Haunted Apartment

With so many stories to tell, I've had a hard time deciding where to start. I suppose the best place to start is the beginning, with stories from people who contacted me right after the Wedge article was published in 1978.

In early November '78 I got a call from a woman stockbroker in her late 20s who lived in a 1910 apartment building not far from our house in the Wedge. Over the phone she told me that she feared her apartment was haunted, and she and her roommate were moving out, enough though it meant losing several hundred dollars in rents and deposits. She invited me to the scene of the alleged haunting on the third floor of the brick building. 

               The apartment where these incidents occurred has been converted into condos.

When I arrived that November evening, it was dark and dreary outside. A couple dozen boxes crowded the entrance to the apartment, as if they couldn't wait to get out. She, her roommate, and a friend gave me a tour of the apartment, showing me the corner in her room which emitted an obnoxious stench that scrubbing and painting could not erase, and pointing out the window in the air shaft where a black cat had entered on three occasions. They showed me the shaft, and I could not see any way a cat could get up to the third floor in it, let alone get into the shaft itself below. These things did not initially scare the roommates, although they later thought there might be a connection between these and the incidents that conspired to drive them out. 

         Many 19th and early 20th century buildings had ventilation shafts to allow in light and air.

The two roommates had moved into the apartment nearly three months previous to my visit. The apartment was roomy and attractive, with hardwood floors and varnished woodwork. The roommates found it a comfortable place to live--until three weeks before my visit.

The woman came home late on a Friday night. Her roommate was still out. As was her custom, she turned out all the lights in the apartment and went to bed. Exhausted from a long day at work, she immediately fell into a deep sleep.

But an hour and a half later, around 1 a.m., she was suddenly awakened by an odd feeling that someone else was in the apartment. She immediately noticed that the light in the bathroom across the hallway was on. She called out to her roommate; there was no answer. She searched the apartment. No roommate. Nothing had been disturbed. She tested the pull chain on the bathroom light. It worked as before. She sat up for a long time, racking her brain for a reasonable explanation, but could think of none.

A week later, she and her roommate were sleeping in their respective bedrooms when click, the large portable radio by her bedside came on at 1:30 a.m. Loud music blasted forth, startling her from sleep, her heart pounding. Both roommates were so shaken by this rude awakening that, even though it was in the middle of the night, they decided to go to relatives' homes to sleep.

                                       The interior of a similar apartment in the neighborhood.

The last straw came the next day, a Sunday, when the woman was in her room listening to the Vikings game on the radio. She heard the front door being unlocked, heard the doorknob creak and the door close, followed by footsteps coming down the hall toward her room. She looked up, and seeing no one, concluded that her roommate had gone into the front bedroom.

But when she called out a greeting, there was no answer. Hoping against hope, she went from room to room. No one was there. The front door was closed and locked. All was still.

Terrified, she fled the apartment, vowing to move out with all haste and never to stay there alone until the last stick of furniture was carted away. 

Her roommate wasn't eager to risk further disturbance by remaining there, either. When they gave the apartment manager notice that they would be leaving early in the month, he asked them why they didn't like the apartment. Hesitantly, they decided to tell him about the spooky incidents. He then told them that an elderly couple had lived in the unit for many years and had passed on several years previous, adding that two other sets of tenants had also moved out of that apartment before the end of their leases. Hearing of others' premature exits from the apartment made them feel better, validating their own experiences.

The next week a moving truck came and hauled their furniture and belongings to another apartment--one that they hoped would be quieter and less nerve-wracking than the one they had just evacuated.

                                                          The front entry to the building

Exactly 43 years have passed since the young woman told me that story. Judging from the experiences of others who related stories of their ghostly experiences years ago, I'd say it's very likely that the current residents are not being harassed by unseen persons. Claims on TV shows notwithstanding, active hauntings do not continue unabated for decades--at least, so I've been told.