Apartment 113
Apartment 113 a True story of a Haunting
Apartment 113 a True story of a Haunting
A. J. Phillips
#kindle
To begin whoever said be careful what you wish for,
you just might get it. Had obviously
done it and I wished for this and got more than I bargained for. I am a writer and creative thinker named A.
J. Phillips and this actually happened to me in my mid-twenties.
I had just graduated college and was looking for my
first place of my own, as well as looking for my first real job. Earlier that same year I had met a woman who
at the time I thought was the one, but that is only a minor detail. I had a friend who was going to be out of
town for the summer and he let me sublease his room in a house for that
summer. So for the time being I had a
place to be while I hunted a job. Austin
TX is a hot and humid place especially during the summer. It is strange to me but at one point my
mother, grandmother, my uncle and yes even my dad had lived in this city at
some point in their lives. This torch
had now been passed to me. Austin is a
pedestrian city, very friendly to bikers and walkers alike. Since I was on foot I got to know it quite
well. The story of 113 and I began one
afternoon when I happened to wonder through UT Austin’s campus on my way back
to my temporary home. I happened across
a flier on one of the poster kiosks toward the far eastern side of the campus
near the LBJ Library. It simply read
efficiency apartments $350 per month all bills paid except electric and
internet. The apartments did not have a
name; the flier just listed an address and phone number. I took it home and googled the address and
directions to it. It turned out the
apartments were not too far from the campus.
The fact that the apartments had no name should have been my first clue,
but I was too excited the price was too good not to at least check it out. I called and made an appointment to see the
apartment manager.
My appointment was at 3pm the next day, I am a very
punctual person if I tell you I will meet you at 3pm expect me to be around at
least thirty minutes prior to that time.
I call this time screw up time; I always allow time for something to go
wrong to avoid dealing with Murphy and his law.
This complex actually consisted of three addresses, two identical
buildings on the same lot and a third down the street. Each building was three stories tall and this
ugly pastel piss yellow in color. The
buildings on the double lot were the main ones; I was looking for room 101 of
building 2506. I found it rather easily
and knocked. This young Asian man
answered the door he looked like a student and probably was. We chatted for about twenty minutes. The complex seemed deserted, but it was
summer and most of the area was transient student housing. He asked me what kind of apartment I
preferred. I asked for one on the ground
floor at first he said he did not have one but I pushed the issue a
little. Finally he caved in and
confessed there was one just one. It was
apartment 113 on the back of the building.
He did something that no true apartment manager would do he trashed talked
the apartment trying to disillusion me and convince me to look at a different
one. This part of the building faces a
narrow alleyway with no parking, which worked for me, I had no car and could
not dirve. Next he tried this one it is
behind a utility wall and gets no sunlight. That line right there sold me on it me and the
sun…not friends. To me this was a plus,
it was also on the east side of the building getting the rising sun’s heat not
the setting sun’s another plus. Being on
the back of the building and in that narrow alleyway behind the utility wall I could come
and go quietly and unseen, Finally I convinced him to let me see it.
We went around the back and he unlocked the door. The apartment smelled stale, it had been
sealed off for some time. They did not even
have power connected to show it off. I
walked in and wondered around in the dimly lit room. The apartment manager did not enter with me
he stayed outside. His overall behavior
should have been my second clue. I said
I would take it. And, we returned to the
office to fill out some paperwork. A
little background of this area of Austin, this area was the former ghetto of
Austin, which students at UT had forcibly reclaimed by sheer numbers. So if you believe in that sort of thing it
was saturated in negative energy from memories past. Many violent deeds had been done here, the
office had two framed articles on how the owner of this complex had been mugged
and robbed twice. I myself believe the
Earth can remember things.
Three days later the apartment was set to be mine as
soon as I got the utilities lined out. I
could move in. All of this happened so
fast. Finally I got the electricity on
and could see my new place. It was your
basic one room efficiency. The layout,
one main room a kitchen, bathroom and walk-in closet this place even had an on
demand water heater. My girlfriend was
with me, she was the one who noticed the burn marks in the carpet. Point of fact they are supposed to redo an
apartment after a tenant leaves for health reasons, here they did not. However, I did not care I was your regular
guy who now had his own cave. Let’s set
the record straight here I am a firm believer in the supernatural and paranormal
having experienced it firsthand more than once.
