A Place to Flee To

In 2002, I decided I wanted my own place.

After three years of living shoulder to shoulder with strangers—traveling, planting trees, doing a government program, crashing in student housing—I just wanted silence. Space. Somewhere I could hear my own thoughts.

I’m the kind of person who needs cozy. Give me floor lamps over fluorescents; I don’t like noise unless I invite it in. I like to have people over, sure—but on my terms. I needed something that felt like it was mine. A respite from loud roommates, loud music, and late-night student gatherings.

And I found it.

It was the upper loft of an old heritage home—fourth floor, walk-up. Over time, it had acquired a well-worn charm, the kind of character that’s impossible to replicate. It was clear that, at one point, it had been an impressive building. Its siding, a patchwork of rust-colored bricks, seemed as if the building was constantly shedding its skin.

To reach my unit, you had to ascend. First, the main stairs into the building, followed by two more flights of carpeted stairs. Then, my door, adorned with an old, brassy lion-head knocker. But the climb didn’t end there—my apartment began with another staircase. Narrow, creaky, and steep. Four more flights inside, each step echoing with creaks and even croaks, as the top floor gradually revealed itself with every movement.

At the top, the space opened into a hallway. To the left, the bathroom, with its vintage black-and-white checkered floors. To the right, the living room. Directly ahead was the bedroom—open, with no door, exposed to the top of the stairs. Just to the right of the bathroom was the kitchen—bright and sunny, framed by floor-to-ceiling windows and even a skylight. There was a balcony, too, just off the kitchen.

It should have felt perfect. But from the start, there were things that… didn’t quite fit.

The bathroom, for one, had no power—no light. So, I often relied on candles late at night to find my way around. The frequent scent of extinguished candles gave the place a ritualistic atmosphere, almost like a church or a coven. Behind the clawfoot tub was a sliding door. When you opened it, you’d find a trapdoor on the floor. If you shined a flashlight down into it, you could see a whole underbelly of gleaming metal pieces and thick, gray carpets of dust. I was shown this when I first toured the place, but it didn’t bother me. I simply avoided it, never venturing there. My friends were curious and wanted to explore, but I never let them. Mostly because I didn’t want to deal with all the dust and dirt they’d drag up.

A different sliding door at the far end of the bathroom led to a hidden room—about 250 square feet. It reeked. Musty in a way that felt old, primal, forgotten, almost archaic. The kind of smell that carried a subtle warning, as if it knew you shouldn’t linger too long—like the scent most women would instinctively recognize as danger. I never lingered. I didn’t even store anything in there. I pretended it didn’t exist. Looking back, I probably should have explored that uneasy feeling a bit more, but denial, as they say, is one heck of a drug.

The rest of the apartment was quirky in the best way. The living room had peach-colored walls and hardwood floors that creaked like my grandparents’ house—a familiar, comforting sound. As if they themselves were a few flights down having tea. My grandpa had been deceased for some time now, and it was him I imagined in his plaid shirt on the phone, his Rolodex beside him. I shook the memory away.

But the charm didn’t stop at creaky floors and vintage colors.

There were doors. Everywhere.

Not just doors—secret ones. Cabinets hidden within walls, panels inside panels. You’d open a cupboard and find another tiny door inside, like a nesting doll of architecture. Some cupboards had locks that didn’t lock anything. Others opened to dark, hollow spaces you could reach into elbow-deep.

Even the ceiling held its own mysteries.

At first glance, it appeared coffered—decorative, elegant. But I noticed small pegs. Locking pegs. Pegs that seemed to hold something in place. And in hindsight… I think those weren’t just design features. I think there were hiding spots up there. Crawlspaces. I can only imagine what they hid. I never bothered to explore.

Back then, I thought it was all part of the charm.

Now? It’s not charming. It’s tragic, sad, even terrifying, knowing what I know now.

One evening, after a long walk with a friend, we stood outside my building, just chatting. The sun hung low, casting a soft yellow light that made everything feel a little more golden, and the shadows more pronounced. A small patch of flowers was bathed in that warm glow. Even the way they moved in the breeze—so slowly, so hesitantly—seemed as if they didn’t want to draw too much attention to whatever secrets they held among them.

And then I looked up—just casually—and I saw it. A bright yellow window.

An extra window?

There was only one window in my living room. I’d lived there for months. I knew that. But from the street, clear as day, were two windows on that side of the building.

