[TW: Suicide]
Hello Reddit. Me again.
Some of you may recognize me from my disastrous legaladvice thread from a couple months ago. I have made innumerable apologies to the mods and members of the subreddit since then, so anyone planning to derail this with bullshit trolling and further harassment, kindly shove it up your ass. I’ve learned my lesson, okay?
I only bring it up here because I have a dreadful feeling that it’s relevant to my current situation. For those of you unaware, I can summarize the original thread by saying that I witnessed a death in May. My across the courtyard neighbor, specifically. I live in an apartment, her window faced mine, and I was having a quiet night in by myself when I happened to look into her place and saw her, let’s say, making preparations. I’ve already made the mistake of “doubling down” when I mentioned in comments of the now-deleted post that I didn’t go out of my way to watch her kill herself, that I was having a typical “freeze” reaction to something unspeakably awful happening right in front of me. I called the police some time after the deed was done and I had processed what I saw. It was a terrible tragedy and we all feel very sad about it.
Well, to all those who hounded for my blood and my comeuppance for the high crime of being fucking human, here’s karma for you: I think I am being haunted.
At least, haunting is the first term I reach for, but “cursed” might also be apt. Maybe I’m a superstitious man. I don’t think of myself that way, I’m open to skepticism, but I struggle to come up with a logical explanation for everything that has happened to me. Calling it a coincidence is just too much to stand.
I am not experiencing the typical pop cultural signs of a haunting. No cold spots and flickering lights. If anything, this only strengthens my conviction; if my HVAC was busted or I was having a gas leak (I check my CO alarms regularly) I would be getting these more basic faux supernatural signals.
It started several weeks after Eloise died. Her name was Eloise, to be clear. I think her family couldn’t make it down to pick up her stuff for a while, or she didn’t have family, and the landlord hasn’t gotten a new tenant in yet, so he didn’t bother cleaning the place out for ages. My work desk is right at the window that directly faces her balcony where I used to see her- another thing which made the occasional eye towards her place pretty inevitable.
When the light is on and the blinds aren’t drawn I can see clear to the kitchen through the balcony window. Obviously it’s much harder to see without the lights inside, but especially during the day with some sun coming in, it was enough to see that the place was abandoned. Full of lumps and shadows outlining the things she used to own, like little burial mounds. But, you know, still.
Until it wasn’t. I looked over one day from where I was doing some bullshit emails because something had caught the corner of my eye. It was late afternoon, getting dark with the sun falling behind Eloise’s side of the apartment building. I stared over for a while, thinking maybe it was just a bird taking off. I saw it from somewhere in that dark apartment. This shadow. Big, person-sized. It moved really slowly, really deliberately, until it crossed out of sight behind the far wall.
I thought for a half second that maybe it was the landlord, but what fucking landlord walks around the place in the pitch black like that? I didn’t think a burglar would walk around so slowly. They’d just want to bust in, grab what they could, bust back out, right?
It freaked me out. Describing it feels really stupid, like, oooooh I got scared by a literal shadow! So spoopy! But I don’t know man, it hadn’t been that long since I saw her, and something about that shadow really upset me. I got up and made myself a coffee (bad idea by the way because I was up all night being jittery as well as unnerved) and after I got back to the emails I didn’t notice anything else from her place.
And then it happened again. It happened at almost the same exact time. Maybe one time it could have been a burglar, but two nights in a row? Who the fuck would break into the same apartment twice?
I swear to god, this time it was watching me. I noticed the shadow moving around a little, but then after a while it just kind of stood there? It stood still for a long time, right in the middle of where I knew the kitchen was. The first time it could maybe have been anything, but this time I know it was a silhouette. I couldn’t make out anything distinct but it was the shape of a person if nothing else. It stood there staring back through the window until it got too dark to see even shadows.
Look, I’ll be up front, I have nothing to lose. Especially on the internet, I put on kind of a tough guy front. We’re probably all guilty of that at some point, I’m not embarrassed about it. But I’m a nervous person in real life. I don’t handle conflict well. Someone so much as raising their voice at me makes my heart basically explode with cortisol. I don’t even watch scary movies. So the only way I’ve learned to live with that is by doing dumb things to reassure myself and put my mind at ease. I went around the long corridor the next morning- fuck no was I doing this at night- to Eloise’s apartment.
The door was locked. In my book, that’s definitely the worst option.
This kept up another few days, not quite a full week. I saw it more frequently too, if my overactive, paranoid mind wasn’t getting the better of me. I saw it in the morning before work, plus in the evenings. Then this thing, this spirit, whatever it is, I think it shifted. It came closer.
