The Menacing Presence

A couple's ideal apartment becomes a paranormal zone of torment

My husband Bill and I used to live in a very nice one-bedroom apartment in Seattle. We moved there because we thought it was a good area of town, the apartment was newly renovated and we thought we were "upgrading." We were very excited, and at that time we were planning to get married. It was around the first week of October 2004 when we moved in and got married a couple weeks later.

I was a housewife and spent most of my time tending to that nice apartment. I loved it, but I felt that something was not quite right.

One afternoon, a couple of days after we first moved in, I was sitting at the edge of our bed folding clothes. The bedroom door was ajar. When I looked up, I noticed something move away from the door, very fast. It looked like the top of someone's head, and was a gray color. I did a double-take. There was nothing there. It was so fast I was not sure if I really saw anything, but it felt like someone had been watching me. I shrugged it off and just went on with my chores.

That feeling of being watched intensified day by day.

Bill would get home from work around 10 p.m., and I always had dinner prepared for him. I had been feeling uneasy for the first two or three weeks since that we lived there, so one night during dinner I confessed to Bill that I felt our apartment was haunted. I told him I waited two or three weeks before I told him because I did not want him to think I was crazy. To my surprise he replied, "No, I do not think you are crazy. I felt it too." Then he explained that from the first time he set foot in the apartment he felt a nameless "resistance" to us, but kept quiet about it because I seemed to really like the place.

Shadows and light

After that conversation, the "thing" started to get really bold. Bill and I would see shadows walking around the apartment. There was an apparition of an old man having coffee. Bill had been touched on the shoulder by something, but when he turned around there was no one. We have a cat named Cooper, and he would act like he was following someone, then run away, begging for us to go after it.

I was getting really scared and thought I was losing my mind. We started fighting incessantly, and I just felt I was going to be put away.

I never brought up the subject of moving, and neither did Bill, because we had just moved in and it would be a waste of money to move again. After all, this was a really great-looking apartment and in a very convenient location.

But I was constantly asking Bill what those things were in the apartment. I say "things" because there were multiple entities there that we have seen. I have seen an orb, and we both have seen an reddish-orange entity in the form of a man go into our kitchen. Bill saw a face in the kitchen window, and I have seen shadows varying in height from three to eight feet.

Another thing we could not figure out was that we saw replicas of ourselves there. Like it was trying to imitate us. We realized then that it makes us see what it wants us to see.

The haunting intensifies

Then one night there was a loud crash in the kitchen. Bill and I were in bed trying to get some sleep when it happened at about 2 a.m. Bill got up as he thought it was an intruder. He came back to bed looking shaken. He said there was nothing, just the cookie sheet that had fallen off from the counter. But how could that happen? The cookie sheet was in the cupboard! He said he did not know, and told me to go get some sleep.

Another night I was sleeping fitfully and woke up alarmed. I saw a figure by the bedroom doorway, and almost immediately Bill started fidgeting next to me. I grew concerned and asked him if he was alright, as I thought he was awake. He replied in a very labored voice, "It is not the power that we see!"

Bill does not talk that way and he would never think of phrasing anything like that. It was scaring me so much that I started shaking him, and he came to. It turned out he really was asleep and was not aware of what he said.

The presence gets physical

By the second week of December, I was starting to really question whether staying in that apartment was worth it. On a Saturday night at about 2 a.m., we were talking in bed about our different schedules for the coming week. Suddenly, Bill let out a scream of pain. He got up and lifted his shirt, and there was a big red scratch on his belly.

There was nothing there, like a bug, that could have caused it. He said it felt like someone put out a cigarette on him, then dragged it out. While I was busy scrutinizing the scratch, something tried to grab my hand. It felt like a big, rough, man's hand. I jerked my hand away.

We decided to get up, put clothes on, grab our cat and leave. We were out the door with nothing but the clothes on our backs and our wallets. We checked into a pet-friendly motel. The next day we began to look for a new apartment.

Seeking answers

We contacted a local ghost society. A psychic in the group sensed that someone had been murdered in the bathroom tub. They maintained that it was just a memory, but we seriously doubt it was just a memory. They would not give us further information, but a member of the group later told me that it was the scariest case their psychic had ever encountered. Whoever or whatever it was, she had felt all the emotions it had.

Myrisa's comments about the photos on the first page of this article: "I have attached photos we have taken when we were not even sure the place was haunted. We did not find them until after we moved out. One is of me coming out of the bathroom. Bill took the picture. One close up of the bookshelf to the right of the picture. I have also attached a picture of my husband Bill for comparison."