I stopped talking mid-sentence. I must have had my mouth open because my friend turned to look, and I remember saying something like, “There’s a whole other window.”

I couldn’t let it go.

The moment she walked away, I practically ran upstairs. This place had already shown me enough oddities to make this feel less like a glitch or bizarre dream. The reality was this place was otherworldly, so different. There was nothing wrong with my reality; this was not a bad dream. This was fun and interesting, curious. Some new oddity to flirt with, get lost with. There is something else to explore! Something shiny.

I went into the closet, the one off the living room—dark wood, almost black, and oddly cold. At the base of the left-hand wall, I saw it: the faintest glow. A sliver of sunlight bleeding through. My pulse quickened. I probably gasped. I pressed my hand to the wall, and it gave. Just a little.

It was flimsy. Hollow.

And I knew, without tools, without help, I could get through. My thoughts were working fast and my hands couldn’t keep up. This is fun! Wow, another secret room!

I started peeling it back, coughing from the thick air. Every time I wrestled with the wall, the light was trying to break through—like it was asking to breathe. The wood splintered and cracked under my hands, light streaming in through the breach. And then—I saw it.

A room. Nothing more.

Long and narrow. Maybe 16 feet by 3 feet. Just wide enough for the window. Cobwebs dangled in midair from the air my commotion stirred, dust motes twirled in the sunlight. I don’t know why, but I dropped to all fours and crawled inside. It felt instinctual, like my body knew I shouldn’t enter standing.

I stepped—crawled—over old rags and boxes, some splintered wood. Dust clung to my knees, tickled my arms and hands. I couldn’t see clearly at first; the light was too bright, almost blinding in contrast to the dark interior I came from. The air was stale, heavy, and dry.

I made it all the way to the window and peered out. I tried to open the window. Chipped paint on the windowsill, dead flies. My hands were filthy from the dirt I had crawled through. I wiped the hair from my face and dust all over my face and nose.

That’s when it hit me.

The image and sound of brakes: Get out. The image of slick pavement, streetlights, rain in my mind. Get out. The sound of a crash. Now. My head was ringing. Something was wrong.

The message was clear, and it didn’t feel like it came from inside me.

I scrambled out of there faster than I went in, on my feet. I lunged and then ducked to avoid the cobwebs, my ears ringing. I could feel the web cover me, its strands clinging to my skin and face. I don’t mind spiders, but this was a massive web, and I was expecting to feel it on the nape of my neck.

Back in the closet, I slammed the panel shut like that would help. Like sealing it would undo the feeling. Like it hadn’t followed me out. When I was attempting to put the door back up, I was shaking so much at first I kept dropping it.

I told myself it was just adrenaline. Just surprise.

But deep down, I knew. That space wasn’t meant to be found.

And something in that space… knew I’d been there.

After I discovered the hidden room, things didn’t feel normal anymore.

I kept telling myself it was just anxiety. Exams were coming up, it was spring, I was over-caffeinated, maybe even underfed. But it was more than that. It was something else—a low thrum under my skin. Not exactly fear, but… unease. Like something in the walls was watching me. I’m great at tuning things and people out. This, however, couldn’t be ignored, no matter how hard I tried.

Sometime later, my friend Jamie came to visit.

We were planning to go for a bike ride. It was one of those first truly warm days—the kind that smells like thawed dirt and lilacs. I was upstairs waiting for her, listening for the creaks in the stairs. She didn’t come up.

I leaned over the banister and called, “Jamie?”

She replied—but her voice was strange. Distant. Wrong. “I’m not coming up.”

Then I heard the door close. That was it.

I went outside, and she was there, just standing, trembling, eyes glassy. Her skin looked pale in a way I’d never seen before, like someone had just pulled her out of cold water.

“I saw a ghost on your landing,” she whispered. “There was a man. An old man. Plaid shirt. Just standing there, on the landing.”

She wasn’t joking. She wasn’t the kind of person who made things up. But in that moment, I didn’t know what to do with it. I believed that she saw something. But me? I hadn’t seen a thing. I was more curious than anything else. Sure, this place is odd, but I found it interesting.

So I said, “Okay. I’ll grab my stuff.”

And when I went back inside, I paused at the landing. Just stood there and said, “Hey. If you’re here, that’s cool. We’re roommates now.”

I don’t know why I said it. Maybe I was trying to keep things light. Maybe I did believe her, just not enough to feel afraid yet.

