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Story 81

Ann’s Haunted Apartment  

Many years ago, Ann lived in an old, rundown apartment on a historic avenue. She chose the apartment because it was “dirt cheap” and would allow her to put away more money for travel.

In the middle of one night, Ann rolled over in bed and her eyes partially opened. She saw a figure standing next to her bed. A beam of light from the streetlight shone in through a triangular opening in her curtains. Ann could see that the man was wearing a light blue work shirt tucked into tan corduroy pants, and he had shoulder length, wavy light brown hair. He looked like he was in his 20’s.

At the sight, Ann’s whole body froze and she was covered in goosebumps.

She kept telling herself, “You’re dreaming, you’re dreaming, this isn’t really happening.”

She peered through the slits of her eyes, not fully opening them, and said to herself, “Pretend you’re still sleeping, pretend you’re still sleeping.” She didn’t know how long she lay there in panic, waiting for the man to do something.

Eventually, she heard him walk across the creaking wooden floorboards of the room, around the foot of her bed to the other side.

Ann felt the bed go down as the man sat on the corner of the full-size mattress and she heard the bed squeak as he leaned against the brass footboard.

She thought, “Oh my God, he’s still here. He’s going to stay until I wake up!” Then she told herself, “You’re going to go to sleep. You have to be dreaming this. This isn’t happening. He would have done something by now.”

Ann said she did somehow manage to fall asleep. When she woke the next morning, she slowly peeked through her slitted eyes and didn’t see the man anywhere in her room. The door to her tiny closet was open and she could see that it was empty.

She tried to think of what she could use as a weapon. Her eyes landed on a pair of stiletto heels she had borrowed from a girlfriend for a date the previous week. She jumped out of bed, grabbed one of the pointed shoes and started racing through the apartment, ready to defend herself.

The man wasn’t there.

The deadbolt lock was still set. The door chain was on. All the windows remained closed, but since Ann was on an upper level of the building, there was no way an intruder could have accessed her apartment through them, anyway.

“This is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever had happen in my whole life!” she thought.               

She told some people at work about the experience and one woman said, “You have a ghost. My family grew up with ghosts. Just tell me whenever he makes himself known, because you’ve got one.”                                                                        

Ann worked that full Friday, then drove to a racetrack in another city where she regularly volunteered to work on weekends.

The first person she saw there was her friend Allen and she said, “I’ve got to tell you about this dream I had last night. But it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt like it really happened.” She told him the story, and when she described the man, her friend started to cry.

She said, “Allen, what’s going on?”

“You just described Daniel,” he said. His friend Daniel had died several months earlier. An aggressive cancer had killed him within a short period of time.

“You talked about his daily uniform when he was in college. Every day he had on tan corduroy pants and a blue work shirt. I don’t know if he just had that one outfit or if he had several slightly different shades, but it was always that.”

“I think that was Daniel coming back to say goodbye to you,” Allen said.

“Why would he say goodbye to me? I was an acquaintance. I didn’t really hang out with him. I just saw him here at the track. He was your friend.”

“I don’t know, Allen said. “But I think that was Daniel.”

Ann eventually ended up with a nest of mice in her kitchen wall. Every night she set eight or nine mousetraps. She had to wear earplugs at night to avoid the loud sounds of them snapping shut.

Each morning before work, she had to clear out her catch from all the traps. They were filled every single night. It was strange, because Ann had been in the apartment for over six months without seeing a single mouse and now, she was inundated with mice.

After that problem was finally taken care of, she had a new challenge.

Ann walked into the kitchen one morning to find every cabinet door and drawer wide open. The drawers were as fully extended as they could be without falling out of their niches.

Instead of freaking out, Ann went into denial. She nonchalantly walked around and shut every cabinet door and drawer, then drove to work.

She told her coworker who had grown up with ghosts, who said, “Yup, that’s your ghost. We had that when we were growing up at our farmhouse. He didn’t always open every single one. But apparently your ghost really wants you to know he’s there, so he’s not going to leave just one or two cabinets open.”

Ann would also wake up in the middle of the night and smell food. It wasn’t a lingering aroma. She would get sudden, very distinct, individual smells in sequence.

“Bam, something sickeningly sweet like syrup from a coke dispenser. Bam, a pungent spice from India. Bam, something else.” Four or five scents would come in rapid succession, and they didn’t mix with each other. Each was distinct.

