The Haunting of Apartment 128

The pounding starts while I’m home alone reading, around 10:30 p.m.

I’ve heard it once before, a few months ago. I was the only one who could hear it then. What if I’m the only one who can hear it now?

I text my neighbor to ask if she’s okay. The banging is so close, it sounds like it’s coming from the wall of her apartment that connects to mine. She doesn’t answer. Cue screechy music.

Next, I try the WhatsApp group for our apartment building. A neighbor who shares another wall with my neighbor who won’t answer walks through her own apartment and out into the breezeway listening. She doesn’t hear anything.

So reassuring. Just me then.

The pounding goes on. And on. And on. And on some more.

These apartments aren’t big enough to hang that much art, unless they’re covering every square inch of wall and then progressing to the ceiling.

It is Austin, though. I’ve seen that done.

If it were raining I’d think someone was building an ark in an apartment near mine. Like Jethro Gibbs building his boat in the basement on NCIS. Only louder.

How is no one else hearing this racket?!?

I eventually worry that it is someone locked out — or in — upstairs. Should I call the police? What do I say?

“There’s this banging noise. I think someone is being held captive and trying to pound their way out, or they’re locked out and are pounding on the door to be let back in. No, my neighbor and I don’t see anybody. And she doesn’t hear anything.”

That call would likely result in a quick trip to the loony bin for me, courtesy of the city’s finest. I can’t leave the cats behind. The neighbor who won’t answer her phone is the one who feeds the cats when I’m gone, so that’s out. I don’t call 911.

I might not feel so creeped out if someone else could hear it.

Or if my neighbor with the connecting wall would answer her damned phone so I’d know she isn’t being held captive or being bludgeoned to death. Although that would be an overkill of bludgeoning. She’s fairly laid back. I don’t think anybody hates her that much.

You would think my cats would hear it, but they’re cats, so how would I know? They can’t bark, and they hide in the best of circumstances. They did appear to react when it started, but that might have just been their normal zoomies. Now they seem to have decided it’s background noise. If they ever heard it at all.

Adding to the freakiness is a discussion I had earlier with someone who showed me a recording of a see-through orb floating around their porch in front of their ring camera.

Yeah, I know professor Google and Dr. Duck Duck Go explain those away as flying insects or “backsplatter” of light. Why and how an insect shows up on video as a see-through, perfectly round floating orb is not explained. Not to my satisfaction or limited understanding of technology, anyway

I know what I saw in my friend’s video, and it’s a creepy, translucent, floating orb with an agenda. Not a bug.

My friend believes the orb is the spirit of her newly deceased brother-in-law.

“He always played tricks on me,” she insists. “It’s got to be him still messing with me.”

If a spirit can attempt to communicate from within a glowing, floating orb, hovering around a front door, then surely one can also bang and pound for over an hour-and-a-half around, over, next to, or under my apartment.

Finally, at midnight, I put in earplugs and go to bed.

The next morning I put out a WhatsApp to the entire apartment complex. Did ANYBODY hear pounding in my building last night?

A neighbor on the other side of the building wrote that she heard banging that sounded like construction coming from my side of the building during the day sometimes. She thought there were people working behind the building, but she never saw anyone. I’ve never seen any building going on over here, either.

She didn’t hear it last night.

Thank goodness someone had at least heard it before. Never mind that I work from home and should have heard it during the day if she did. Maybe this spirit only auditorally haunts one person at a time. She gets days and I get nights. Lucky her.

Why does it haunt only my side of the building? Is this a malevolent spirit attached to me, only allowing this neighbor hear it occasionally just to drive me even more crazy?

I can’t think of anyone on the other side who would want to keep me up at night, and drive me crazy. Maybe I better check the obituaries for my frenemies. I like to think I don’t have enemies. Don’t you?

Another day and night passes without the banging. Relief. I can go back to reading WhatsApp messages without a shiver down my spine.

A woman in another building, a chronic complainer posts, “I don’t know who has the apartment above mine, but you guys definitely need a BIG THICK CARPET or at least a quieter bed.”

Wait. What? A bed banging against a wall during passionate love-making could account for all the noise I heard!

If so, respect.

Love making of that magnitude for over an hour-and-a half means that while you’re not a spirit, you are superhuman.

Do me and all the WhatsApp groups a favor, though. Move that bed to the middle of the room. Or I will haunt you while you’re banging.

. . .

Thank you to Stephanie Wilson for assuring me I’m not crazy. You did do that, right Stephanie? Stephanie? If you can hear me knock three times.

—

This post was previously published on MuddyUm.

***

Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today.

All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.

A $50 annual membership gives you an all access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.