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The ghost in Kate’s old apartment. |
The ghost in Kate’s old apartment.
When I was little, I loved the holidays because we would go to my Grandmothers house where all of the family would get together. Being essentially an only child, it was a real pleasure to be around all of my cousins; sort of like a big slumber party that lasted several days. This was in a very old and very small town that had seen its better days and was slowly drying up. This meant lots of old empty houses and buildings we could (without our parents knowledge) explore and play in. At this time in the world, especially in a small town, nobody worried about letting their 9 year old or older kids run around freely without supervision. One of our favorite games was a sort of hide-n-seek where we would set out boundaries and scatter. The hunters would seek the hunted in and around these old buildings. This one night I, after some serious circumnavigation, snuck into a garage apartment over the garage of my Granny's next door neighbor. This was a perfect place because nearly everyone except me was totally terrified of Kate. Kate was a strange sort, (God she would have loved this web site!) and because of her extreme uniqueness many thought she was a witch. (I suspect now that they were correct, just not in the way they thought.) I carefully crept up the rickety old outside stairs, careful to hug the wall so my weight wouldn't pull them away from it and dump me. Once inside I sat on the dusty floor in the corner of the tiny square living room. I was facing the only window in the room and I was pulled back into the deep shadows knowing that if someone came in the room, they would look out the window and be night blinded by a street light that was just outside. There was a door to my right and another one on the other end of the room to the right of the window. I had been careful when I entered to not look out and get hit by the street light. I knew that even if someone came in the room, if they didn't have their head down as I had, they would do so and I would be totally invisible in my dark corner. The shadow the light threw across the room left three corners in darkness. One corner, the one to my right with the door in it was in direct line with the light and well lit. I sat there in my corner secure from discovery and congratulating myself on my sneakiness. As with most kids though after a bit I started getting bored and began looking around, not so worried now about my night vision. The room I was in was small and totally bare as were all of the three rooms. There was in the corner directly across from me a deeper darkness and the longer I looked at it the more certain I became that there was something in that corner. I don't mean something bad, just something. I thought maybe the wall paper had pulled away from the wall and was hanging down. Then it moved!!! I was sure that it had to be one of my cousins who had, had the same idea and just beat me to the place. I wondered why he hadn't said something when I came in and thought maybe I had been so quiet he hadn't seen me. In the darkness I grinned at the possibility of scaring the bejaggers out of him. I watched as he moved just a little and then got still again. It was so delicious sitting there in the dark, sure he had no idea I was there. After a couple more minutes he started moving again and I decided it was time to scare him. He moved to the edge of the window when I softly, so as not to alert any "hunters" that might be near, said "BOO!" He didn't jump, he didn't even twitch. I said to him, "I see you." but he ignored me. I was a little annoyed that my fright had flopped so ingloriously and pouted a little bit before I got curious as to which cousin I was sharing my hiding hole with so I spoke up a little louder and asked. This still got no response. I was beginning to vacillate back and forth a little between annoyance and the first tremors of nervousness. Then he moved across in front of the well lit window. I knew immediately that it was most certainly NOT one of my cousins. From the back in the silhouetting light I saw that it appeared to be a man dressed in an old brown suit. He turned and looked in my direction but the light was such that I couldn't see his face. He then, without a word, went through the door on that end of the room catty-corner away from me. I listened as hard as I could and sat there frozen waiting for him to come out. After what seemed like forever I decided I had to go and look so I crept across that room and peeked into the room on the other side of the door. It was black in there but I could see enough to tell two things, one it was a storage room only about six feet wide and ten feet deep, and two it was empty. I struck a match(Yes, I carried matches when I was a kid, and a pocket knife too.) to better see, thinking there had to be another door or something, but the closet (or what ever it was) was bare. I know that I saw him. I know I didn't fall asleep and dream it! I got out of there pretty quick after this and as soon as we were all gathered together again, I asked my cousins if any of them had been up there. They all not only denied they had been there, but as I expected they were so scared of Kate that the didn't really believe that I had been either. They wouldn't even cut across her back yard.
I liked Kate and when we would go to see my Granny and there weren't any of my cousins to play with I would go over and see her. She told neat stories and was really very sweet in a weirdly gruff sort of way. You see Kate was a woman ahead of her times. She would now be a liberated woman, but back in the 1930s and 40s a woman that wanted no man telling her what to do was ostracized by society. By the time I knew Kate she was probably 60 years old or so. Even in the 1960s a cigar smoking woman who wore Khakis and men's white work shirts as her habitual uniform was considdered pretty strange. Kate abhorred dresses and refused to wear one. She was surprisingly enough, very well educated, with a degree at a time when few women were educated. She spent her life treasure hunting all over the US and had some wild tales to tell. I used to have a bunch of treasure hunter magazines that she had given me that had write ups in them about her "digs". Her father had been a lawyer and judge and had left her comfortably well off financially.
I asked her one time about the old apartment over the garage and she looked sad. The house she lived in had been her Fathers. He had built the apartment for her younger brother. I had never heard anything about Kate having any siblings and as kids do, asked about him. It seems that her Mother had died bearing her brother. It was a dry birth and it left her dead and the baby damaged. He was retarded and very slow and ill suited to deal with society. He had been raised by his Mammy(I come from the old south and I had a Mammy when I was little too.) and stayed with her more than at home until she died when he was 16. That was when the Apartment had been built for him. He just sat up there looking out the window for the next ten or twelve years. He was cared for by hired help, relatives of his Mammy, and was finally found dead sitting there when he was a little less than thirty. He never spoke and never really understood most of what was said to him.
Did I see his spirit? Or was it just sort of an imprint, made on the room where he spent his every waking hour for a decade? I never was one to hallucinate or imagine things like this. This was my second brush with the unexplained and I think that it and the stories that Kate told me were the seeds of my lifetime fascination with things a little off of center.
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| Alias | Date | Reply |
| donno |
3/2/2005 7:22:00 PM |
This was a fascinating story, I read every word. how sad, about the ending and the poor lost soul, it knows not where to go or for whom to call out too for help. Ty for choosing Usm. |
| Ezekiel_Rage |
3/3/2005 7:52:00 AM |
IT seems as though his spirit may have been visiting. I would be interested in closer investigation of the appartment but if you did not get any bad "vibes" so it's safe to assume that there were no bad effects of his death... |
| HeavensLilSin |
4/12/2005 1:30:00 AM |
That would have scared the heck outta me!! For some reason the thought of seeing an apparition frightens me, even though Ghosts interest me greatly. It's sad that her mom died and her brother was like that. Perhaps now he able to be free from the problems her had in life. You are braver than I am though!! ~*HeavensLilSin*~ |
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