Your True Tales
March 2004 – Page 4

Haunted Apartment
by Angela

About six years ago, my two children, my dad and I moved into apartments in Anaheim, California that were being refurbished from the original apartments that were previously boarded up. We lived in this apartment for approximately four years before we decided to get out. For the first two years, nothing out of the ordinary happened until my dad moved out, then curiously things started to get interesting.

The first thing I ever noticed was that when I took over my dad's bedroom, the smoke detector in that room started beeping because the batteries had died and it made this constant annoying beeping sound. So wanting to change the battery, I took a look at it but I couldn't figure out how to take it down. It looked like I had to unscrew it or something but I didn't have any tools with me, so I called my dad for help. My dad told me that the smoke detector is very hard to take apart because he had difficulty with it, so the next time he comes to visit he will help me with it. Since he is living in Las Vegas I knew I had to wait a while, and in the meantime I had to listen to the annoying beeps it made. Strangely enough, a few days later after returning home around 1:30 a.m. from working the night shift I noticed the apartment was very quiet. It took me a few seconds to realize that I heard no annoying beeping sounds. I looked up at the place where my smoke detector should be, and to my amazement it had disappeared. No one had any clue as to where it went or who took it down. Even though we were all puzzled by this, we all started searching for it, and finally my son found it - stuffed among some old clothes I had put away in the kitchen closet. Sometime shortly after, I was getting ready for bed and I distinctly heard footsteps, like someone walking across the kitchen floor right outside by bedroom door. Thinking I woke up one of my kids, I called out to them, but I got no response back. Nobody was there.

Since I worked the night shift, I didn't experience as much as my kids and my friend did, and I would get phone calls at work from them telling me about the strange goings on. Like this one time I got a strange phone call from my kids telling me something which sounded really unbelievable, but because I was busy I told them to tell me when I got home. My daughter started off telling me that while they were watching TV they both heard a loud bang, like something hit the cupboard doors in the kitchen. At first they said they just ignored it until it happened again. My daughter told my son to find out what was going on because she found herself not being able to get off of the couch. She said she felt cold and hot at the same time and she felt like she became paralyzed. Then my son went on to explain to me that when he got to the kitchen he said he saw - which believe me sounded very unbelievable - his scooter twirling around all by itself in the middle of the kitchen floor on its back wheel. He went on to say that when he reached out to grab the scooter, it stopped twirling. I must say, I was kind of skeptical about this story, but I could see it on their face that they were genuinely scared and puzzled by the whole thing.

This one year, a green little budgie parakeet, which we named it Limon, flew into our apartment. Not knowing whose it was, we decided to keep it. A few months later, my daughter, who kept it in her bedroom, told me that she had the bird out of its cage singing happily to itself by the window. She said that she just left her room for a few minutes to go to the kitchen when all of a sudden the bird started screeching loudly. Upon hearing this she quickly ran to her room to find the bird in a messy state like it had been in an awful fight with somebody except nobody was there. A lot of the bird's feathers on its back had been plucked out, which my daughter pointed out that she couldn't find those feathers anywhere in her room. She also noticed that she couldn't walk or stand on her left leg for a long time after that. My daughter did say that even though she saw nobody in her room she said she did feel like someone was watching her.

Another night while I was working, my kids told me that they were all outside playing with their friends when upon returning back to the apartment for unknown reason my son decided to look in the window before entering. He said that even though it was somewhat dark in side he noticed a shadow like figure move across my bedroom doorway. He said he called to his sister and friends to come and see if they saw what he was seeing. Guessing that they did because right after looking in they all started running down the stairs yelling back to them saying that the place is haunted and that they saw someone in there. But as soon as my kids turned on the lights when entering it had disappeared. Right after this happened, I asked all the kids what happened and they all said the same thing about seeing a dark figure walking where my bedroom door was at.

This other night I came home from work to find my friend and my daughter up and we started talking about all the strange incidents that were going on the apartment when all of a sudden we heard a noise coming from the kitchen. All of us looked in the same direction but didn't see anything out of the ordinary except for a few remote control cars left by my son one the kitchen floor. Ignoring it, we went back to talking again when we heard the same noise again. This time we all saw the same thing, one of my son's remote control cars was mysteriously moving back and forth on the kitchen floor. Even though we were all in shocked at seeing this, my daughter decided to get up to try to find out why. When she reached the car, it started hitting her foot, so she picked it up only to find that the car wasn't even on. My daughter found batteries in it, but my son told me that the batteries were old and they didn't even work, and he told us that he lost all the remotes to all of his cars.

By this time we were all pretty unnerved by everything going on that we decided it was best to move, and so we decided to move in with my dad in Las Vegas where we reside now for the past two years. But sometime just before we moved, my son told me that he actually saw a ghost. He said that while my daughter was on the computer, he stood right next to her facing the kitchen which also faced my bedroom door. He said that while he was standing there he just happened to look up and saw a ghostly figure of a young man wearing a white or light colored shirt with dark pants and he said he could see right through him. My son said that when they came eye to eye with each other he had a surprised look oh his face and ran off very quickly toward where my bathroom was never to come across him again.

I can't remember when all these strange incidents took place or what order they came in but just before I end this I just want to share a few more things.

Like this one time I had just got out of the shower to dry myself when I noticed these strange marks on my upper arm area where my biceps and shoulder meet. I looked at my arm and I saw these red looking finger marks like someone had grabbed me very tightly. Hearing that my friend was home I ran to her showing her the markings also agreeing that they looked like finger marks. Right after I showed her the marks decided to disappear. Also my daughter told me that while I was at work they would keep my bedroom door closed sometimes and she said that whenever she kept my door closed she would hear rustling noises like someone was going through my things or papers but my daughter was too scared to look at what was going on. There was other things like my clock alarm would hardly ever go off when I set it. They told me in one of our conversations that they kept hearing their names being called but the voices sounded like me or my dad when he came to visit. Which I did notice that they would come to me lots of times and ask if they called for them but I hadn't. My dad also told me that they asked him as well.

My daughter also told me of this other time while my dad was visiting and I was at work, that when she finished cleaning her room she decided to watch TV. She just happened to turn around and to her surprise noticed her little boom box was upside down which was sitting on top of her bigger boom box. Which my dad went on to tell that she came to him scared looking and asked him if he had been in her room with his reply being no, which she went on to explain what happened. Also, this other time me and my kids were all in my bedroom watching TV when my son said to me, "Do you hear that?" Not knowing what he meant, I told him no and then I heard faint music coming from another room. So we all decided to get up to investigate to find out where it was coming from. When we all started searching my daughter then yelled to us to come to her bedroom to find that somehow her radio had been turned on and her CD was playing. I asked her if she had an timer on it that would turn it on, but she said that the radio didn't have a timer; in fact it didn't have anything that would cause it to turn on by itself.

Other little things happened, but I would be at this all day if I mentioned everything. But I just want to mention one more thing before I end this in that my kids told me that they both had sent the same ghost but on different occasions. They described him as being an old man wearing a top hat and said he walked with a cane.

I did happen to come across a previous renter before these apartments were bordered up. He told me that this area was full of gangs and people using drugs. He said that a few people died in the area from drug dealings. He also happened to mention that where my bedroom was used to be a big open gap between the building where I lived and the building next door where he said that somebody had died. He said that where the kitchen was there was a window overlooking the next building over so I guess while they were refurbishing the buildings they put in an extra bedroom connecting the buildings together.

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