This took place about 21 years ago, when I was about 18 or 19. This is a wild ride so make sure you’re comfortable then get ready for quit the most mysterious tale you’ve ever heard. Hang in there for the long haul because this is a period of time that took place in the south side of Detroit in the early 2000s. I’ve been listening to creepy pastas for years and have never come across something like this. That’s not flexing either I’m just saying stick around this is a strange ride. Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.
So, with that said let’s set the scene. I lived in a 24-unit apartment building with my mother who was a hard working single mom, who basically was hardly around as she was working two waitress jobs to keep a home and lived with my younger brother about 14 or 15 at the time. Furthermore, between late shifts and travel time 5 and 6 nights a week she wouldn’t even get home until 2 or 3am or so.
This is an erie story that came together from 3 points of view and the parts that are based in unquestionable reality were not divulged between us until years after moving out of this apartment. In addition, there are parts of this situation that could be interpreted as having roots in the supernatural, ie, spirits, ghosts, demons, afterlife ect. Although if you like your scares based that’s here as well. The overall tale is based yet some things that you’ll hear can be arguably blooming from another dimension. It’s open-ended and I would love to see what people think. My mom never wants to get into it as she is 70 now, and my younger brother and I will bring it up at family gatherings here and there but again that’s just our perspectives.
We lived on the top floor, and to give a quick layout because for this story it really does factor significantly in how things were perceived and ultimately played a big role in how things were handled. This building was one solid long rectangle. As I said before it was 24 units that were divided into two sections with 12 on each side that each had their own separate entrances and the only way to travel to the other section of 12 units once you’re inside being through a conjoining laundry room that had a doorway from each side. Every apartment was shaped in a way that you had a big window on the side facing the front of the building which was essentially the street that lead to the apartment, also it was the street that you could turn into the back parking lot which was a secluded parking lot that was fenced off and had a slightly wooded area behind the fence and then the back of a strip mall a grocery store but you couldn’t really see it with all the brush in between.
That being said you could look to Main Street or there was a small window in the kitchen that you could look at to the back parking lot. Now as I stated before we lived on the top floor, within a week of living in this apartment something was slightly disturbing on the first floor in the middle of the night we would hear screaming if we went out into the apartment hallways. Which happened often being teenagers and having friends over or leaving and coming in.
This would take place usually between 2:00 AM and 4:00 AM. Technically at this point it was random and living where I come from again you tend to ignore the neighbors but after it went on for a while my brother and I both conveyed that we heard this lady screaming and we’re very added out about it.
Although at this point our mother had not heard it yet as I said three and four nights a week she worked till well after 3:00 AM and somehow, she just was missing anytime get the screaming what’s going on. Although within a week or so she did hear it and that’s how we found out who it was it was the lady on the first floor she was an old woman in her 80s that lived by herself. Now with this latest information it did one of two things that either made it upsetting and sad that she may be experiencing mental issues at that age but at the same time it also made it slightly scary or eerie in a sense that she was screaming at that time of night.
Now let’s step away from the elderly lady who screams for a few minutes, if you remember how our building was set up when I’m in my bedroom on the opposite side of the wall there’s a neighbor but you can only get to him by going through the laundry room basement almost every night one of two things would happen an alarm would go off in the middle of the night from his apartment and never shut off for hours on end like four or five hours or every other weekend or every few weeks we would hear loud muffled screaming in there as well or at least I would hear strange noises. We live in the South side of Detroit it’s the kind of place you don’t get into neighbors’ business I didn’t know if this was moaning for pleasure or what.
As time went on, I begin to notice that the neighbor that was on the opposite wall as I said before was rarely ever home and when he was home it was always hearing a woman moaning or muffled sounds. Loud bangs from the opposite side of the wall. If you remember how the building is designed that there’s a window to look to the Main Street and a small window in the kitchen looking to the back parking lot this became the stuff of possible nightmares. I started noticing that when the guy was around, he was taking out giant heavy duty garbage bags or big duffel bags that looked like they were packed heavy and putting them in his pickup truck and driving away. This would always happen at night and went on for the course of a year. I Notice through this years’ time that this would happen about once a month are every other month, at least that’s the number of times that happened to notice him bringing these bags out in the wee hours of the night.
I’m getting ahead of myself a little bit I want to jump back some, the lady downstairs continue to scream in the middle of the night I had noticed that the times that she was screaming sometimes always equal the times that he was carrying out these duffel bags not the same day but just the same time frame which was starting to get weird, finally I questioned the older lady and asked her if she was OK, I did not directly ask why she screams that night I didn’t want to embarrass her or push her mental issue stronger I just asked her if she was in need of any help or was she having any trouble at night.
