So apparently the most interesting thing about me to date is an apartment I once lived in twenty years ago. I'm not sure how I feel about that, to be honest.
Anyway, to appease the masses, here's what happened:
I attended a small private art college. One year, I agreed to become a Resident Assistant in one of the student housing apartment buildings owned by said college. The building I was assigned to was a two-up/two-down apartment building, built circa 1900 -- in other words, absolutely typically of the neighborhood in general. Basically I had to oversee 10 upperclassman students who mostly kept themselves to themselves and pretty much expected nothing of me in return except to buy them expensive snacks with the activity money we got every quarter from the school. (Well, I don't know that they expected that, exactly. I was required to spend the money and since none of them wanted to do any activities I figured they could all have snacks, operating under the theory that everyone likes snacks, especially when they're free.)
Now, as was our wont, my roommate and I did not own any living room furniture. The bedrooms were furnished with, you know, beds and stuff. The dining room housed the studio stuff. The living room? It's sole occupants were an answering machine, a small pile of misshapen pillows and an exercise bike. Needless to say, we spent a minimal amount of time in this room.
Strangely enough, every time I rode the exercise bike (not a very frequent occurrence), I got the distinct impression that someone was watching me from one corner of the ceiling. It was a pretty persistent feeling and also pretty strong.
Also, all our aluminum mixing bowls and foil kept going missing.
One day I went upstairs to discuss something with one of the girls in the apartment above us (her roommate's boyfriend had beaten the crap out of her roommate after finding out she'd used all his heroin and this girl was understandably pissed off with them both-- and yes, that's the kind of thing an RA had to mediate at our school.) We were walking through the living room towards the roommate's bedroom when she made a strange detour towards the middle of the room and said, "Oh, I don't walk in that spot."
"Um?" I stood and looked at the spot on the floor she was staring at.
"It's a bad spot."
I wanted to scoff, except... it was a bad spot. It also happened to correspond exactly to the spot in my living room ceiling where I felt something watching me.
Turns out not only did she think it was "a bad spot" but her third roommate (not the junkie) thought so too. Also, the guys in the apartment next door admitted that they thought one of their rooms was "not quite right". The guys in the lower apartment admitted they thought their back room was haunted, but they hadn’t wanted to say anything.
They also kept having to replace their missing can opener.
Oh. I forgot to mention that we all had really really really strange dreams. That part we only figured out at the end of the year when we got together for our End Of The Year Expensive Snack Party.
There's more, but this is already pretty long and boring. Mostly, it was a perfectly normal place to live. Other than the aluminum going missing all the time. And the strange manifestation of a single insect sitting perfectly still in the middle of the room every time I woke from a particularly vivid dream. Frankly, the most annoying part about it was, you know, the insects. As you know, Beangirl doesn't do vermin.
Also, to answer another question: my mother makes peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwiches, so that’s where I learned about them. I have absolutely no idea where she learned about them. They are, however, tasty. But you have to use sweetened peanut butter and non-kosher dills or it’s a disaster. Kosher dills have garlic in them. It’s not a good thing. Not with peanut butter, anyway.
EDIT: Ooooo, so you should go read Oonabaloona’s ghost story. It’s quite a bit freakier than mine. And as for the “spot” it really was just sort of a… spot. A place. A presence in that particular locale. It was a little freaky. Also, I have no flippin’ clue what was up with the aluminum. It was very mysterious.
