After we agreed to take the apartment and picked up the keys we went for a second look. We hadn't noticed the door in the sitting room that led to an attic the first and only time we had been there. We went exploring and headed up the stairs. It was unfinished with the smell of old wood and dust. There were old trunks up there scattered about and some broken furniture. We noticed another door leading to another apartment in the building. I immediately felt uneasy, like I didn't belong there. I started to feel an anxious claustrophobic feeling and quickly retreated back downstairs to resume cleaning. My boyfriend, Jim, just chuckled.
Moving day was fun. Mostly because we had nothing but promise. A few dishes, basic set of pots and pans, one set of sheets and about 20 boxes of clothes and shoes (mostly mine) were quickly moved in and we began to unpack and start cleaning.
Closet space became an immediate inadequacy of the apartment. In the 1700's closet space was not a necessity. They were more concerned with sitting parlors and servants quarters back then. Our 2.5 room with a small kitchen apartment filled up quickly with our meager possessions. We splurged and bought a couch. He had a bed. The rest was hand me down relics from relatives and friends. There was not a lot of room for extras and that suited us just fine. Within a day or two we had a pile of laundry. It wouldn't fit in the bathroom. It was unsightly in our "sitting room" and the kitchen...well THAT was so small you had to go outside to change your mind. So we tossed it into a basket behind the attic door.
The first "weird" occurrence there happened on our first weekend. I was not a drug user and I didn't drink very much. I was still recovering from chemo and radiation so I liked to feel as naturally energetic without any chemical drains. We hadn't received the ordered couch yet and the bed was simply a mattress on the floor. We had one floor lamp and no overhead lights. That night we fell into bed exhausted from cleaning and "setting up". Sometime in the middle of the night I found myself wide awake with the feeling there were not just two people in the room. I turned my head to the right and because I was at floor level I saw small, almost glowing little wax bodies. They weren't human but looked like wax molds of human bodies and I remember them being about 18" tall. I sat up and gasped as I was fully awake and it scared the SHIT out of me. This had NEVER happened before in my life. I woke my boyfriend up and he just laughed. I lay awake for a bit before sleep came again and the next day was sunny and warm with the promise of spring and I had windows to wash so I chalked it up to a very intense nightmare.
Then nothing happened. Months went by. I got pregnant. That summer we continued to "settle" and our priorities became more focused. My pregnancy progressed well and I spent most of my time reading what to expect while I was expecting books. Summer quickly turned to fall and soon snow was falling. The little wax men of my "vivid nightmare" were long forgotten and we were living for Wednesday night episodes of Seinfeld on TV.
Then it began to happen again. I had a sudden aversion to the attic. Remember we had piled our laundry just inside the door. I would open the door and gaze up the stairs and chills would wash over me. I would close the door and the feeling was gone. I told no one about this because I thought it was a pregnancy thing.
In my eighth month of pregnancy Jim decided he needed one last "hurrah" out with his friends. It was January and we were experiencing a Nor' Easter with wet snow piling up quickly. I had it in my head I was going to go into labor and Jim would be somewhere and I'd have to call an ambulance to get me to the hospital. I called my step mother and we were chatting on the phone as it was nearing midnight. We were prone to long talks and had become close as she had my toddler brother and I was expecting my first. I knew I was having a boy and we giggled about the boy things neither of us were accustomed to. That's when I heard Jim pound up the stairs and to my relief I told my stepmother he was home. She, sensing something, told me not to hang up and go make sure. I flicked on the light and looked out the back door. A drift of snow was where our car should have been and there were no footprints in the snow coming up the stairs. I was completely perplexed as I was one hundred percent sure I heard him pounding up the stairs. 100%. I quickly retrieved my phone and told her what happened and she, a real wiccan (serious), had sensed something and insisted she stay on the phone with me until Jim arrived home. She did, he did come home and again, nothing else happened for weeks. I chalked it up to a gust of wind that shook the house that must have just SOUNDED exactly the same as someone coming up the stairs every other time someone did.
Then my son was born. I gushed and I hovered and I rocked him and loved him. My mother was immediately smitten and had graciously offered to watch him every weekend. She would stay at our house and sleep on the couch as Jim and I both worked in retail and could not afford day care. (at least not the kind I felt was "good enough"). She came every Friday night with new outfits and toys for him excited to take care of her "little prince".
On the second or third weekend my mother was there she came busting into our room at about 3 A.M. yelling that there had been someone standing over her. I had NEVER seen this behavior in my mother before and took to a fit of laughing. ( I laugh when I am nervous) I completely believed her as she went on to explain that she was sound asleep (in the same room where I saw the wax figures) and she woke up to a man with a cowboy hat looking down on her. We all got up, paced around, laughed nervously and with some trepidation we all went back to sleep. What does one do in a situation like this? Call the police? A couple of weeks after that we were all sitting in the "sitting room" (again the same room) watching television when the TV did the EXACT same thing that happened on Poltergeist the movie. It got all fuzzy and the three of us looked at each other as the TV sputtered the words "get out". Programming soon resumed and we all sat there in a stupor, on the couch looking at each other then finally asking "did you hear what I heard?"
Nervous laughter again. This time, even skeptical Jim realized that there was something going on in this house and we all agreed it was time to think about moving.
My sister had asked after the apartment (the price was right) She was fully aware of my ghost stories and laughed at it. She decided to move in with her fiancé and loved it just as much as I had.
A few months in she was home alone, late at night waiting for her chef fiancé to return home. She was chatting with her friend Jen on the phone when she heard him pound up the stairs.
Except he wasn't home and it was midnight.
She called me the next day and had decided maybe she would move.
She did move after she boiled water one night and that turned into a full kitchen fire. That was explained, I think....
By itself this may seem just weird and there are plenty of people that will think each of these episodes are explainable.
Allow me to give you this:
Years later I was a manager at a radio station in Boston. I was charged with training "rookies" We would do some ice breaking activities and get to know each other. One young woman told us her name was Jen and she was from Hingham Mass. I told her I had lived there and we soon discovered we had lived on the same street, different houses. I asked if she still lived there and she said no, just her parents now. She told me that her parents had moved there not too long ago and as pretty a house as it was she would never stay there alone. Neither would her sister. A cold chill began to creep up my spine when I asked her why?
Because whenever one of us is ever alone in that house we hear people run up and down stairs....but only when we are alone....
Happy Halloween!
(This is a true story)