My girlfriend even though she was a Catholic was not she thought it was
a load of bull$*!+. This was mistake
number one on her part she said so in the apartment. To the things that go bump in the night this
paints a huge bull’s-eye on your back.
It was shortly after this statement that the weird things began to
happen.
I began moving my stuff into apartment 113 on a
Saturday. Once all my stuff was inside I
began to unpack. All I had was the
contents of my dorm, consisting of my closes some blankets and my computer plus
all associated items like DVD’s. I
literally camped out in my apartment for the first month. It was all lots of fun to me again I had my
cave. It was about sunset when I started
setting up my computer, I had flipped a storage bin upside down to use as a table. At this point I was connecting wires all I
had plugged to power was my subwoofer to my Logitech speakers. That’s when it happened a low groan came
through the woofer, I ignored it, but it got louder and louder then suddenly
stopped. By the time it stopped I had
everything connected and my computer was booting. I may believe in the supernatural and
paranormal but I first go to scientific facts before I attribute anything to
them. Here was my logic my speakers have
picked up CB radios before, I am only a few block from I-35 so I labeled this
radio interference and discounted it. I
have a belief that we can all see ghosts but most of us cannot fathom what we
saw so our minds quickly rewrite what happened so it is if it never did, so
most of us never notice the supernatural as a result.
Small little
BS things like this continued to happen escalating little by little. I finally broke down and told my girlfriend
about the incidents and she blew up and clearly thought I was crazy, typical
nonbeliever response. At this point they
were little minor BS kinds of things like objects being moved and the like. This However was mistake number two for her
she said she did not believe in it in the apartment again! My girlfriend was of Vietnamese descent and
had been raised old school Catholic. She
grew up in a small close knit Vietnamese village hidden away in one of Texas’ little
fishing towns. She was a woman of Science so a pseudo-science like
parapsychology was comical like the movies Ghostbusters 1 & 2. This complex had one very unsettling feature
at least to me it was unsettling. There
were florescent lights that stayed on night and day lighting the outside
walkways. This place was brightly
lit. I mean like the sun kind of
lit. What made this unsettling to me was
none of the other apartment complexes were lit like this. This one was unique. Whenever stuff would happen I was always
alone…typical right? I kept blowing it
off because I have been a paranormal/supernatural nut since I was a child when
I was 9 I saw a ghost it scared the crap out of me. I pulled the covers over my head and sleep
trembling all night. That incident
awakened an insane curiosity in me; I read everything I could find on ghosts
for years after that.
This one had some of the classic poltergeist
behavior. I was home alone mid-afternoon
filling out some online job applications when the loudest and hardest knock I
had ever heard sounded from my front door.
I mean it shook the door; I went to the peep hole quickly after getting
over being startled. There was no one
there, I opened the door went outside even went to the outside of the utility
wall…nothing. As I came back to my door,
I saw it; there was a dirty foot print, with the full imprint of a shoe on the
bottom of the door. There are a few
problems with this, the utility wall makes this spot really narrow and the foot
print was too large for someone to have kicked my door and made it in that
amount of space. What I am getting at is
you would have to be a midget with huge feet to pull it off otherwise you would
be standing inside the utility wall. I
tried to copy the angle and do it I could not I am 5’7” my girlfriend was 5’1”
I did show her and asked her to try to copy it she could not. I cleaned the foot print off the door but no
matter how many times I did, the next day there it was again. The other problem was there was nowhere for a
prankster to hide here and I was the only one living on that side at the time,
I was the only one on that floor everyone else was gone. Still I ignored it though I knew I was not
alone. This type of thing is a ghost
hunter’s wet dream; I mean you are living with it. I was perfectly willing to coexist. Right here is where a very famous mistake is
made I knew I was not alone, most people in this situation would do something
stupid like try to make contact through either an amateur séance or a Ouija
Board both of which I knew better than to try.
A Ouija Board is like leaving your door unlocked with a huge sign saying
all are welcome.