Ann thought she must have a neighbor from another country who was cooking in the middle of the night, and she was smelling their spices.

The aromas kept waking her up and Ann kept telling herself it was just somebody in the building cooking. She remained in denial because she didn’t want to consider the alternative.

Then the ghost found a new way to wake Ann that was harder to dismiss. Her bed would start shaking back and forth in the middle of the night. And whenever the brass frame moved, it creaked. It kept shaking until Ann woke up.

Every time it happened, she would roll over and do her best to ignore it. After about five repetitions, the ghost gave up.      

Ann went on a trip and was gone for four or five days.

When she returned to her apartment, everything intensified. The shaking of the bed, the smells, several things happened to Ann every single night. She told her coworker about it when she got back to work.

The woman said, “Oh, you pissed him off. You need to talk to him. He didn’t know where you were, and he wanted your company.” She said, “In the future, as you’re packing, talk to him. Tell him where you’re going and when you’ll be back.”

Ann’s aunt died abruptly of a brain aneurism. Her dad told her, “My eldest sibling has passed away. I need to drive to Pennsylvania for her funeral. I want you to come with me. I can’t do this without you.”

Ann agreed. On their way to Pennsylvania, in the car for 19 hours, she told her father about her experiences in the apartment. Her dad didn’t really respond. So, Ann thought he didn’t believe her but didn’t want to come right out and say she was crazy.

At the viewing, Ann went to where her aunt lay in the casket, and silently said to the dead woman, “Aunt Daisy, if your spirit is still around, would you please come to my apartment and help this young man to the other side. I think he’s lost. And he’s scaring me badly. I’ve told him all about you, that you raised three boys, and you’re so fun-loving.”

While in Pennsylvania, Ann and her dad went to dinner with his brother and wife.  Her father said, “Ann, tell them about the ghost you have in your apartment.” She thought he was setting her up for the others to think she was nuts.

Then her aunt spoke up. “I totally believe you because I’ve been in a house with a ghost. My first husband and I…” That led to a big discussion.

After the trip, when Ann returned to her apartment, her father followed her through the door, carrying her suitcases. She headed straight to her bedroom with the things she’d been carrying and put them on the bed. Ann turned around, thinking her dad would have followed her, but he hadn’t. She went back to the living room, and he was still standing there with the suitcases, white-faced.

“Dad, are you okay?”

“It’s gone. Don’t you feel it? It’s not here anymore.”

Then he proceeded to tell Ann that he had been seeing things in her apartment, but he never told her because he figured it would just make things worse for her.

After that, Ann never had another paranormal experience in the apartment.           

Her aunt gave her that gift from the grave.

Story 80

Close Cat

Chelsea used to have a cat named Fizzgig. She described him as a very playful dog-like cat.     

Chelsea had a reptile room and every time she washed the animals’ dishes in the bathroom, her cat would wait outside the door to jump on her when she left the room. He would startle her and make her scream, then race down the hall and leap over the gate they had put up to keep the dogs out of the reptile area.          

Fizzgig would wait on the other side of the gate and do charming little rolling chirpy calls at Chelsea.         

He eventually passed away from severe kidney failure at only five years old.          

About a year later, Chelsea was washing reptile dishes in the sink as usual. She turned, and Fizzgig jump-scared her like he had before he died. She actually saw him.          

“I startled, because he looked like he was alive. He looked just like a normal cat. And he raced down the hall and jumped the gate.” She said she even heard him bounce off the gate a little like he used to do with his back foot.        

It could not have been another cat, because there were no living cats in the house anymore.         

Chelsea said it was hilarious getting jump-scared by a ghost cat.                 

Her dad also had experiences with Fizzgig. When alive, the cat used to lay in front of the fireplace, “twisted up really goofy on his back. We would say he looked broken.”        

For many weeks after Fizzgig died, when Chelsea’s stepdad went by the fireplace where his office was, he would see Fizzgig lying in front of the fireplace, curled up like he used to do. Her dad thought it was crazy that he was still seeing the deceased cat.

Story 79

Raven the Cat  

Chelsea also had a black cat named Raven that passed away ten years ago. That cat didn’t like to be seen, so “We used to call her my imaginary cat because she hid from everybody except for me at midnight. Then she’d come out and cuddle with me.”           

Raven used to travel around the house by slinking very close to the walls.          