We went on our bike ride. It was long, golden. One of those rides where you push yourself past the point of conversation and just move, hypnotized by the spin of tires and sound of your breathing. We didn’t say much that day. Later, we went to a bar, met up with friends. She brought it up again—to other people this time.
At first, they laughed it off. You know, the way people do when something is uncomfortable but they don’t want to admit it. They joked about me living in a haunted house, made bets about how long I’d last, told exaggerated ghost stories fueled by cheap beer and the buzz of an early spring night.
But Jamie didn’t laugh. Not once. She just sat there, quiet, fiddling with her glass, eyes still wide like she hadn’t quite made it all the way back from whatever she’d seen.
And for the first time, I wondered if I hadn’t been imagining it all—the unease, the strange architecture, the restless feeling under my skin. Maybe the house really did have a pulse. Maybe it remembered everything.

I grew up in a rather religious household. On one hand, my mom took her Catholic faith seriously. On the other, my dad did not. New age and esoteric things were forbidden, and ghost stories were frowned upon. I find this very peculiar now because the Christian faith is full of ghost stories and references to evil spirits. My mother thought discussing these things was anti-God, so it would stand to reason that she believed in them. My mother worries about everything, thinks about everything. Believes things she cannot see or define. Has major intuitive hunches. My father doesn’t believe in anything he cannot see for himself. He is probably the most grounded person I know. I’ve only seen him angry once, at my brother, but very few things rattle his nerves. He’d probably not hear anything about spirits even if I told him—he’d be worried about me talking so fast.
“But Audrey, there’s no ghosts now. Time to move forward, there’s lots of stuff that you need to focus on.”
All of this to say ghost talk was rare and either frowned upon, dismissed, or even ridiculed. My parents would’ve been the last people I talked to about this.

I’ve had two other significant ghost stories. The first one was when I was staying at a boyfriend’s cottage on Lake Erie. It was a boat-in cottage, and he and his brother had left to get supplies in town. A storm gathered, and they decided they were going to ride out the storm in town and come back once the lightning settled down. The entire building shook with the wind, and when the lake lit up due to lightning, the power went out.

I sat there, on the old floral couch in front of the massive window, staring out at the darkened, churning water. The cottage creaked with the force of the storm, every gust of wind making the building groan and sway as if it might just give in to the storm’s wrath. The waves on the lake were enormous. I could hear the roar of the wind, the whistle of it through the cracks in the old wood. The only light came from the occasional lightning strike, casting eerie shadows across the room.

I cannot describe just how beautiful, magical it was to watch the lake violently wrestle with itself in the total dusk light while large willow and pine trees scraped the roof and window. I sat transfixed, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the living room in front of the large window. It really was so beautiful.
Once it began to settle, I went to bed. All I could hear were light drops of water on the leaves outside and onto the windowpane. My head hit the cool pillow, the scent of lilacs and fresh-cut grass and pine permeated the room. I started to drift in and out of sleep.
I awoke a few hours later in total silence and darkness. I froze, breath trapped in my chest. I was sleeping, facing the wall. It was pitch black. I heard a noise.

I listened. Counted. Three steps. Pause. Three more.      I wanted to sit up, to look, but I couldn’t move. It felt like my body had turned to stone. I stared at the wall, eyes wide open in the dark, heart hammering.

The footsteps stopped right beside my bed. Gentle ruffling on the carpet. And then, slowly, I felt the edge of the mattress dip, like someone was sitting down. I didn’t scream. I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I just waited. Waited for whatever it was to pass, praying for it to pass. Or waiting for it to touch me or worse—grab me or worse.

Eventually, the weight lifted. Silence.

I looked up. I’m sure I looked fast enough to see it exit the room, but there was nothing there. Had I dreamt this? It must have been a dream.
I mentioned it to the guys when they got back, my boyfriend’s brother eyeing me suspiciously as he stirred his coffee. The strange looks between them.
That was one experience. The other ghost experience is for another story.
So up until this point, I’d had a few scary experiences with people. Perhaps one puzzling supernatural event I could write about, but really… most paranormal things were new to me.

I digress. Later, back at the apartment.