It was after this the music started, my girlfriend
could not hear it so clearly she thought I was imagining things. Every night when I would go to bed just
before I would nod off, I could hear something that sounded like an old record
player playing an old song. The song was
familiar I knew I had heard it before but to this day I cannot place it the
music was out of time and step. The
tempo was off too. This went on for
weeks the same song every night. I soon
became aware of a set of eyes staring at me from somewhere in the back of the
apartment. I tried telling my girlfriend
again this time she started crying saying she did not believe in it. Clearly this was denial the real truth is she
was afraid of this kind of stuff whereas I was insanely curious instead. I hugged her to me and apologized even though
I knew the fatal third mistake had already happened. A nonbeliever had practically called the
haunting out, saying you don’t believe in it in its domain is a mistake doing
it three times is an invitation.
Hauntings often will not mess with those who believe because a genuine
haunting wants your attention. A believer
pays attention. However, nonbelievers
are fun to them, kind of like beating a level in a video game.
It was right after this she started having the nightmares
when she stayed over. Each one was worse
than the last; she even told me she had them in her apartment, combined with
the escalation of small happening I knew something big was coming. About a week later I was home alone again
doing more job applications. This time
the slam came from the kitchen which was in my line of sight. A glass had been taken from the sink and
slammed to the floor shattering loudly.
I got up to go clean it up and said there is no need for that…I could
feel a very angry presence all around me.
This was the first time I left because of it. I went for a walk and decided to go and wait
for my girlfriend at her UT summer job and surprise her. I did
not tell her about this one because it really wasn’t her problem it was mine. We went and got dinner and ended up back at
my apartment. It got late and she
decided to stay the night. That night
she heard it, one of the unexplained phenomena just a BS little happening. Every night around midnight there is this
noise that sounds like a person dragging their finger nails across the walls
and the doors that would start at one end of that side of the apartments and go
all the way to the other end. I had
heard it many times and tried to catch whoever it was multiple times, you would
open the door and the sound would stop.
So you would close the door and the sound would resume. I had been dealing with it for weeks now and
I just ignored it. This noise unnerved
her, I just simply stated yeah I know and left it at that. We settled in to watch a movie it was Friday after
all and then to bed. By the time we went
to sleep it was about 2am. Since I had
no furniture yet I had a really thick pallet on the floor for us. There was the music again this time it was
much louder, all the times before it sounded really far off. Tonight it sounded like it was on top of
me. An hour ticked past and we slept
soundly until she woke up screaming which woke me up. “There’s an old woman” was all I got from
her. I closed my eyes and a face
appeared right in mine I slammed against the wall cussing, in seconds I was on
my feet. She pointed to the center of
the room there was this greenish black mist hovering in the center of the room
spewing angry energy. My girlfriend
grabbed my hand and said “let’s run” my response was run where it is 3 in the
morning where are we going to go?”
Needless to say I was pissed. I
could tell whatever it was its focus was on my girlfriend.
I twisted my hand loose from hers and charged the
thing punching and kicking the air. This
move must have startled it because it vanished for a couple of minutes. When it did I began ripping the place apart
hunting it, as I said I am deeply into this sort of stuff I knew it was not
over yet. Then my girlfriend screamed
and pointed it was back and it was after her.
We were a mixed race couple and if this thing was an old woman and our
location being the old ghetto, we had violated a taboo, which may explain the
things full on hate directed at her. Without
any forethought I yelled “say the Lord’s Prayer and keep saying it. Focus your thoughts on me” then I myself
began to pray I asked god to help me protect my girlfriend. Then I asked for his light to fill my hands
as I did I rushed it. I had the beast
cornered. What I did next was straight
out of DragonBall Z I put my hands together like I was going to do Goku’s
favorite move and yelled “let your light shine brightly in Jesus name Amen”
shoving my hand into the green mist. One
tormented scream later and I saw an orb of light vanish into the ceiling and it
was over, through him we had won. I
quickly turned on the lights and looked around, the whole room seemed brighter;
it was as different as night and day. A
nonbeliever had become one the hard way.
Whoever said ghosts come out at midnight the witching hour is full of
crap most full on hauntings happen between 2 and 4am. They also say evil places crawl with lower
life forms like bugs this place really did, it had an over abundances of
crickets, roaches, these odd worms that ate the sheet rock and they were not
oddest thing. At the back of the complex
there was a grassy area about the size of three of the apartments and it
practically swarmed with lightning bugs thousands of them.
I had gotten my wish but in the process someone innocent
to that world had been initiated into it and she was terrified. To me it was just par for the course. I was sorry it had been brought on by her
insistence it did not exist and I still feel bad that she experienced this
because of me but past is past.
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