This is a story I wrote about 10 years ago. Figured I would share it on here.

As I looked back on 2006, I was 25 years old. It had been 2 years since I last saw my biological family. My biological grandmother had passed away a month after being diagnosed with cancer. As a result of her marriage the summer before, my birth mother was having trouble selling her three-bedroom trailer, and she offered it to me for a small amount of rent and utilities. Due to my ex-husband moving out, I was left to pay daycare for a 2 year old on top of everything else, so one of my birth mother’s friends moved in to help me.

During the summer of 2006, the trailer park manager began setting up walkthroughs for potential buyers. The manager was bitter and angry that I lived there, she believed I was subletting and breaking the rules, so I began looking for a new place to live.

A few months later, I found a place to live in an old, narrow building that had been built in 1909 as a hotel, then renovated into town houses, and finally separated into apartments. There were vaulted ceilings and dramatic doorways, and I even had my own entrance.

In the middle of August, I put down the deposit and moved in. To reduce day care costs, I moved my ex in with me. (I realize that is a terrible idea, but I was young and clearly not very intelligent.)

I spent most of the first month unpacking boxes and trying to figure out how to work the small apartment since it did not have air conditioning. My son, now 3 years old, had the smaller room with the closet that looked like it had once been a stairway. I made it work by placing his toys in crates that fit perfectly in the cubby closet and his clothes in an old dresser I pulled into the closet. In my room, there was a boarded up fireplace and a new bedroom closet. The bay window in my living room was one of the biggest I had ever seen. It had gone up all the way to the vaulted ceiling and was framed by beautiful old woodwork. It looked out to a parking lot and sidewalk, but I imagine when it was built it had a beautiful view.

It was around the middle of September, fall was in the air, the apartment was less stuffy, and sleeping with the windows open made it perfect, but that night, the windows were closed because it was a weekend, and drunken people flock to my open window like flies. After sleeping for a while, I was jolted awake by someone screaming, “Get up!” I looked around for a moment, but everything was still. Thinking I had dreamed it, I glanced at my alarm clock and realized it was 3:15am. As I glanced out, the sidewalk was still, thinking someone had yelled in my window, which was not opened. I rolled over and saw him. I froze. The camouflage jacket was too heavy for the weather, and the pants were tattered. It was too dark for me to tell what he was holding and in my panicked state, I didn’t want to find out. While keeping my eyes on the intruder, I elbowed my ex to wake up as quietly as I could. My ex was in a dead sleep; my heart pounded so hard I could hear my heartbeat, why did he not move? Did he think I was still sleeping? He looked homeless maybe he got cold and broke in, but why wasn’t he moving? He wasn’t looking at me, he looked at the window. “Oh god”, I thought to myself as I glanced at the clock. 3:17am? I thought that had been at least ten minutes, so I looked back to the foot of the bed and he had disappeared. I ran to my son’s room. He was fast asleep, with no one around. I ran around the apartment, checking my doors and windows, looking for any way someone got in. I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. Was I sleeping? Was this sleep paralysis? For the first time since I was startled awake, I noticed the apartment was really cold. I got some water and crawled back into bed.

As the nights went by, it was hard to sleep, the place felt electric, I felt watched when alone, I was jumpy and I kept looking over my shoulder, making me jumpy. My ex was no help, he insisted it was a nightmare and ghosts aren’t real, and I would walk away knowing better. One night while working, I received a message from my ex. He said he was sitting at the kitchen table on his laptop and he crushed out his cigarette. The ashtray slid from the middle of the table, where my son couldn’t reach it, across the table, spilling onto the floor. Asked if he believed me, he replied that the table probably wasn’t level and that he probably knocked it loose when reaching for it.