I’m not sure if I would have preferred a straight up answer of some sort because what I got was ominous and chilling in its own right, she stared at me blankly with almost Halo eyes again this lady was in at least her mid-80s and she brushed off the question and just asked if I would like some cookies she said that I liked cookies since I was younger and then she asked where Timothy, Charlie, and Susie have been she misses all her grandchildren. So, at this moment I wrapped it up to she must be experiencing Alzheimer’s or some memory loss, once every few weeks she would have a family member stop by and check on her. So at least for that moment I figured that her family was making sure she was OK, and it must be my brain just connecting that’s something strange was going on with her yelling and screaming when really, it’s just Mental issues. Or at least for the time being my perception of that would soon change.
Now as I discussed the guy who was bringing the bags out and had women periodically screaming and was barely ever home his alarm clock would go off day after day when he wasn’t there and it would start around 2-3 in the %99 and somehow would shut itself off around maybe 7:00 or 8:00 AM but it was one of them old style alarm clocks that everybody had back in the 90s the ones that just are beep that will drive you crazy, now from my mother’s room you couldn’t hear it and you could only slightly hear it from the front room and my younger brother was a very deep sleeper so he seemed to not have an issue with it when he slept in the room yet when it was my turn to sleep in the room it would drive me crazy. Eventually I got the nerve up that I was going to walk through the laundry room to his side of the building when I knew he wasn’t home and check the door handle because I was going to unplug that alarm clock.
It was the middle of the night I got to say I really didn’t know what to expect but I did go over there and I knocked at first even though I knew that he wasn’t home but still my instinct was the knob I wasn’t 100% but I was pretty sure and yet there was no answer for about 3 or 4 minutes. If you remember I was a late teenager at this time the time of your life that you feel invincible and I wanted to put an end to this plus I got to admit I was curious to see what was inside this apartment but I truly do not expect the door handle to be unlocked yet it was.
As the door slowly creaked across the hinges I felt as if I was a detective in an old school rat pack movie, I could no longer control the irregular heartbeat that I had soon discovered was going on inside my organs. I was the protagonist of my own private eye story at this point. That little gulp inside your throat that you get when your fight flight or freeze instincts start dripping down the nerves of your body , which somehow tingle the very bones that are keeping you standing in your own place begin to give way as if they are defective and have worked perfectly for you your entire life.
It is as if you have just entered an enemy war zone or some kind of alternate dimension. At the very least every nerve single inside your body is telling you that you should not be in the position that you are in right now but for some reason you ignore what your gut instinct is telling you. Which is not got for over all human evolution or at least human survival rate amongst other species because this is what is supposed to keep us alive at the upmost undesirable moments5 natural instinct kicking in as I entered the apartment.
It was every bit the cliche looking serial killer apartment, there was no furniture and rusted over stove all the lights are off just a couple scattered things it was super freaky and I knew right away something was wrong with this place but again the invincibility of being a teenager pushed through and also I pretty much knew the man was not home as I said before how I described the building I fully made my way to the bedroom it was like torn up mattress with stains on it and sprawled around the closet where different items that look to be women’s clothes and jewelry and a giant jug of change like one of them water dispenser jugs and then of course the infamous alarm clock was ringing. Anybody who was born in the 80s and grew up in the 90s knows this alarm clock it’s the one everybody had without hesitation I pulled the plug out and for good measure I must say at the time we were not a wealthy family and Mr. jug of change had to be a few $100 I took the jug with me when I left I was in and out of that apartment in less than two minutes.
My heart was racing so much as I left the apartment because that would be the only moments I couldn’t see if he pulled up and then here I am lugging his water jug through the basements through the laundry room back up to my side of the building and in my house it was quite frightful. Especially now running through my head even more as the fact that he might actually be a killer. My brave confidence had weighed in on seeing the insides of that apartment and I got back to my house as fast as possible locking the door and going inside.
What we have here is a man who’s hardly around and when he is there’s add sounds coming from his apartment and he takes out body size bags to his truck and leaves. We also have an incredibly old woman in her 90s who screams in the middle of the night yelping her saying names occasionally. So we didn’t put it all together then but after we had moved out my brother and I started swapping stories and we came to the conclusion that it’s possible people were being murdered there and the old lady could see their souls as they were unsettled and still here on earth walking around which made her scream and yell. But as I said this story isn’t necessarily supernatural as she could just be old and have dementia and we were just dealing with somebody who was a killer by us bringing bodies up back to their truck and burying them somewhere else. So you can come to your own conclusions on what was going on but it was such a disturbing time overall and when I look back on it I get such bad vibes and the chills even thinking about that place if I was to drive by it now I wonder if it would have a dark aura about it I may do so.
Yet here’s the catch after swapping stories years after a few years ago a serial killer was caught and a few of his kills took place here in Detroit as they said he lived here part time when they showed his picture on TV he all looked almost exactly like our neighbor to the state we’re not 100% sure if it was Sam as we both don’t remember that neighbors name or if there was a name on the mailbox to tell us who it was what chances are it was him and that’s real messed up I feel like if we would have pushed harder maybe we could have stopped them back then yeah we were young and just piercing all this information together.
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