I started noticing things going missing or being out of place. Keys, my laptop, kitchen knives. Little things, but things that really disturb me to notice. I wasn’t seeing the shadow in the other apartment anymore, but I can feel in a way that can’t be articulated that there is a presence in my home. Obviously I live alone, I have since I moved out. At times there’s this weight to the air when I come home from work or have freshly woken up in the morning, like the air has just stopped moving around someone who was here before me, like I’m about to hear a footstep from the other room. And a few days ago this smell started in my kitchen. I can smell it from most of the apartment now, it’s not very big, but it’s worst in the kitchen. It smells like something died. Literally, putrid meat. I’ve been vegan for the last three years for medical reasons (fuck alpha-gal allergies), but I checked my fridge and pantry anyway for rotten vegetables and I can’t find the culprit. It’s driving me nuts.
That’s not the worst thing.
Two weeks ago, I heard her. I fucking thought I was hallucinating. Do you ever hallucinate right on the edge of sleep? I’ve gotten that a few times in my life when I’ve been really exhausted, and I have been recently, understandably with all of this shit going on. So I’m lying in bed and I hear this tiny little voice, really quiet and really close. It was like it was right in my ear. She could have been lying in the bed right next to me.
I don’t remember the first thing she said to me, I was half unconscious. I snapped awake and went rigid in bed. It took me a minute to think: did I just hear that? Was that in my head? And I was ready to write it off as just a random nighttime bleed over between waking and dreaming mind.
It came again. Something like, “I don’t think I ever told him,” or maybe it was “told you?”
At this point I am pissing myself because that’s not a hallucination. I froze. I could barely move to breathe for the longest time.
Silence for a while. Biding her time or just unaware of how much was passing. I doubt ghosts have much sense of scale.
A sound like she was taking a shallow breath in through her nose. Something soft and wet, tongue shifting around audibly over her lips. “Never…”
I got just enough breath in my lungs to throw myself out of bed and book it to the living room. I threw all the lights on as I passed and cowered on the couch with my knees to my chest. Eventually I fell asleep because exhaustion overwhelmed me, before I’d even realized.
Sleeping on the couch, I didn’t hear her the next few nights. But she found me. Like the first time, murmuring so close she could be on top of or beneath or all around me.
I don’t write down or remember everything she’s said. Some of it is weird, like she’s just talking to herself. I tried talking to her once, answering a question she asked (“I don’t know. What do you think is going to happen?”). She didn’t respond. Her voice was so sad.
It’s not every night, but it’s enough nights. When it happens, I usually run downstairs and sleep in my car. Thank god she hasn’t caught onto that yet, or hasn’t learned how to follow me. It took her a week to break into my apartment, a few days to follow me from the bedroom to the couch; I consider it only a matter of time. She hasn’t said anything so far that is malicious. Honestly, she seems more sad than anything. But I’m scared to death that something I do will anger her and she’ll turn on me.
I didn’t mention it back in legaladvice because it seemed too macabre, too much. I didn’t want to be called a liar over a stupid little detail that meant nothing. And honestly, if I had said something, I have no doubt it would be used to smear me as the most disgusting bastard alive.
Eloise looked at me. She knew I was there.
I’d talked to her a couple times at the mailbox. Just casually. We’d been looking across the courtyard at one another for a year. It’s small enough that I could see her expression, tending the pigeon box she kept on the balcony. She got rid of it a couple days before she jumped. I don’t know if maybe she felt better that somebody was watching. Or maybe she hated my fucking guts for not helping her.
I wish I knew what she wanted. If she’s mad, you know, if I could appease her, or if she’s sad and I could… I don’t know, get her to move on?
The smell has gotten worse lately. I’m trying to tell myself it’s a dead rat in the wall, but that means I’ll have to put up with it until it rots away. I’ll put out some air freshener. Hopefully that makes it bearable. I seriously don’t want to be in my kitchen these days. I don’t want to be in my apartment at all.
I’m not sleeping well. This has already been going on for so long, I’m at my wit’s end. I can’t afford to move, rent in this city is stupid and I don’t know anybody in real life who would be willing to room with me. Even my one bedroom in a shit neighborhood is barely within my price range. I’m reaching out here because if I can’t talk to someone about what’s been happening I’m going to lose it.
A few weeks ago, the landlord finally came through to clean the place out, dump her stuff. Maybe a relative finally came by. I think someone might be moving in soon. He’s in there as I write this, giving the place a fresh coat of off-white paint. I’m afraid for whoever plans on moving in.
I’ll update if anything else comes up. Call me pessimistic, but I’m already sure that it will.
- Neighbor