The Incineration of Apartment #3

From: M"ma Heave (x93nelson3@wmich.edu)
Story type: Ghost
Location: 711 W Lovell #3 Kalamazoo MI
Source: Form Submission

The Incineration of West Lovell Street #3

The 711 W. Lovell Street House original location had been surrounded by parking lot in downtown Kalamazoo until the late 1980"s, when it was moved to Lovell Street where the foundation of a long-since burnt-down home had been excavated.

With an addition built on the rear of the house, the owners/restorers divided it into three apartments for leasing. ... Two female students were renting apartment number three, a long, stuffy two-bedroom, in 1989.

The young woman, Jymie, experienced a supernatural encounter after being awoken suddenly from deep slumber late one night in her bedroom, the smallest room the apartment. She saw, at the foot of her bed, the apparition of a tall mysterious man dressed in glowing white, with a hat. She was startled, but simply stared for a while before falling back asleep.

Upon mentioning this to her roommate the next morning, Jymie discovered that her roommate had had a similar experience a couple of months prior, when Jymie was out of town, being able to descibe the apparition"s clothing exactly without Jymie having introduced any such details. ...

I moved into apartment number three on Lovell Street in 1994, when I was working for the owner, the man who had originally bought and moved the house. I never really like the place. It seemed stuffy, especially during hat midsummer days, as well as generally uneasy.

I lived there with two other guys (one slept in a bed loft we built into the living room) and my dog, Maximus. I stayed in the small room, which had a slightly sloping floor and wallpaper capable of causing instant neurosis.

Late one night I was awoken by what felt like a sudden shift in gravity. The room seemed to be rocking (I wasn"t under the influence of any drugs) and Maximus was barking at the gap between the closed bedroom door and the floor. I room continued to rock, and lights moved accross the window. I began to feel nauseous, and started to rise but decided to lay back down and ride it out. I was able to fall back asleep almost imediately. In the morning I place three pennies above the door moulding and never experienced any further nocturnal disturbances. I understand that this Caribbean custom rarely fails. ...

A few months later, the three of us decided to move from 711 West Lovell Street #3. I was the last one to move out and so defaulted as clean-up man. A large bundle of sage had been left in the kitchen so I conducted a spontaneous sage ritual, my first of this kind.

I took the burning sage to every corner of the apartment, baptizing every space with smoke. The middle spaces of rooms and the darkest closet corners were the central focus points of the ritual. Perhaps twenty minutes later, I doused the stub of sage and continued to sweep and patch nail holes. I opened the door to the large bedroom to survey the clean-up needs but was assaulted by a shadow before turning on the lights. I flipped the switch to reveal a bat circling the room. I managed to catch it in a waste can and put it outside. It took off after a little while.

My roommate"s television was still in the living room and was on despite my having recently patched holes the walls of that room, with the television off, and my being the only human being in the apartment, then or since.

The last sweeping job was down the stairs to the door outside. As I swept the landing, I heard an odd noise in the decorative lamp fixture cover on the ceiling. It sounded as if something was scratching heavily upon the metallic inside of the cover. I tapped it with my broom stick and it stopped momentarily but continued as I finished sweeping the stairs. ...

I met Jymie when she moved near my current residence last spring. We had nearly crossed paths many times over the past six years, having many mutual friends. The coincidence of our both having lived in the same place at different times was just one in many such coincidences. Months after meeting we learned of each other"s supernatural experiences at the Lovell Street apartment #3. ...

About three months ago, as the apartment"s residents were moving out, right after the house had been sold, number three caught fire. The circumstances of the fire are hazy, but the results are the strangest. Number three was entirely incinerated; most of the walls burnt out. However, not a single rafter in the roof was touched by flame, neither number one nor number three were harmed in the slighest, and nobody was hurt. The previous owner came in and restored the apartment. I saw him in the grocery store a few weeks back but he desmisses my story with skepticism. I"m convinced, though.