Despite nothing happening in late October, I felt the same uneasy feeling that someone was always right behind me all the time. Since no one had appeared by my bed or thrown anything across the room, I tried to relax, but it was difficult because I felt static electricity as soon as I entered the apartment. I found a mouse in my entry way and ended up getting a cat, an adult tabby one of my coworkers dropped off. His daughter was moving and couldn’t take her with them, so he gave her to me to catch mice. Apparently, she was an excellent mouser who left presents in the entryway all the time. There was something unsettling about the dead mice, they seemed drained of blood, like deflated balloons.I grew up in a small town, and we lived about five miles outside of town, my dad calls it a farm, but it’s not. As far as animals were concerned, we only had a dog and a few cats, which my grandma called barn cats. The dead mice they left by the door never looked like those deflated, flat-looking mouse carcasses, they were so flat that I wondered if they had even a bone or if they were just dead, empty mouse skin. My ex cleaned them up and I pushed those thoughts away. The dead mice started after we got the cat, so it has to be her. That cat, her previous family had named her Elizabeth, the irony was not lost on me, she never really warmed up to anyone, she wasn’t mean at all but was quite skiddish and always seemed agitated and cried almost every night, which kept me on edge since cats were not allowed in those apartments.

Almost the end of November, it was chilly, hoodie weather, like when you don’t always need the heat, but there were times when it was just too cold. That’s when things started happening again, and I believe they were waiting for me to relax and let my guard down. I stopped sprinkling salt around the doorways and near the fireplace. I had always been uneasy about that old fireplace.

During a weekend morning, when the sun was getting up, there was just enough dawn to see the room. I had moved my bed, which used to be under a window and against the radiator, since it was getting cold outside. That’s what we had, radiator heat, those big clunky metal radiators placed throughout the apartment, they got hot, so I kept the heat low so that my son wouldn’t burn when he touched them. My son was 3, and he HAD to touch them because they looked cool. I slowly started waking up this morning, and when I opened my eyes, I saw my son crouched, no, perched on top of my bedroom radiator, staring blankly at me, expressionless. It made me so uncomfortable that I couldn’t speak for a few seconds. As soon as I caught his attention, I asked what he was doing. He seemed a bit confused, but jumped down and demanded breakfast without explanation. I crawled out of bed and cooked him breakfast, feeling that prickly electric sensation running down my spine. As he finished his breakfast, I relaxed a bit, but that image would stay with me for years to come. He looked like a gargoyle, and I swear there was nothing in his eyes.

Several nights later, it occurred again. It was not the gargoyle toddler this time, but a man. I heard someone shout, “Wake up!” The air was electric, if I touched anything there would be sparks. There was a man in the same spot as before, but since I had moved my bed, he was standing by my legs instead of standing by my feet. He was not the same as the last one, he had more muscle definition and his skin looked almost transparent. The most terrifying thing about this man was that he was standing alert, facing the window across the room, unmoving. But on his head was a paper bag, which I found maddening, why on earth did he have a bag on his head?! I moved slightly and he looked at me, my breath catching in my throat, and then he was gone. As I glanced at my clock, it was 3:17am, the same time as before. My nerves were firing in all directions, and his image was burning behind my eyes. Why was he wearing a paper bag?

Then I started looking for apartments again, I didn’t feel safe in my home. I moved out in February; my things were already moved out and I vacuumed and cleaned until the sun went down. We had only 1 light fixture in the bathroom, so we had to get floor lamps and desk lamps. I was wrapping up the vacuum and planning to go back the following day since we had an extra week to finish when I felt hot air against my neck and my spine began tingling. I turned around to see nothing. My body shivered, and I said, “ok, you win, I’m leaving.”.

One night at work, I was telling a co-worker about the 2 men I saw. He looked away quickly and muttered “that was creepy”. “What was that?” I asked him. I was silent for a moment while he shook his head “nothing.” I asked again, “What are you hiding?”. “I’m from Texas, I don’t know Spanish, but my mother is very superstitious and she taught us how to ward against evil as well as what evil looks like…I guess I’m saying that I understand why he had the bag on his head, and escaping there was a good idea.” As he continued, “if you see a ghost with a bag on its head it is symbolic, as it means they are ashamed of their own actions. He was trapped there and has probably become evil. He didn’t look amused. “You’re serious” I told him. “Yeah” he replied. Finally, I had an answer, more of one than I realized. I got chills thinking about what could have happened had I stayed.

Now that my son is 13 years old, he barely remembers anything. That’s okay, I wish I could do the same.