My name is Andrew and I’m a recent college graduate. I’m what people would call a top-A student. Everyone said I should’ve gone to medical school, but I always felt like blood and guts just weren’t my calling, so I chose to study history instead. Little did I know that what was waiting me in life was far more bloodier, and guttier, than any medical student would have to go through.
So I’m sure most of you guys know, because personally speaking, I was one of those people who didn’t know, that getting a job with a history degree is harder than getting a job without any degree. The only place that would ever email me back other than McDonald’s was a shoe factory that accidentally emailed me thinking I was someone else.
Still, I didn’t let my spirits down, afterall, I am known to study my ass off. So I kept trying and trying and eventually, I landed a really sweet job at the local library cataloging some crazy old newspaper archives from New York city. So lucky for me, that’s finding a job done. But unlucky me, the library’s in downtown and the rents are IN-sane! So after apartment hunting for almost a month, I almost called it quits and started dialing McDonald’s until one bright, or I should say dark October day, when I spoke with an old friend about my apartment situation.
“Sure!” My friend Michael said, “You can totally stay at the apartment. It’s a little old obviously but I’m sure it beats losing the job.” My friend Michael had no problem offering me the spare apartment his family had owned for generations, but never really used.
I knew the apartment was old but, frankly speaking I didn’t know it was that old. It was a four-story tall building and each floor had two apartment suites on opposite sides. Michael’s apartment was on the last floor. I was quite shocked that downtown New York still had such apartments. I mean don’t get me wrong, I was extremely happy that I found a place to live in, I just didn’t want the thing to collapse on me or something while I was sleeping, that’s all.
Well eventually I moved in and immediately started cleaning the place up as best as I could. After a couple days of rearranging furniture and cleaning, I was totally exhausted but seriously excited. Finally, I had a house to settle down in, it was such a great feeling. Until that night, the night I finished cleaning my apartment.
During the middle of the night while I was deep in sleep after all the hard work I did, I was forced awake by super loud knocking on my door. It wasn’t really knocking on my door as much as it felt like it was someone breaking down my door. Anyways, I jumped out of bed and checked the time, 2 freakin’ AM! So I thought okay maybe it’s just some confused drunk and he’s mistaken my house for his, so let’s just check through the eye hole to make sure there’s nothing shady going on. I was quite shocked to see what I saw: A bald old man with a bluish skin color. One of his eyes are completely white while the other eye is bulging out of his skull. As soon as I saw him, something strange happened. He covered the eye hole with his hand from the outside.
I felt extremely uneasy but I didn’t waste anytime. I thought maybe he lives in the apartment in front of mine and he’s having a medical emergency. He is just an old man after all, creepy face asides. But as soon as I opened my door to see if everything was okay, he already reached his apartment, slamming the door on my face. “O.K,” I thought. “Well, there’s no way he almost broke my door down unless he had some kind of emergency. And at the same time, there’s no way I want him knocking at my door again at this ungodly hour.” So I went to knock on his door. I said, “Hello sir, is everything okay? You we’re knocking on my door. Do you need any help?”. There was no response.
I returned to my apartment and I hear sounds in my kitchen. First, it sounded like pots and pans clanging, then as I got closer it sounded like someone in distress choking, as if they want to scream but their voice isn’t coming out. I could feel the hairs on my arm rise. I slowly approached my kitchen to see what on earth was going on and what I saw was absolutely horrific. I found a man slaughtered, laying dead in a pool of blood on my kitchen floor. Someone had slashed his neck open. I stood in my spot, looking at the horror in front of my eyes. It was as if I had no legs, I was completely unable to move. At that moment, I even forgot how to breathe. Then suddenly, the slaughtered man rose from the pool of blood, holding his slit neck with one hand while stretching out his other hand, rushing towards me.
The next thing I know is his hand is around my neck, holding me. From how unbelievable the situation is, I feel the whole thing happening as if its not me going through it, instead I’m just experiencing some unlucky person’s life. I was in absolute terror. His hand was frozen cold to the point that it felt like my neck started to frost. I closed my eyes and started praying for my life, calling on the names of every God from every religion I’ve ever heard of. When I opened my eyes, I found myself standing in the middle of my kitchen with the moonlight shining on me from the window. Everything in my kitchen was clean and organized, back to normal. It was as if nothing had happened and the body and blood just disappeared.
Immediately I ran to my room, locking myself up and basically I curled up into a ball waiting the morning to arrive. It sucked a lot because it was also, coincidentally my first day at work. Dead person or not, there’s no way I could lose this job. I entered my office at the library extremely exhausted from going through the terror of last night. Thankfully, my boss was really understanding and she let me go home after giving me a tour of the library. To be honest, I preferred to just stay in my office rather than return to that place but after all I went through, I would’ve probably fell asleep even while standing from how exhausted I was. While going up the stairs, I ran into the same old man I saw yesterday. The only difference was that his skin color wasn’t blue this time, it was normal. I couldn’t help but ask him, “Excuse me, you were knocking on my door last night isn’t it?” He turned his head, looking at me from head to toe. Before I could say another word, he left to his apartment. I didn’t know what to make of the awkwardness because I was dead tired so I just headed straight for my apartment, threw myself onto my bed and slept.
I wake up and find myself in my dark bedroom. The only light I have is the yellow glow of the street light outside and I hear water dripping from the bathroom sink. At first it drips slowly, then starts dripping faster and faster, until it sounded like there was a flood of water pouring out of my bathroom. I immediately fell out of my bed, trying to get up as fast as I could to see what was going on. I ran to the bathroom and turned on the lights. All of the taps were fully turned on and water poured out of them like they were broken fire hydrants. I see so much water coming out yet somehow the water is painting my sink and bath tub into a dark black color. I ran to turn off the sink and bath tub but my whole bathroom is already black so I just stood there, doubting reality. I felt like is this even real? Suddenly, in front of my eyes, a black shadow emerged in the hallway.
