Spokane Apartment
The story I wouldlike to tell is about an apartment building in Spokane, WA. Thisbuilding is only about seven years old, if y'all are anythinglike me you expect a haunted house to be all scary and fallingdown, not clean with nice landscaping. It really started the dayafter we moved in, my hubby came in from the deck (I am acigarette nazi - no smoking in ze house!) scared as heck. I havenever seen my ex-marine hubby look so scared. He absolutely wouldnot talk about it! hmmmm.
Not two days later my little year and some odd daughter wassupposed to be asleep for the night but instead was talking tosomeone. Of corse, no one was there when I checked, but I swore Icould hear an old lady talking to her. I figured it was my deadgrandma, she comes to visit now and then (don't ask) but it was araspy smoker kinda voice, not my grandmas. I went in for a final"go to sleep, little one! PLEASE!" and I figured thatit couldn't hurt to ask the lady to leave her alone, so I saidthat it was past time for her to go to sleep, so please quittalking. All of a sudden the room filled with a cigarette smokesmell, but no smoke. No windows open or anything as it was Feb.,didn't know what to make of that. So, little girl went to sleepand soon after so did I- lucky me, hubby worked graves.
A couple of days later, I was in the shower in master bathroom,and I swear, the water knob kept turning to hot, I actuallywatched it turn, it kept burning me. Also I swear someone kepttapping me on the shoulder, I thought I was crazy. I asked thehubby, but at first he wouldn't say, but eventually he said thathe got tapped now and then, but never burned.
Now as you may have already guessed, I am no stranger toparanormal happenings, but man this was up close and personal. Iwould be in our room making the bed or something and again withthe smoke smell. It was making me think I was crazy. About a weeklater I was in our closet, trying to hang up our clothes, thatwould not stay on hangers, hmmmm, I distinctly heard a mans voicein the bedroom say “ Jenny!” emergency like, I said“What!”, nothing… walked out and no one is there,went in search of hubby, he was in the living room quietlywatching t.v. I again asked “what?” He had no clue whatI was talking about. I didn’t much feel like being in thecloset anymore.
Little things like this kept happening (we lived there for almost2 years…I’m no quitter ;-)) One night, my hubby and Iwere sitting outside smoking, mid sentence he totally clamed up,eyes as big as plates. I asked him what was wrong, he says don’tyou see her? See who? The old lady standing inside the slidingglass door staring at us, smoking a cig. Uh, no! She stood therefor about 10 min. then walked (if you can call it that) back outof site. Woah! We gathered our courage and went back inside,eventually sleep overcame fear and we went to bed.
After a while, I started noticing cold spots and misty spots inmy periferal vision. I thought it was the same spirit, I waswrong. At 6 am, and 6pm the door knob would rattle, and footstepscould be heard going down the steps, I investigated, and neversaw anyone. I was so freaked out about the other things I hadn’tnoticed any of this stuff. My cat would absolutely freak for noreason, if I wanted to go down the hall he sometimes wouldlitterally jum onto my head (declwed, thank god!). He would stareat a wall and his hackles would rise (what is a hackle anyway,hee – hee.). The cat always slightly over reacted to them,but he got more comfortable over time. At least he stoppedjumping on my head.
Then I guess, “he” the male spirit became comfortablewith us, he would come and I will swear on a stack of bibles thathe would come and sit on me. There was no weight, and no feelingof being held down, just a bone chilling cold that would make mytummy knot up, then it would be gone. It wasn’t just on onespot on the couch either. Sometimes it wasn’t right on you,more like beside, one leg and arm would be all goose pimply.Weird!
All kinds of things happened while we were there. I don’tthink the “smokey “lady liked me, maybe because of theno smoking in the house thing? She left me alone, unless I usedthe master bath, I took to using the other one. The male spiritwould follow me around sometimes while I did my chores, I wouldwalk into the laundry nook to do something and turn around justto walk into a cold spot. It will sound crazy, I am sure, but hebecame kind of a comforting presence. He didn’t “scare”me anymore, sometimes surprised me, but not scary. The smokeylady was always kinda scary, but I could live with it, I askedher to leave once but she rattled my dresser drawers all night,sio I got the hint that she didn’t want to go. There aremany other stories that happened in that building, but this ismore than long enough, so maybe some other time.
I submitted the first part of the story a couple of weeks ago andjust wanted to finish it out. I did some recon work and found outthat first of all, the camera shop that I took my pics of theapartment to threw them out because they had fog and water dropson each frame and couldn’t improve them enough to charge mefor them!!!! Well, duh – that’s why I requested theysend them to me regardless. Does no one follow directions anymore?
Second, I grilled my hubby until he finally told me that thefirst night when he was so scared and wouldn’t talk aboutit, he saw a “man” walk through the wall and into thejanitors area which was locked. He swears he saw it and he isn’treally inclined to lie.
Next, I asked the manager if there had ever been a natural gasproblem at the complex. She of course said no, but her assistantpulled me aside when she left and told me that yes there had been.The first year the complex was open there had been a leak on thedeck (where the gas hot water heaters are) and the man who livedin the apartments below ours had lit his gas grill. Big boom andmany injured people later, only the barbecue guy and a guythrowing his trash out were killed.
The really odd thing is that the reason I even thought to ask herwas that shortly before we moved, I was napping on the couch andI “dreamed” that a nice man wearing a mechanics uniformcame and sat beside me. He talked to me for a long time; he wasvery kind and answered a lot of questions for me. He told me thatthere had been some kind of problem with the natural gas and itkilled a guy outside taking out his trash. He said that hisfamily used to live in my apartment. He also told me that thelady that lived in my closet had visited her grown daughter at myapartment and soon after had died. She died of lung cancer (supposedly– heck I was dreaming after all). Now, don’t get mewrong, this all seems to cut and dry to me too. It does explain alot, but maybe it was my subconscious trying to solve the puzzles.I do know for sure that there was definitely something going on,but who can say for sure what. By the by, my kids no longer talkto people I can’t see. Make of that what you will.