From sleep disturbances, the hairs standing up on the back of your neck, appliances turning on by themselves, animals acting out, and unexplained noises. This place had them all.
I never believed in ghosts or anything paranormal for a long time.
I would consider myself to be a person based on logic, rationality and facts. Strong evidence. Tangible evidence that you can see, touch and feel. Mostly black and white logic.
I admit that there is a minuscule area of grey. It’s that small little voice that says ‘What if it’s true?‘ and makes you start questioning things, usually around the time you want to sleep and are at your most vulnerable. Why doesn’t that voice make itself known at other times? You know – like when you aren’t by yourself?
Let me ask you this though, would you willingly go and live in a house that was rumoured to be haunted?
Some die hard skeptics would holler ‘yes, it wouldn’t bother me’.
However, I am going to speculate that most people would say ‘no, thanks’. Most likely due to the same little voice located in that grey area of logic. That same little voice that questions things and keeps you up at night when you are most vulnerable.
I’m neither a skeptic nor a believer. All I can say is that there were strange occurrences in this place over the two year period I lived there. Occurrences which I hope won’t be repeated anytime soon that I will share with you.
Moving day…
The property I moved into with my partner was part of an 1880s mansion that had been divided into apartments.
It was obviously a much older property, but I always thought it was pretty cool. The ceilings were very high and the decor on the ceilings was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was a Victorian-era style home. Great in summer. Cold in winter.
It was spacious and in a good location. For the most part I enjoyed living there.
There was something about the hallway…
To get to our apartment door, you needed to walk down this hallway. At the end of the hallway it had an old antique wooden staircase. It was very outdated and creaked a lot.
We would have friends come over and the first thing that they would usually say was ‘I like your place but there’s something creepy about the hallway…’
The hallway was a lot cooler than other parts of the house. It was dimly lit at the best of times and the lights would often flicker on and off for no particular reason. Or if there was a reason, I’m not an electrician and couldn’t tell you why. Faulty light?
Often late at night I would scurry in trying to find my keys to get into the apartment quickly. There was something unsettling about the hallway and stairs. It did give you that ‘hairs standing on the back of your neck’ feeling.
One friend divulged that on one occasion when they were waiting at the apartment door, it felt like someone was standing behind them, breathing down their neck.
There were unexplained noises coming from the stairs…
The landlord was quite hands on with the maintenance of the property. I regularly heard her walk up and down the stairs in the hallway. Once I wanted to ask for permission to adopt a cat. I heard someone slowly start walking up the stairs.
I opened the door to find no one there.
There were other people that lived in the property. So it wasn't unusual to hear other noises. However, it became a common scenario. You would hear someone start walking up the stairs, you'd open the door and no one was there.
I never really thought much of it. In fact, it actually became an ongoing joke between my partner and I. We considered giving the 'ghost' a nickname.
We just assumed that it was an older property and therefore hearing strange noises from time to time was the norm.
Animal instincts..?
The landlord eventually gave us permission to get a cat.
The cat settled in after a few months. He was a very confident cat. In fact, he owned the place. He loved people, was generally calm and would happily spend most of his time snoozing on the couch. He would often sit on the windowsill and other tenants would greet him as they walked into the property.
There were a couple of areas within the apartment that gave him the creeps. Call it 'cat logic' or whatever you will but there were only two areas the cat did not like.
One was on the wall near the kitchen. The other place he didn't like was the hallway...
Sometimes I would wake up and go to the bathroom (you needed to bypass the kitchen first) to find him hissing in the pitch black. I turned the light on expecting to see a moth or cockroach that he was hunting. There was nothing there but a blank white wall.
During the day, the cat would stare at this one spot on the wall (in between his 20 hour sleeping schedule of course). I could never work out why this area of the wall bothered him so much. To this day I still don't know. Do animals pick up on things that we don't?
Appliances sometimes turned on by themselves..
We had a gimmicky Homer Simpson bottle opener that was also a magnet. Not my choice. Every time it was used, the bottle opener would say: 'Alcohol! the problem and solutions to all of life's problems' in Homer's voice. Most of the time it would stay on the fridge.
It was a mild source of amusement when we had people over. I never really thought much of it. Until one day we were sitting on the couch watching TV and it went off by itself...
I walked over to the kitchen and it was on the fridge. Where we had left it. The cat was happily snoozing on the couch. Seemingly, there was no logic for why it went off by itself.
There was another time when my partner woke up to hear that the tap turned on full blast by itself in the middle of the night. He woke me up and asked if I could hear it.
I'm not a plumber...at the time there was no explanation. My partner simply turned it off and then we went back to sleep. If there was a ghost and the ghost was trying to scare us, it wasn't doing a great job.
My sleeping behaviour became a little bit paranormal
Before I go into this, I can honestly say that I've never had any sleep disorders. No history of any. I never sleep walked, never any issues with sleep with the exception of mild insomnia if I had a bit of anxiety before some big event the next day.
LISTEN: Debbie Malone is a psychic medium. Post continue after audio...
I'm usually out like a light, and sleep the full eight hours. Sometimes I'm in such a deep sleep that I might as well be dead. If the world was ending I'd still be asleep. Fire alarm? I'm asleep sorry.
One morning, my partner turned to me and asked:
'Are you alright, what was with you last night?'
I asked him what he meant.
According to him, I abruptly sat up in the middle of the night (with my eye mask still on). Kept tapping him repeatedly and pointed towards the middle of the room shouting:
'Look... it's over there!... it's crazy, it's crazy.'
I have no recollection of this at all.
There was another time where I was asleep in the bedroom while he was watching TV in the other room and I shouted 'I don't want her that close to me!' or something along those lines.
They could have been strange dreams, but since we moved out of this place a year ago, there have been no strange occurrences, no appliances switching themselves on, no taps turning on at full blast, no sleep disturbances, in fact everything seems normal.
Behind every paranormal experience, there is either a logical reason, or a hidden reason. There is no conclusive evidence that we had a ghost or that we didn't have one.
I don't have any conclusions. All I can say is that it happened.