At 13, in the middle of the 8th grade. I was sent to live with my mother in DC.I’d been living with my grandparents, but had to move schools, so this was the ‘best’ option.The row-house was small for four, less than 12ft wide, but we managed well enough. I was already a night owl & stayed up listening to my step-dad’s albums over the headphones, watching dark comedy reruns or 1940's movies. Needle nose pliers on the stem of the broken knob & faded color on the tv. I’d sit in my step-dad’s chair, the only other seat being an uncomfortable Victorian sofa against the wall, usually we just sat on the floor. This being the beginning of my chronic lower back pain. From the rocking chair, one could see into the dining room in a small mirror, which also showed a fraction of the stairs.
The kitchen was visible in the reflection of glass covering an art poster. That light was always on.
You know when you feel someone staring at you from across the room, turn to look & meet their eyes? I felt that…& saw a dark spot on the mirror. But each time I would turn, it would vanish.
This eve, I moved only my eyes to look. A small boy was peeking at me from inside the deep frame of the 10”x12” frame. He was like a deer in headlights a few seconds & then he dipped out of sight.
This game continued for the next year, but I never saw him full on like that again.
I moved to Asheville, NC, sight unseen, ending my 2nd stint in Austin (& then to Atlanta, why the run of A’s, I dunno) I lived a few blocks away from the police station, & in the middle of where the prostitutes worked their corners. I didn’t have a car, so I walked everywhere, past these women or at least past their pile of ciggy butts. And was nearly always approached by men in cars, mistaking me for a hooker...me, in vintage granny dresses & boy shoes or bundled in my pink motorcycle jacket, always reading a book as I walked the six or so blocks into town. 69 Elizabeth Street #3, I had ½ of the 2nd floor of this old estate house, 2 blocks up the hill. The stairway was wide & since it was once a single family home, I had 2 doors, but both were interior doors; one into the bedroom / living-room, one into the kitchen. Also an odd 2nd room off of the kitchen & a tiny shower stall bathroom.
An ex-boyfriend broke through one of my doors & through a window, at different times, both while I was home. I was more mad than scared. Every time I heard foot-fall on the stairs, worried it was him. Or there'd be no sound, but shadows of moving feet under the door. The first few times I’d steel myself & swing the door open, ready for a confrontation. Nothing. No one on the landing or stairs. No other sound except for me closing & locking the door. The shadows appeared at least twice a month.
During this time, I realized how many horror books & videos that I owned, along with the wall-to-wall skull art, I got rid of it all, feeling like I was drawing this negative energy to myself. After 2 years,
I moved. Of course the next house had ghosts, too.
My friend, Bethany, was visiting me from NYC, for a few weeks in the Bay Area. I was still living in the ‘tudor’ home in Lafayette, CA. & tending bar at the long standing nightclub, the I-Beam,
in San Francisco.Usually not returning home til 3a. I told B about the ghost, but since she’d never had an encounter in her current late teen life,she didn’t think there was anything to it & wasn't scared.
To be alone, all night long, in the woods.
Once I finally got my baby blue Plymouth Valiant home (Eddie was his name)
& walked in, lil B was wide eyed, speaking hurriedly about the footsteps up the stairs to the sewing room, the door opening on it’s own, her slowly climbing up to close it. Again, & again, & again.
Then finally leaving it open. Already freaked out by this scenario, it was doubled when she heard a few steps again & the door closed.
Sometimes, a person just wants to be heard, even in death.
And sometimes a person just wants to play.
Play all you can in life, people, play!
Just over two years ago, I moved into my current apartment. The first time I’ve lived in a complex. Thankfully I’m top floor & only share a single wall in this newer construction, which has a late 70s,
early 80s vibe. There are overgrown woods across the parking lot. All sorts of critters come to visit. Raccoon, opossum, I once saw a porcupine waddle down the road; & I adopted a baby ferret for the week, which I found in the courtyard; someone must have abandoned her to go on Thanksgiving holiday. There are also many feral cats. My cat, Merle, is not allowed outside.
Among others, there was a trio of adolescent white cats. Within the first month, one of them was run over by a car, just before I was leaving the lot. A man was kneeling there, worrying over what to do next. I had a shoe box in the car & put the small cat inside. After showing me pictures of his own cats, that he kept in his wallet, the man drove off to have a vet put her out of her misery. A few weeks later, a white cat appeared in my apt, which my cat was none too pleased about. Merle hissed & bounded six feet or so, to attack my arm
as I had reached out to absentmindedly pet this other cat, that I’d seen peripherally. He anxiously searched the apt when the ghost disappeared. On rare occasion, it appears. Merle lays his ears back & just stares. There is also a man, who will tap-tap you on the shoulder. Or blow on the back of your neck. It’s happened a couple of times to others while visiting me, but I hadn’t told them about the ghost beforehand. And often people think that I have two cats, asking about "the other one".
I lived in NW DC for the second time. Alone, in a large 3 room flat on the 2nd floor of a 3 story building, on a short 2 block street. The whole floor to myself. Heavenly. Walls over a foot thick of brick & cement plaster. Quiet. Aside from the gunshots in the street. Ahh, city life. There were a few odd things though. There was a fire escape at the back door, which was in my bedroom. Creepy. That entire wall was covered by floor to ceiling curtains & had a wardrobe up against ½ the door. You’d have to wedge yourself through if necessary.
My bedroom was at the very end of the very long L shaped hallway. I had to go through the living area, past the open kitchen counter, past the art studio & the bathroom before blindly walking into my bedroom, which had a wall of closet. Had I not been mugged at gunpoint by two men in my house in SE DC a few years before, I might not have had PTSD & none of this would have been an issue. If there were a cat or dog anything other than a plant.
And a male ghost. He was most active as I was trying to wind down from my bartender shifts. (I was already sober) Often he’d walk just a few feet down the hall. Carpet over old wood.
So if I was in bed, it sounded like he was coming in there. If I was in the living room, sounded like he was going from bedroom to studio. Either way, I would have to look over the entire place, just to make sure, right? What if either of the doors were somehow unlocked?
I still don’t sleep until 3am, sometimes dawn. But now I’m not at the end of the hall.
When I was 25, my boyfriend & I had just moved from Oakland, CA to Santa Fe, NM.
Living in a station wagon, on the back roads of the high desert while looking for a house.
We’d take a ‘spit-bath’ in the lobby bathrooms of the La Fonda Hotel, off of the square.
We got to shower proper & cook at a pal’s from time to time as well. But it totally sucked.
Break up the days, with a drive out of town, stopping to wander an abandoned building.
A favorite hobby of ours, that we’d enjoyed on our cross country road treks the last couple of years.
We found a lot of animal skulls; cat, dog, coyote, mouse & other assorted bones.
I only recently gave up the many jars worth of my collection.
I still have a few.After a month or so, we finally found a four room duplex in a culdesac.
Making fruit crate altars, using the skulls & bones that we’d found.Some of those very items made their way into my small assemblage art many years later. Oh, the young uprooted artists.
We loved hard & fought harder.Maybe it was the bad feng shui of the place; that old section of town; the hippie witch that lived there before; the many bones we brought into the house; our own angsty artist vibes? There was definitely an unease, it always felt like someone was in the next room.
(Or at the kitchen window) We would have to stop whatever it was we were doing to investigate the sounds. Maybe the cats? Sleeping. Okay then, just the ghosts, teasing the new tenants. For a year.
photo by Geoff Johnson