I was allergic and knew that I’d get major headaches if I drank more than two beers. I was not inebriated. I was tired—and the apartment was still… off.
It was around 2:30 a.m. That same uneasy vibration under my skin again, as if the walls were alive. I went to the kitchen and filled a glass of water. Everything felt tilted. Not wrong exactly, just like gravity wasn’t working quite the same as usual.
The floor in the kitchen was uneven in one spot, and it felt very uneven today. Like the floor had grown a bump while I was away.
The table was crooked, a calendar was crooked. A pop bottle was sitting sideways and on an angle on the counter. The fridge appeared pulled out a bit and crooked. The stove seemed crooked.
The water had a strong metallic taste.
Everything was crooked.
Was I dreaming? Was someone here?

So I did what I always did when I felt a little scared. I put on some background noise and background life.

The only DVDs I had were Finding Nemo, Shrek, and White Oleander. Something warm, familiar. Safe.
This was before Netflix. Before streaming.
The night was heavy, spring-thick. That first heat, the one that’s more anticipation and nostalgia than anything else.

And then…

I just stared at the fan.

It spun slowly, then faster. I remember the hum of it, how it blurred into the sound of Dory’s voice in the background…

Weightless. Quiet. Strange. Tired. I fell asleep.

The idea of being watched by the walls was put at bay by my exhaustion. The humdrum of the fan. “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”

I fell into a trance, exhaustion setting in, staring at the fan directly above me. My cool pillow. My eyes heavy.

I woke up on the floor, disoriented, my head closest to the closet. My body ached, and for a moment, I couldn’t remember how I had ended up here.
I tried to push myself up, but I just collapsed backward, my limbs heavy, uncooperative. Something was wrong.

My pants had been pulled down to my ankles, though my underwear remained. A wave of confusion hit me, then disgust. What the happened?

Around me, chaos.
A box—one I usually kept full of random junk—had been emptied. Batteries, an old flashlight, tangled wires, and scratched CDs were scattered across the apartment as though someone had thrown them across the room in a fit of rage.

The blankets, once tucked tightly around me, were now flung carelessly across the room, as if someone had ripped them away in haste.

The lights were on, glaring and harsh. The ceiling fan spun at high speed, the air feeling unnaturally cold. And then, I heard it—the television. Finding Nemo was playing, but it wasn’t just playing—it was stuck on a loop. That familiar, childlike chant echoed from the screen, but it wasn’t comforting. It was eerie. Repeating.

Ukachaka, ukachaka.

When I came to my senses, I realized something really, really bad had happened—or was still happening.

Internally, I was screaming. My body felt frozen. I couldn’t blink. I was too terrified to even move my eyes. Every part of me was wide awake, but paralyzed. It was like something had dragged me out of a dream and left me in its place—half-conscious, terrified, and helpless.

My head throbbed with a dull, pressing pain. I didn’t know what had happened. Something violent had occurred. I could feel it in the air. I witnessed myself as the focal point of a violent image. An out-of-body experience, really; I was frantically trying to make sense of it.

I was too afraid to look toward the closet. I knew the door was open. I hadn’t seen it with my eyes yet, but I could feel it—an unnatural cold seeping out like a draft from some unspeakable void. My skin prickled, every hair on my body standing at attention, warning me not to look.

This was in 2002. I didn’t have a cell phone then—but I could see the landline. It was across the room, tucked into the far corner, exactly opposite from where I lay on the floor. A simple thing. Just a phone. But it might as well have been miles away. I couldn’t use it.

I didn’t know if I was alone.
What if they heard me talk—or even move?
They.
Who are they?

I didn’t know if someone—something—was still inside the closet, or if perhaps someone was in the kitchen.

The thought of turning my head to the left, of shifting my eyes even a little toward the cold void behind that open door, made my entire body seize up. I couldn’t risk it. Not yet.

Something had happened here. Something was still happening.

Ukachaka, ukachaka.

I didn’t know what was going on.

I was too afraid to move. Too afraid to look inside the closet in case I locked eyes with something—someone—lurking in the dark.
My mind raced with possibilities:
Had I been chloroformed? Roofied at the bar and followed home? Or maybe nothing had happened at the bar at all, and someone had slipped in through a secret entrance, catching me completely unaware.
I had been exhausted from the bike ride… maybe I had just collapsed, and someone came in after.
Was it sunstroke? I did feel warm.
Running through my mind: Am I on medication? Birth control? Can birth control mess you up this much?
Omg, focus, my internal voice snapped, as if rolling her eyes: This is not because of birth control.

“You’re in trouble,” I heard that same voice say.