About two weeks after the incident with the Fizzgig ghost, while Chelsea was walking through the house, she saw a little black cat slinking along the side of the wall down to the basement, where Raven always used to hide during the daytime.          

Chelsea spoke up, “Raven, I can see you,” which was something she used to tell the cat when she was alive, too. It amused her.         

Raven’s slinking never made her as invisible as she thought.

Story 76

Ari’s Paranormal Adventures

In 2014, Ari was an assistant manager at a tanning salon near a college campus. Over spring break, a girl went missing. Ari kept seeing posters plastered around the area showing the young woman’s face, desperately seeking leads to her disappearance.

One night, Ari went to bed with her boyfriend (now husband) and woke up at 2 am from a disturbing dream. In it, she had been sitting with the missing girl under a bridge, where they stared into each other’s eyes. The missing girl’s unblinking, dead stare was unnerving. Her mouth kept moving over and over but there was no sound. Ari could only hear what the girl said inside her head. Again and again, she chanted, “Underneath, underneath, underneath.”

Ari told her boyfriend (J) about the upsetting dream and went back to sleep. She then had the exact same dream several times in a row.

It wouldn’t let her be.

When she went to work the next morning, the salon manager said, “Did you hear about the missing girl?”

They had found her dead body under a bridge that led to campus. Ari called her boyfriend and said, “You are never going to believe this!”

At that time, Ari and her boyfriend were living in his grandfather’s house, in which the old man had passed away. It was located near the college campus, so it was a convenient place for family members to stay when attending school.

The house had a wonky layout. You had to go through some bedrooms to get to others. Lots of odd things happened there, but nothing malicious. When things felt off, Ari would sage the house to cleanse it.

One day while saging, Ari headed into the basement, which she said had just “one lightbulb, like in a horror movie.” Suddenly a loud bang on the ancient “octopus” furnace made her jump. The booming sound echoed eerily through the empty basement. She said “nope,” and headed back upstairs.

The couple had been warned not to touch the furnace, since it had asbestos. But apparently no one had told the resident ghost.

Once, Ari and J heard the distinctive sound of a tennis ball bouncing in a room upstairs. J was downstairs and Ari was upstairs when it happened and no one else was in the house. They searched for the ball but couldn’t find it anywhere.

A half-done shower they couldn’t use was near the spot where J’s grandpa had passed away. During the Superbowl one year, they heard the shower head fall off and hit the tub underneath with a loud smack. Was grandpa letting them know he was there, enjoying the football game with them?

After about a year, the couple decided to move in with J’s grandma to help her out.

Eventually they married and now reside in a new house. But they still have odd things happening. In January, unexplained footsteps in the loft area kept Ari and her husband awake.

In February, they heard knocking on their bedroom door in the middle of the night. Then at 4:40 am one morning, Ari heard seven knocks elsewhere in the house.

At 3 am in March, Ari was awakened by a voice in her head that said, “Lily is dead,” Panicked, she went to grab her phone off the charger. But it wasn’t where she had placed it before bed. She and J looked all over the room and ensuite bathroom, without success.

Eventually they found the phone downstairs, on a small couch that Ari had not even been near the night before. Her husband had sat there watching TV before bed and had not seen the phone then, either.

Fortunately, Lily the cat was fine (not dead)!

At 3:35 am in June, Ari heard someone walking around the house for ten minutes before finally going downstairs to check on the noise. She found nothing.

Ari researched the land but found no reason for it to be haunted.

Of course, ghosts can follow you home from elsewhere…

Story 77

Close Grandma

Chelsea had a very close relationship with her grandmother, who mostly raised her from the time she was born until she was twelve years old. She would often tell Chelsea, “I’m not raising you to replace me. But you are my little me.”

Shortly before the old woman passed away, Chelsea requested, “Grandma, please come visit me.”           

At her grandmother’s funeral, there was a photo of her in her thirties that Chelsea wanted more than anything. She remembered as a child thinking “God, she’s so gorgeous. She’s so beautiful.” The photo preserved that cherished memory.           

However, Chelsea’s aunt did not want her to have the picture, even though she knew her niece desperately wanted it.           

So, just before the funeral ended, Chelsea snuck over, grabbed the photo and hid it under her skirt.          

One evening, a couple of months later, when Chelsea was living in her grandmother’s former home, she and her cat lay on the bed in her grandma’s old bedroom. All of a sudden, Chelsea said it felt like the entire room was electrified. Every hair on her body stood up.           

