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Friday, May 1, 2009

A Ghost Story


Since joining Facebook, I've been reunited with a dear friend from high school. We have been talking about haunted things as of late. Actually, Pam has been joining a bunch of cool groups and pages that I didn't know about and so it has led to the discussion of the paranormal.

Pam and I were also college roommates for the first semester at Kent State many years ago. I left Kent after the first semester and went to art school the following year. It was at the Art Centre Apartments that I first experienced the paranormal. Needless to say, when you experience something like this, you tend to be fascinated with the paranormal from then on. So, here is my first ghost story(Funny, it has been twenty years but I can remember it like it was yesterday!)

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I attended the Center for Creative Studies - College of Art and Design (now called the College of Creative Studies) in Detroit, Michigan in the Fall of 1988. The school's student housing was in a building dubbed the Art Centre Apartments and much of the building's original charm was preserved for the art students who now resided in it. The building was built in 1920 and was built as permanent residences. It was a lovely building with beautiful moldings and high ceilings. The not always reliable passenger elevators were wood paneled and had brass handrails. We lived in apartment #104 in the back tower and had pet cockroaches the size of small mice. Our apartment consisted of a large vestibule, large living room, dining room, two bedrooms, two baths and a small kitchen.

One night, two of my roommates, Lysandra and Danette, and I were sitting around the living room talking. It was close to Halloween, I'm sure, because the topic turned to the old building we lived in being haunted. I had told them of a weird happening in our apartment earlier that day. I had been in the kitchen fixing something to eat and saw a woman wearing a red dress walk through the dining room. I only saw her peripherally but greeted her and told her I'd be right with her. We always kept out front door unlocked during the day when one of us was home so I assumed it was one of Jeannie's friends(our third roommate, since she was never there it would explain why I didn't recognize this girl) As soon as I finished in the kitchen, I walked out into the dining room to find it empty. The windows were all locked and when I checked the front door, it too was locked. I was a wee bit confused by this because I knew I saw someone. Danette, was fascinated by the story. Lysandra was a bit freaked out. In a way, Danette and I were being rotten because Lysandra was a God fearing woman and didn't even want to think about evil ghosts let alone talk about such things. Danette and I were teasing saying we wouldn't mind it if they wanted to help around the house, a little dusting would be nice. The conversation ended shortly after that. We spooked Lysandra enough that she wanted to go stay in a neighbor's apartment. Danette and I shared a bedroom and Lysandra and Jeannie shared the other bedroom. We know we spooked her pretty bad because she loved having the room to herself but this time we couldn't keep her in the apartment.

Well that night, Danette and I retired to our room and continued talking while laying in our respective twin beds parallel to each other on opposite sides of the room. We had a window at our heads between our beds. Danette turned off her reading lamp. The street lamp outside our window continued to shine ambient lighting into our room and we tried to go to sleep.It felt like we had been laying there for hours, tossing and turning, in the dark we found that we spooked ourselves too! Suddenly, Danette yells out my name and clicks on her light. Being awake still, I sat straight up and nearly jumped out of my skin. She had seen a man in a black suit standing between us at the foot of our beds. She had tried to say my name for what felt like 5 minutes, she recounted. We both ended up in my twin bed that night, we figured we were safer together than having that huge space between us.

The next day we sat at the dining room table and discussed what had transpired the night before. We had no intention of telling Lysandra as she was already spooked. When Lysandra came in and sat down with us, we changed the topic. Lysandra was a dark-complected black girl. Generally, this wouldn't be an aspect of a person that would matter but in this instance it is an important detail. Danette sat with her back to the living room, I was on the side of the table that had an obstructed view of the living room and Lysandra had a clear and full view of it. Suddenly, Lysandra became gray, literally gray. Her mouth dropped open, her eyes were huge and she was ashen. Danette and my eyes darted towards each other, we both knew that she had seen something, especially since we experienced what we had. I calmly asked her what was wrong. She finally shared that she had seen something in the living room. Slowly I pryed out the full story.

As we sat there, she saw a man out of the corner of her eye, she turned and saw him walk from her bedroom across the living room and through the wall into Danette's and my room. I discertained though a series of non-leading questions that he was dressed in period clothing, a black suit to be exact. Danette and I were talking to each other through darting looks and raised eyebrows. We knew we had to tell her what we had experienced. Long story short, we lost our roommate for another night and Danette and I slept with the light on.

We decided that since we sort of asked them to show themselves, maybe we could ask them to not do so any longer, at least not at night. It seemed to work, while I, myself, did see a blur of the man in a mirror behind me as I got ready for class one day a week or two after that, we never saw them again. Of course, we did move out of that apartment at the end of the semester....

1 comment:

Lin said...

OOOOOhhh Creepy!!!