Tales From a Haunted TX Apartment III

From: Dianne (ravyncat@yahoo.com)
Story type: Ghost
Location: My Apartment, Austin TX
Source: Form Submission

Here is an update on the ongoing haunting of my apartment. You can read the first part in the October 2002 ghost stories (A True Tale of a Haunted TX Apartment), and the second part in the December 2002 stories (True Tales from a Haunted TX Apartment II).

Well the "ghosty" seems to have settled down. It seems to get more active when we are upset. Our household has been unsettled the past few months because my sister is involved in a custody suit over my niece. So maybe that explains some of it.

I sent my last post in early November. I mentioned that a corner of my room by my closet and that my closet itself were getting "scary". I was feeling a presense there, and I didn't like it. My closet is about three feet deep. It has double doors that pull out and fold to either side. I keep this closet stuffed almost solid with stuff. Partly because my apartment is small, and partly so there's no room in there for something to lurk. (OK. So I still act like a little kid when it comes to closets. I should never have read Cujo.)

I tried a home remedy of putting clove oil on all the doors and windows. This is supposed to calm down spirits and discourage them from entering there. I went all out and put the stuff on my closet doors, my desk drawers, my dresser drawers...basically anyplace I thought a ghost might be able to hide in got some oil. This worked for a week or so.

About a week before Thanksgiving, I woke up about 1:45am. I usually get up about 2:30am (I work weird hours.), and I was surprised that I had woken up before my alarm. I was also surprised by how dark my room was. I watched as a cloud of "blackness" started forming on the far side of my room and heading towards my bed. My first thought was 'Oh crap!', and then I reached for my bedside light. (Call me paranoid, but I always sleep with a light close to the bed.)I turned my light on and the blackness was completely gone. I told the room "I'm not playing that game", and got up to make coffee. Nothing else weird happened that day.

Sometime in early December, I had a really bad dream. I'm going to relate the high points of this dream because they seem related to what happened to me a few days later. I dreamed that I woke up from a nightmare in my room and it was dark. The clock said 2am. I couldn't turn on any of the lights, and my door was closed. (I always sleep with my door open so the cats can go in and out.)I knew I was still dreaming because in my dreams I can never turn on any lights. I went to my door and then I heard a rattling sound. There was a light coming in from under the door like the bathroom light was on. (The bathroom door is directly across the hall from my door.) I realized that the rattling was a beaded curtain that I have hung up at the start of the short hallway which leads to my room and bathroom. It sounded like something was playing with the beads.

I knew I was dreaming, so I decided to just open the door and confront it. At the worst, I thought I'd just wake up. I opened my door and the hallway was completely black. So black that I could see nothing at all. The bead rattling continued. This was too freaky, so I slammed my door shut. I huddled against the door and waited for "It" to slam against it. Then I dreamed I woke up and the clock said 2:00am. My room looked normal and I thought I was awake. I heard a cat meowing outside and suddenly the meow sound got very loud and scary. It was echoing and it hurt my ears. Then there was a loud buzzing like a lawn mower that was also scary. That sound got so loud that it made my head hurt. For some reason these sounds caused intense fear. Then it stopped, and I was really awake. The clock said 2am. What freaked me out is that I wasn't positive I was really awake until I turned all the lights on and walked around the house.

A few days later, probably around December 8th or so, I was awakened by a loud slamming noise. I realized my door had just slammed shut. I looked at the clock and it was 2am. I then heard a creaking sound and looked toward my closet. Both doors were open leaving about a 10inch gap. I turned on my light and looked into my closet to see if a cat was in there. It was empty. My window was open that night and it was storming. I guess it's possible that a strong breeze blew in and slammed my door shut. But no breeze on earth could ever open those closet doors, because the angle from the window is wrong.

Well, this event freaked me out. The next night I tied the doors shut so that they couldn't open. As I was getting ready for bed, the closet doors rattled like something was jiggling the handles. I ignored it.

I tied the doors shut for about a week. They kept rattling periodically, but I tried to ignore it. Then my four year old niece got scared because she saw the doors try to open. She ran screaming into the kitchen and we could both hear a loud banging coming from the kitchen floor. (I live in a second story apartment. I doubt my downstair neighbors were hammering on their roof.) This really scared my niece, but it made me mad. I made an excuse to calm her and then stomped back into my room. I opened the closet and yelled at the ghost. I told it to stop scaring my niece, and me, and anyone who lived in the house. I asked it to leave us alone.

Things calmed down after that, so maybe it listened. On the night of December 15th I think it knocked over our Christmas tree. My sister was up late making decorations and my niece was talking to her. My sister told me that my niece suddenly started screaming. When my sister looked up, she could see our tree slowly falling over. No cats were near the tree and it was weighted down with gravel. Again this could have been caused by an unbalanced tree, but it had stood solid for almost a week. I'll keep adding more stuff as it happens.