris is too, and there were severaloccasions when we knew that someone/thing was in the room with us.Sometimes it felt harmless and vaguely interested in us;sometimes it definitely sent chills up the spine. I have had sometraining in utilizing my own "psychic abilities", forwhat it's worth, as part of my coven training, and through my ownstudies. The most important thing I ever learned and put to usewas to trust my own gut feeling. After thinking about all thisfor a while, my gut feeling told me someone, or something, wasthere that night we found the penny, and was probably in theapartment at various times, but I still don't know what to makeof it.

I do know that both Kris and I, and several of our friends, allsaw things moving out of the corners of our eyes while in theapartment, and some of us have seen faint images of faces andhands on the edges of one's field of vision. There was also amirror over the dresser in the bedroom, a mirror shaped like adoor with a lintel, and it made many of my friends nervous -- andme too. I always felt as though someone was staring at me throughthe mirror, and tried my best to cleanse, seal, or otherwise de-contaminateit through various means, but the feeling never went away.

A friend of ours stayed in the living room for a few months whilesearching for an apartment, and he told me years later that hesaw things moving in the darkness. He is not an overimaginativesort, and he's an atheist to boot and doesn't tend to look forthat sort of thing, so I figure he did see something.

Several attempts were made to "cleanse" or "exorcise"the apartment by myself, the high priestess of my coven, and afew other people, but the feeling still remained till we moved.Kris and I moved out of there in 1996, to an apartment in abetter part of town that is at least as old as the other, butwhich has never had the same creepy feelings, strange presences,or sights that the old one did. My covener friends have alsosince moved out, but even though they lived in the same building,they never felt uncomfortable or had any unwanted phenomenahappen in their place.

One last thing: when we moved out, we cleaned the apartmentwithout power, since the electricity had been switched to theother apartment. Kris says that when he walked by the openbathroom door on his way to get more paper towels, he saw, for amoment, what appeared to be bloodstains on the shower!

I still don't know for sure what all that was about, but I amfairly certain that the apartment was the scene of somethingunpleasant, perhaps a suicide or even a murder. One thing's forsure, I'd never rent the place again. Since moving out of thatplace, we haven't had anything comparable happen in our newapartment, so I think the place is definitely haunted. By what, Ihave no idea.