As fast as I could, I ran back to my bedroom, grabbed my metal baseball bat and shouted into the hall, “I don’t know who you are or what you want. But you chose the wrong house to mess with!” I heard my front door open and ran to it, only to see the SAME old man walk out of my apartment and enter his apartment. I went to his door and started banging on it, “HEY YOU! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE TRYING TO BREAK IN AND ENTER MY HOME! I’M GOING TO CALL THE COPS!”. Not a single reply, absolute silence. I sense a strange, creepy feeling and the hairs on my neck all stand up. I back away from the door and I can see the shadow of his feet under the door. I quickly ran back to my apartment, locked the door fully, and escaped to the safety of my bedroom. I threw myself onto the bed, forced some headphones into my ears and tried my best to forget everything.
After what felt like an eternity, the morning sun had risen and I had to go to work again. This time I thought, there’s no way I’m putting up with this any longer.” I called Michael and blamed him for giving me his haunted apartment. I told him, “What the heck man!? Are you playing a prank on me or what? Giving me that haunted apartment to live in. I’ve known you since childhood!”. And he interrupted me, “Woah woah woah, hold on a second there. What do you mean haunted? Bro, I’ve known you longer than my mother, why would I prank you? And by the way, what nonsense are you talking about? What do you mean haunted?” I said, “okay, look forget that. Does your neighbor own a copy of the key to my apartment?”. For a moment he was silent, then he replied, “Oh yeah. I forgot about that.” I jumped and said, “What do you mean forgot about it! That crazy old man tried to enter my apartment last night!”
“Ah, Uncle Ed. He’s harmless! The poor guy, all of his sons either passed away or stopped visiting him decades ago and he’s pretty much been alone ever since. He can be weird sometimes but deep down he really has a good heart.” “Alright,” I told him, “but I wish you had told me earlier. Still it’s cool.” And I hung up the phone.
I went to work and couldn’t help but think in the old man the whole day. I felt like, you know what. If I had no one else in the world, I would probably do some pretty weird behaviors too. I think he just needs a friend. I left work with a refreshed mind and a new goal, I’m going to befriend my neighbor. Every morning I woke up to go to work, I would knock on Uncle Ed’s door but he would never reply. I would even buy a pie for him and leave it at his door as a show of friendship, but he wouldn’t accept anything either.
Eventually, he did open the door one day. I told him, “Hello, I’m the new neighbour next door. Look, I’m sorry about the bad start we’ve had. I’m a friend of Michael and I know that earlier you wanted something from the apartment. Look if you need anything or just want to kill some time, I’m really here for it.” He slowly looked at me from head to toe, took a pause, then said, “I have some dinner prepared. Would you care to join me?”
Well I accepted his invitation, and had dinner. It turns out that old people can cook up seriously delicious roast beef. From that night on, we would regularly have dinners together and the weird things in my apartment suddenly stopped happening. It was really a period of bliss I’d say. I snugged the weird experiences I had under the rug and said maybe I was just exhausted from overworking myself with all the cleaning and lack of sleep. Plus the stress of a new job. Like, come on, we’re only human. It makes sense for the brain to play tricks on us sometimes.
Well Ed became somewhat of a dad figure for me and I even found out that he was a war veteran from the second world war. It was awesome for me since I spent most of my time as a history student studying world war 2 so our discussions were endless.
One night, I posted a picture of me and Ed on social media and captioned it, “To my new friend and neighbor who’s also the awesomest person I know, Uncle Ed.” I started preparing for bed because I had work the next day until my phone vibrated. I got a notification from instagram. It was Michael. He commented, “Where is Uncle Ed?” I immediately called Michael, “Hey man, I didn’t understand your comment. Uncle Ed’s right beside me in the picture.” Michael replied, “Dude, that person isn’t Uncle Ed. I’ve never seen him in my life. Look, I still have an old picture of Uncle Ed on my phone. I’ll send it to you now.” The blood in my veins froze. The man in the picture was the same man I saw slaughtered on my kitchen floor.
I ran as fast as I could out of my bedroom towards the kitchen, but when I reached the hallway I stopped. There was a black trash bag in the middle of my hallway, and clearly it wasn’t me who left it there. When I opened the trash bag to see what’s inside, I found arms, and legs, and buried underneath it all, the real Uncle Ed’s severed head.
I felt such a severe pain in my heart, as if a knife stabbed me right through my chest. “This is too much on me,” I said to myself as tears rolled down my cheeks. I went back to my room to call 911 and told them about the bag I found in my hallway. I sat on my bed crying uncontrollably. The tears were so unstoppable that I could hardly see. Finally the police arrived and I explained everything that happened to me from the first day I came to this apartment. I told them about how I found a man slaughtered in my kitchen and about how the neighbor next door tried entering my house and about the bathroom. I even showed them the picture of me and the neighbor that I posted on instagram. What they told me after shook my soul.
“That man in the picture you just showed us, his name is Greg Maddison. He was a well-known professional killer for the mafia. He enjoyed his job a little too much though and started murdering innocent people for the sake of entertainment. Sick bastard he was. He was caught, tried, and executed four years ago son. How you got that picture is beyond my comprehension, but one thing you should know is, this used to be his apartment. His last victim before he was finally caught was Mr. Edison, his old neighbor.”
I stood up right away and packed my most important belongings into my backpack, then I asked the police officer to drive me to the bus station. I’ve had enough, and there was no way I was staying there any longer. I sat on the bench, all alone at 3am waiting for the bus back to my parent’s house when my phone rang. I answered asking “Hello, who’s this?”.
A voice replied,