Posted by Thank you for joining us… We’re going to kick off this month’s of Player Ghost Stories with one that will send a few shivers down your spine, even if you’re a skeptic! Meet Samantha, who moves into an apartment with her (at the time) best friend…
1. What is your name?
Samantha
2. Are you in a Club? If so, which one?
Ocean Sunset
3. Who’s your favorite Solitaire TriPeaks character?
Poi
4. Okay… now tell us your story…
When I was in college, I made the mistake of moving in with my best friend of 2+ years. I had a feeling in my gut it wouldn’t end well and told him as much, but he dismissed it and said we would be fine and that we’d been friends too long to have an issue break us up. I wanted to believe he was right…
When we toured our apartment, our soon-to-be landlord told us, jokingly, “so, I have to warn you – this apartment does something to people. If you come in as a couple, you end up breaking up… so just be aware of that! I’m not sure if it’s cursed or what.” As only a confident, young 20-something would do, we laughed it off and verbally assured him that we weren’t like everyone else and the “curse” wouldn’t apply to us. How wrong we were…
We signed the lease in October of 2001 and I moved into the apartment in August of 2002 before school started. My friend had decided to take the semester off from school so he wasn’t going to move into the apartment until October of that year.
A month prior to my moving into the apartment, my oldest friend and I drove to Atlanta for a girls weekend. While walking in the old Underground Atlanta mall area, a psychic grabbed my arm and told me she needed to read my fortune – that it was important. I gave her the $5 or $10 bucks and she took my hand and told me I was going to move in with a man. I told her yes, that was happening. She looked me in the eye and said “he won’t be moving in when you do” which I already knew so I smiled and said “yes, I know.” Then she just said “be careful – it won’t end up like you think.” I laughed it off with my friend and kept going about my business, not thinking about it much past that point.
My friend moved his stuff into the apartment in August and throughout that fall he would spend weekends at his mom’s house, working as a bartender, and then drive down to our apartment during the week and live with me. Since he wasn’t attending classes during this time, he was in and out a lot so I basically lived by myself.
I had many weird things happen in the apartment before and during our time living together. Here are some of the freakier ones!
Our apartment was in a large house that was split into apartment spaces. We were the top half of the house so you entered a main door, then to your right was our downstairs neighbor’s front door and in front of you would be our front door. When you opened our door, you were met with about 13 steps which led directly into our living room with the bedrooms off in the back of the living room. It was a small box shaped apartment but it was perfect (or so we thought!).
Our living room looked into the kitchen and the way our couch was set up, I could lay on it and see directly into the kitchen and outside into the back area (parking lot, not a yard) via the back screen door, which I often kept open on nice days. One day while I was napping on the couch, I woke up to see a dark shadow man with a top hat (like Abe Lincoln) walking through the closed screen door into the kitchen before disappearing. I convinced myself I must have been half asleep even though I know I wasn’t.
Later that month I would witness a black cat do the same thing – walk through the screen door, through the kitchen and disappear as it entered the living room. I witnessed the cat a few times. I told my roommate but he assured me it wasn’t anything and I was probably asleep or just waking up and I must have been confused.
Another weird moment happened in mid-September. I woke up to hear the smoke detector going off. I ran downstairs to the front door (where the smoke detector was located) and opened the door to find a small fire having been set on our front entrance way. To this day I have no idea how it started or who would have started it. Thankfully I was able to put it out with a fire extinguisher. After that I was a little more on edge and couldn’t wait for my roommate to move in officially.
The apartment had a weird overall feeling that sometimes just felt… off. As I mentioned, my roommate and I had been bes) friends for over 2 years. We spent a great day of time together and knew one another very well, or so I thought. Looking back now, I realize we both started acting differently during the time we lived there.
He was always a fun, light-hearted person but during his year in the apartment, he became very negative, dark and angry. I became very weak, nervous and anxious whenever he was around and neither of us could understand why. We fought a lot, which was something we had never done before. Every time we would fight, weird stuff would show up on my wood panel bedroom walls and ceiling. By the time he eventually moved out, I had a face of a devil, 666, hell and other things written in white, almost soapy texture on my walls and ceiling that I couldn’t erase no matter what I used. I eventually just started covering them with posters and pretending they weren’t there.
The final thing with the apartment, which still chills my friends and I to the bone, happened on the day I moved out. As I mentioned before, I was the first in and the last one to leave. My roommate moved out after a year despite our 2 year signed lease, leaving in the middle of the day when I had left to attend my grandfather’s funeral. He lived in the apartment on and off for about 1 year and 3 months. I was there the full 2 years.
On the day I moved out, I had 4-5 friends over to help me load up the cars as I prepared to move to Philadelphia after graduation. I had rented a storage unit to house some items while I figured out where my new apartment location would be, and my friends came over to help me move things into the unit. As I picked up the first two or three boxes and moved them out, everything seemed fine. When I picked up the fourth box, my friends started talking about me moving out. At that moment, the smoke detector started going off. It was at the bottom of the stairs, near the entrance to my apartment, so not near anything that could set it off. We tried prying the smoke detector off the wall – nothing worked. There was no way to pull the battery out or get it to stop. It went off for an hour and a half non-stop, to the point that my neighbors came over (from 2 houses down) to complain about the noise. We explained what was going on and they took a look at it but also couldn’t figure out how to shut it off.
I got into one of the cars to drive to the storage unit to unload our first set of boxes and 15 minutes into the one hour drive, my friend calls and says that the alarm stopped about 5 minutes after we left. I thanked God, unloaded my boxes when we arrived at the storage unit and headed back to the apartment. I entered the apartment, picked up two boxes and started down the stairs again. The minute I passed the smoke detector… you guessed it! Went off again and kept screaming until I picked up the final box. As I carried the last box down the stairs, I stopped in the middle of the staircase and said something like “you win. You broke us up. You took away the one person who meant the world to me. I’m done and I’m leaving” and as I stepped onto the landing, the smoke detector stopped and the apartment went quiet again. My friends outside, who could hear me, were screaming and freaking out at this point and I just calmly locked the door and left.
Definitely learned from that experience never to blow off a psychic OR a landlord who warns you beforehand of what is to come. And yes, I did talk to my former roommate a few years after we both moved out and the air had been cleared between us. He still swears to this day that he never did anything to the walls of my bedroom and I honestly believe him since sometimes the things would appear after he had left the apartment to get some air or go back home for a few days to cool down.
5. Would you say this experience changed your life? If so, how so?
Yes. Next time a landlord tells me something, I plan to listen! I hate that it destroyed a good friendship but was glad I got out when I did.
6. Would you want to have the experience again?
No way!
7. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Nope, I’m good!
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