“It was terrifying, to be honest.”          

Chelsea looked into the corner by her grandmother’s dresser, where she had placed her treasured photo from the funeral. She was stunned to see her grandma, standing next to it, looking at her.          

“I think it was probably one of the most amazing but overwhelming experiences,” she said.                  

Chelsea believes that her grandmother realized she was scaring her granddaughter, because she began to slowly fade away.           

But the remarkable memory of her visit remains.

Story 78

Halloween Ghost Cat

One Halloween, I went downstairs a little after 6 am. It was still dark out, so I asked Alexa to turn on our spooky string lights in the living room. Our cat Lily did not greet me as usual. I thought she must still be in bed upstairs lying against my husband’s legs, or asleep in the rocking chair in the family room.

Then I heard a cat run loudly up our old wooden staircase. I remembered I had not shut the bedroom door when I got out of bed. So, Lily must be heading to the bedroom to rouse whoever was still asleep—my poor husband.

I rushed upstairs to stop her. I called her name quietly but didn’t hear her respond. She was not in the bedroom, and I didn’t see her anywhere on the second floor.

Confused, I went back downstairs. I started calling her name and heard faint meowing. But she didn’t come to me. Then a horrible thought occurred. Could she be out in our three-season porch?

I opened the locked French doors and there she was. She must have slipped in the porch when my husband took out the garbage the previous night (after I was in bed). And he didn’t notice she was not around after that.  

I asked Alexa for the temperature. It was 38 degrees. Luckily, the enclosed porch doesn’t usually get as cold as outdoors, and Lily has long fur. I held her close to warm her.

So, what caused the loud, distinctive sound of a cat running up our wooden staircase? Since we had no other living cats, I realized it must have been a ghost cat, trying to alert me to Lily’s predicament.

It was only after I heard that noise that I went to look for Lily. Before that, I had assumed she was asleep in another room. (She may indeed have been asleep in the porch, since she only started meowing after I called her name.) It would probably have taken quite a while for me to discover her plight without the ghostly ruckus.

I suspected that the spirit of one of our deceased cats that had come back to help rescue Lily. Cuzzy had visited me and my husband separately after she had died years earlier, to let us know she was okay.* She might have made a return trip to aid our current cat—especially since I suspected she and our other departed cat Nightshade had a hand—or paw—in bringing Lily to us.

*The story is on pages 62-63 of my book, Collecting Spirits: Life with Ghosts, Guardians & Guides.”

Story 75

Rattled

After their parents separated, Eric and his two young siblings took turns staying overnight with their dad at his apartment.

One evening, when it was Eric’s special time with his dad, they sat in the living room watching TV. Suddenly the door to the apartment started to rattle. The doorknob kept jiggling and rattling until Eric’s Dad got up and looked through the peephole. He didn’t see anyone.

He yanked the door open and looked all around. The knob continued to shake and rattle even as he did that. But there was no one in sight.

“That was crazy!” Eric told me.

Although the kids didn’t know it at the time, that was not the only odd thing that happened at their dad’s apartment.   

One morning, when he got up and went into the kitchen, Eric’s dad found all his cupboard doors open, even though they had been shut the night before This happened repeatedly during the year that he lived in the apartment.

Perhaps the most disturbing incident occurred when Eric’s dad was all alone, enjoying a warm, relaxing bath. He was suddenly shocked by the touch of a freezing cold hand on his back. He quickly turned around—and saw no one.

When he walked through the nearby hallway, he would sometimes encounter inexplicable cold spots.

He swears that there was something in that apartment.

However, he didn’t want his young children to be frightened, so he didn’t tell them about the paranormal activity until they were older—and he had left that haunted place.

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Story 74

A Touch of the Paranormal

‍There is a lot of history in Turner Hall. And at least one ghost.

The original hall was built by the German Turners* of New Ulm in the 1850’s, burnt down during the Dakota Conflict in the 1860s, was rebuilt in 1866, added onto in 1873, renovated in 1900 and partially burned again in 1952.

‍The restored Hall remains a mainstay of the town. It used to be exclusive to members but is now open to the public. And its famed rathskeller in the basement is known as the oldest bar in the state.

‍That underground level is where Barbara’s story takes place.

