The Loft

From: 
Story type: ghost
Location: Hayward, California
Source: Form Submission
Date submitted: Tue Mar 20 12:08:42 2007

When I was almost eight years old, my family moved into our first real house. It had a huge yard, three bedrooms, and a loft above the garage. When we moved in, however, the loft was a wreck. It had suffered fire damage, so my father set about repairing it and reinforcing the supports. Within a month, it was safe to walk around in.

Apparently, the fire had been started by the local teenagers, who used the loft as the neighborhood hangout. They were all "stoners," into the satanic-themed heavy metal music prevalent in the early 1980's. The walls of the loft were covered in satanic and graphically sexual grafitti, which my parents tried several times to paint over, though it still somehow managed to show through slightly.

We all felt afraid of the loft; the standard "I'm being watched" feeling was very heavy. I'd go up there sometimes to crawl around the attic (which was connected), but would often come running down the stairs in fright.

Later, as teenagers, my brothers and I began using the loft as a hangout. By then, sufficient coats of paint had been added to the walls to cover up the grafitti. We had a thirteen-inch color television, carpeting, and (best of all) a Nintendo to occupy our thoughts. When we were all together up there, the place seemed fine.

I would sometimes go into the loft just to be alone, bringing a book or some comics. I still felt uncomfortable, but told myself to ignore it; it was just psychological because of the grafitti. Still, the loft would creak for no apparent reason, not in the area on which I stood, but across the room. (This would also happen quite often when in the garage beneath.) Also, quite often when I was up there, I would hear someone (whom I thought was my mother) calling for me. I'd go down the stairs and into the kitchen, but my mother would always say she hadn't called.

When my grandmother became sick and came to live with us, she needed a room of her own. It would have been quite sensible for her to have taken my room, moving me into the loft. I was never asked to do so; it was understood that nobody would want to sleep up there. (The entire eight years we lived there, we never slept in the loft.) We ended up buying a larger house across town.

I wonder if the loft has the same effect on the new residents of the house as it had on us?