It was a hot summer’s day when I moved into my campus apartment. It was located near most of my classes and there were a few restaurants nearby. As I walked in, I greeted my new roommate and took in my surroundings. The walls were a bland cream color, with some kind of stains on them. The floors were dusty and dirty, but the kitchen seemed okay, and the bathroom looked decent. When I walked into my room the desk was so dusty it looked like no one had lived there in a few years. I inspected the carpet and besides a few loose strands, it was okay. I looked up and saw the cracks in the ceiling which seemed to be stable for right now. Overall, my room could use a little work, but nothing that lights and curtains can’t fix. I started to unpack my boxes and settle into my room. After a few hours, I got hungry, so I walked into the kitchen to start making food. I got my pan and placed it on the stove. To my surprise, the oven starts wobbling. Just to make sure I was seeing things right I shook it again and it rocked back and forth. I’m pretty sure a moving oven is a safety violation, but being as hungry as I was, I carefully made my food. When college students are hungry nothing can keep them from food. As I sat down to eat, I wondered what other surprises the apartment had in store for me.
A few days later, I woke up to the sound of banging. Being concerned that the apartment complex was collapsing I jumped out of bed half asleep. I looked at my phone and it said 4 am. Still dazed I heard the loud knocking again and realized that it was coming from above me. I heard loud voices and doors being slammed shut. Great, noisy upstairs neighbors. I wonder if they ever sleep? Tired and annoyed, I crawl back into bed and try to go back to sleep as I have a physics class in the morning. From hearing people go up and down the stairs to the water pipes in the wall… now there are noisy upstairs neighbors too. Is this what the college apartment experience is like? If so, can I have a refund for my deposit?
Days turned to weeks and before I knew it it was October and the fall semester was coming to an end. One day as I was doing my laundry, a brown and white cat came up to my patio. It looked injured and meowed loudly. Feeling pity I went and grabbed some chicken from the fridge to feed it. Since then, I somehow became friends with the cat who lays on my windowsill and meows in the middle of the night when hungry. Creepily though, after the cat showed up, the apartment’s floor creaked more and it felt like someone would be watching you from the darkness. I was convinced that this cat somehow brought something to the apartment, which is another thing that I needed. After a few weeks of the cat making a daily appearance, it was time to go back home for the holiday break and wait for the new semester to start.
January rolled around and it was time for the new semester to start. As I was moving back into the apartment, I noticed that someone was moving in next door. We didn’t have a neighbor next to us last semester so I was curious to see who it was. He looked like a graduate student and seemed closed off. As I was moving the last of my things in, I looked in his direction getting ready to greet him, but before I could he quickly went inside and slammed the door shut. Little did I know that would be the last time I saw that neighbor until the end of the semester. Food would be delivered to his house every few days so my roommate and I knew he was alive but other than that, he just stayed inside. But, on a cold winter night around midnight, I heard music coming from somewhere in the apartment. It sounded like the funeral march being played on an organ. I walked out into the living room and found that the noise was getting louder. I looked over at the wall that we share with the no-show neighbor and put my ear against it. It sounded like he was playing the organ while a horror movie played in the background. Backing away from the wall, I wondered what kind of person this mysterious neighbor was. Since I never got to talk to him I will never know.
Over the semester the neighbors upstairs were still loud and having arguments with each other as they normally would until one day when I noticed that it got much quieter. At first, I was happy because it meant that I could sleep and do homework in peace, but then I started to wonder why it got so quiet. I figured that one of the roommates finally moved out. Around this time, I noticed that the ceiling started to look like it was drooping. Curious I climbed onto the counter and reached up to touch it and to my surprise, it felt wet. I told my roommate and we contacted maintenance. The next day though, the entire wall by the sink had water dripping down it and the paint was coming off. We tried to stop the water from flooding as much as possible until maintenance could fix it and luckily within a few hours, due to maintenance, it had stopped. It was a fun way of waking up the morning before an exam. Being a new semester I had hoped that the apartment would be more stable and tolerable than last semester, but it seemed to have a mind of its own.
A few days before the end of the semester my roommate noticed something on the ceiling. When I looked up I saw brownish-red splotches that looked like ketchup. We didn’t pay much attention to it until they started to appear on the walls near the kitchen. Being creeped out and hoping that it was just rust, I was thankful that it was the end of the semester and I was moving out. If I stayed there any longer I wouldn’t be surprised if the roof caved in based on the apartment’s track record.
As I was putting the last of my boxes in my car, I went back inside the apartment and looked around. It’s hard to believe that this normal-looking, semi-decent apartment had so many problems and a character that was its own. Over the year, I started to call my apartment “haunted” because all of the events that occurred made it seem like the apartment was alive. Hopefully, my next college apartment will be less active and eventful, but my “haunted” apartment will always have a place in my memories.