‍She got a job working in the basement kitchen back in 2008. The woman who hired her said, “Within the first two weeks, you can expect a welcome from one of the Turner Hall ghosts. Don’t be alarmed. They’re friendly ghosts. It’s a way of being welcomed, not something startling.”

‍That conversation was rather surprising to Barbara, if not startling.

‍Shortly after she began her new job, Barbara was working in the kitchen alone. The only other employee present was the bartender in the next room.

‍Suddenly, Barbara felt a tap on her shoulder. Surprised, she turned around and saw…nothing. “Hey, is anyone there?” she called out. No answer.

‍Barbara might have felt frightened, but she remembered the alert given when she took the job. She realized this was her welcome from the ghost. The tap had been gentle, not aggressive. Instead of being scared, she felt safe and welcome. The ghost was indicating they had seen her and she was now accepted as a part of the place.

‍Barbara said, “It was a really cool experience.”

‍But it happened only once. The ghost quietly welcomes people but does not harass them repeatedly.

‍Employees at Turner Hall regularly ask new people who start working there if they have been told about the ghost. Forewarned is forearmed. No need for fear.

‍Interestingly, Barbara said that she had never heard of volunteers at the Hall having any ghostly encounters. Only employees.

‍However, when people invite paranormal activity at the Hall, it may happen. A friend of hers and other people who attended such an event heard a ghostly whisper “Over here!”  

‍And when out-of-towners put a flashlight on a table, inviting ghosts to turn it on, it instantly lit up. They couldn’t believe it. So, they asked the ghosts to turn it on again. Same result. Barbara’s friend jokingly credited a former customer who had passed away.

‍Both of these occurrences happened near the kitchen where Barbara had her encounter.

‍Apparently, the Turner Hall ghosts prefer the basement. Or maybe they love that German beer has been raising spirits there for over 150 years.

*In the nineteenth century, Turners created German-American organizations that promoted physical education (especially gymnastics), and provided social, political and cultural opportunities for German immigrants.

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Story 73

Her Father’s Music Box

When her oldest son was little, Dee had a music box that was part of a wine decanter set. The wine went in the middle and there were wooden cups.

She was scolding her son for getting into something, and all of a sudden, the music box started playing on its own.

Dee thought, “Oh…kay.” She felt it was her dad, because of what had happened at an earlier time.

A beautiful wooden music box that had belonged to her great grandmother had sat in her aunt’s linen closet for years because it was broken. Finally, Dee’s dad gave it to her, even though it wasn’t functioning.

Shortly after he passed away, it started playing on its own, despite not having worked for decades. It was the perfect sign from her beloved father, who had given her the heirloom passed down through his family.

Dee said, “Now it’s not working again because someone over-torqued it, probably one of the grandchildren.”

She’s waiting for her dad to come back and fix it for her.

Again.

A pair of parental paranormal stories from Dee shows that it’s not always what you see that matters. All of your five senses can reveal signs from the other side. So, pay attention.

Story 72

Her Mother’s Lamps

Dee’s mother was Italian and a very strong woman. Dee said she was her role model, and that’s where she got her own strength and character.

A lot of furnishings in Dee’s house came from her mother, “So she surrounds me and I talk to her all the time,” said Dee.

When her mother passed away, Dee inherited some money, so she decided to buy a new couch. She still has it, because it was hardly used when her children were growing up, sitting in the living room that was rarely entered (except on Christmas).

Dee’s friend Mary is a decorator and came over to help her when Dee moved into a new home. They put the couch in the living room and placed tables on each side.

However, Mary was not in love with Dee’s table lamps. She said, “Dee, you must have different lamps that we can put in here.”

“Well, I have these lamps that were up in the bedroom that my mother always told me I needed to put in the living room. They were hers.”

When she showed the lamps to Mary, the decorator declared that they were perfect for the living room. So, they were moved there and everything was soon arranged.

When Dee came down the next morning, no one was in the house. Everyone had left. But there was a strong scent of her mother’s signature perfume L’Air Du Temps, and the distinctive smell of Ben Gay, which her mother had used to treat her arthritis.

Although she didn’t see or hear her mother, Dee knew she was there. She felt her mother saying, “See, I told you I was right!” Her mother had wanted her lamps in a prominent place, not hidden away in a bedroom.

When Dee is making Italian food, especially the meatballs, sometimes as she looks down, she thinks, “Are these my hands, or are they my mother’s hands shaping this?”

She said, “I think that connection never goes away. It gives you great peace.”