Ukachaka, ukachaka, ukachaka on the TV. Looping.
Every Ukachaka hurt my head.

I must have been lying there for at least three hours. Watching across the room for the phone. Waiting to hear footsteps come from the hall, the closet door creaking, a drawer being opened, stairs shifting.
I waited with terrified anticipation.

At last, the world outside shifted—brighter now, busier. I could hear the soft hum of early-morning activity: car doors opening, grocery carts moving on the sidewalk, cars driving by, people stirring. Movement. Life.

And for the first time, I thought: If I scream now, maybe someone would actually hear me.

It gave me just enough courage to move.
Ukachaka.

I surveyed the entire room without looking toward the closet even once.
I was too scared to look at the closet. I pretended it didn’t exist, had nothing to do with the situation I found myself in.
I convinced myself there was a rapist in this place.

Crawling, with my head still pounding, I made my way across the room and grabbed the portable phone.
I did it as quietly as I could. It probably took a few minutes, each movement deliberately stealthy and controlled. I didn’t dare call anyone yet. I was terrified that if someone was still in the apartment, they’d hear me.

I picked up the phone with a trembling hand and hid it under the blanket before pressing the “on” button, terrified it would make a loud beep.
I dialed 9-1 and hovered my finger over the last digit, ready—just in case.

Then I started checking each room.
I slowly crept toward the hallway (all the while avoiding the open closet) and hid in the early-morning shadows that flanked the hallway. The bedroom.
Holding my breath, sucking in my trembling lower lip.
What if someone’s in there? What if someone’s waiting for me to come in?
I peered in, waiting for something to stir, for someone to lunge out—the dizzying horror of locking eyes.
But there was nothing.

The kitchen. Empty.

The bathroom terrified me the most.
Not because of who might be in there, but because I didn’t want to see myself.
I was afraid of the mirror—afraid of what I might find staring back.
What if my face is covered in blood? What if there are marks on my neck? What if I’m not okay?

Candles weren’t going to help me, and it was still a little dark, but I could see that my face was fine.

Then a flash of memory: the lotion.
The last time I’d been in here, I had grabbed the lotion to soothe my thighs.
We’d gone for a long bike ride, and they were chafing. And now a new thought took shape:

Maybe… maybe I had pulled my pants down myself. Maybe I lotioned up and passed out from exhaustion.

I tried to believe it.
I wanted to believe it.

Yes! Yes! The memory of it was coming back.
I peered into the living room and saw the lotion sitting on the coffee table.
Yes!

I had one last thing to check.

The door.
The main entry door.

I made my way down the stairs slowly, stopping at the landing, staring down at the door and the chain lock.  My breathing was labored and loud now, like I had permission to finally let it out—but my fear was really taking over.
Because the outcome—either way—meant something terrifying.

If the chain was on the door… then I had a whole different problem. That would mean no one had come in or out—and something else, something unseen, had moved around the apartment.
A ghost? A hidden entrance? Something I couldn’t explain.

But if the chain wasn’t on…

Then someone had come in. Someone had followed me. Or waited for me. And then left. Which meant… I needed to go to the hospital. I needed a rape kit. I needed answers I might never be able to face.

Either way, what I found at the bottom of that landing was going to change everything and still not solve a thing.

When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I hesitated. For a moment, I even covered my eyes and peeked through my fingers.

The chain was on.

In a strange way, I was relieved. It meant I didn’t have to go to the ER, didn’t have to call a doctor, didn’t have to explain something I couldn’t even name. I could tell myself: I pulled my pants down. I put lotion on my thighs. I must’ve passed out. No one came in. No one touched me.

Unless…

Unless there was a hidden door. I thought of my landlord. I’d have to ask someone if there was a hidden door.

Unless someone was already inside when I got home?

But I couldn’t think about that. Not right now. I had a test to write. I got dressed quickly.

Ukachaka ukachaka. I turned it off. The silence was deafening. I stood there for one moment, my back turned from the closet door in complete fear. I grabbed my bag and left. In hindsight, I just didn’t want to deal with this and was looking to grasp onto reality.

On my way to school, my head was still pounding. My teeth chattered uncontrollably, like I couldn’t quite keep a grip on my body. I’d had a concussion before, and this felt familiar—but hazy. I didn’t know if I was sick, scared, or still in shock. Maybe all three.

And I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it. I felt embarrassed. Like whatever had happened, it was my fault. