My Haunted Apartment
Name: Karen H.
Location: Lake City, Florida
Date: 2005
I was doing a college internship during my last semester, and had to spend three months three hours from home, so I was looking for a short term rent. It’s a very small town, and none of the local apartments would rent to me. I did find an apartment (in an older house, divided into four apartments) in the local paper and called the landlord. Nope, he didn’t want to rent to me either. Finally, when I offered him the rent in cash, all up front, he said yes. So I moved in, with an incredibly sparse amount of belongings.
The house was built in 1922 or thereabouts. It smelled like an old home. My room was upstairs, and opened to a balcony that faced a small building. I was drawn to that view. I’d never been in that town before, but I loved looking at that building. I put my bedroom things in the front bedroom and when I went to bed that first night I couldn’t sleep. It was quiet, but the room seemed overly dark. In my mind the walls became black and my bed felt small. I couldn’t shake the image that a young girl had died in that room, that it had been the nursery. I’ve had paranormal moments all my life, and it was once explained to me that I was a receiver of the minds & bodies of spirits. But the spirit world eventually learned to just do the mind thing, as the few bodily visions just freaked me out too much. Anyway, the next day I moved my things to the master bedroom and decided to make peace with any spirits living there.
Whenever I felt I was being watched, I’d just talk to the “ghost” and tell her that I wouldn’t bother her if she didn’t bother me. That worked pretty well until one day when I got home from internship and found something odd in the kitchen. There was a little ledge in there and I had set a cotton tote bag full of boxes of tea on it. When I got home that day, the tote bag was off the ledge, but standing upside down beside it, on the floor! And not one box of tea had fallen out! I tried to replicate how that could have happened, but never could do it without the boxes escaping. And it was a plain cotton bag, not firm at all. Finally I laughed and said, “Okay, you’ve had your fun.” And I went on with my day.
Weeks later, on Halloween night, we had no trick or treaters, so I was sitting in the living room watching a marathon of ghost shows. I was really into it when I heard an odd sound. Looking around, I saw a plastic shopping bag that I had brought in that day… and it was scrunching down. Normally, if those bags move (and this was hours after I’d placed it there), they open up… this bag was closing. As I watched, my mouth open, it continued to scrunch downward. I told the spirit, “Come on now! You’re freaking me out!” I slowly reached over and touched the bag, and it stopped. Everything looked normal inside. No bugs, no rodents. No visible reason for what had happened.
I attributed those actions to the little girl who I believe had died in the nursery, but later on I realized it could have been someone else. My father had died in 1985, and not only did he have a great sense of humor, but I inherited my abilities through his mother, and him. He had psychic moments during his lifetime, though he never really talked about them. But years after that internship I was cleaning my childhood home and found my father’s work calendars from a decade prior to his death. Flipping through the pages, I saw the name of the building that had been across from that apartment. It was in there several times. He was an architect and was designing several schools in that county, and had many meetings in that same building, as did I with my internship. I never got any messages from him, but the tea tote magically turned upside down was funny, and the bag crumpling downward sure got my attention.
