Challenge Entry Three (
Spirits & Ghosts ā Spiritworker)
Iāve always believed in ghosts, I think? To be honest, I canāt remember. I do know that itās a deep-seated belief, and I have had more than my fair share of spirit encounters in my life.
When we first moved to Florida, we lived in an apartment that had the funkiest energy Iāve ever felt. It wasnāt welcoming, but it wasnāt hostile. The best way to describe it was heavy ā the complex turned out to be not great, and over time, I learned that there were always people in and out, crime, etc.
Anyway, the first night we lived in that apartment, we had what I can only describe as a spirit encounter. Thereās almost no other explanation. Our furniture hadnāt arrived yet, so we were sleeping on the floor in the bedroom. Sometime early in the morning, my child woke up and needed something, which then woke up her dad. He looked around and was upset because his pillow was missing, and he thought we had taken it. I assured him that no, we didnāt have his pillow, and I had to turn the light on and make him look around before he believed me that his pillow wasnāt even in the room.
So, mystery number one: where the heck did his pillow go?
Then, as Iām helping my child, I hear the cat meowing. I didnāt think much of it because we were in a new-to-her place. Sheās gonna find her way around, explore, etc. I ignored her for a few minutes, but it became apparent to me that wherever she was, she couldnāt get out. This obviously confused me because we didnāt have any furniture or boxes for her to get stuck in.
So, mystery number two: where the heck is the cat?
At this point, everyone is awake. Itās about 2 or 3 am, and the four of us (my mother was here, too) are going from room to room looking for 1) the missing pillow and 2) the missing cat. We opened every closet in the bedrooms. We checked the bathrooms and the showers. We checked the kitchen cabinets, and we checked the laundry room. Neither the pillow nor the cat to be found, but I could still hear the cat meowing from inside the apartment.
So, the last door I checked was a utility closet. This is where the AC unit and furnace were located. I had opened this closet when we first got there, just looking around and making a note of where everything was. The door to this closet was hard to open in general because of the way the landlord painted the door. It stuck, and it made a lot of noise when it was opened.
Anyway, I grabbed the door handle for the utility closet and tugged it open. What did I see? Well, my partnerās pillow was sitting on top of the furnace/AC unit, and the cat came walking out from behind the furnace/AC unit! When I opened that door earlier in the day, the cat hadnāt been let out of her carrier, so thereās no way should could have snuck in.
See, the reason this is so confounding is because I am an extremely light sleeper, I always have been. My partner used to make a game out of it when we were going to bed. Iād end up in bed first, and heād try to sneak into the room without me noticing. Any disruption in air flow, the way the room sounds, etc. outside of the usual will wake me up. Being in a new place, thereās no way I wouldnāt have heard that door open in the middle of the night without some sort of interference.
So, to this day, we still have no clue how that happened, or who was playing games with us. That was over five years ago! Iām pretty sure it was the spirit of a child, because I had more experiences in that apartment with a smaller, child-like spirit. There was also an older woman with long gray hair that my partner would see sitting in his desk chair in the middle of the night, and we would see shadows passing in front of the kitchen night-light from our room, though everyone would be asleep.
That place was very, very haunted!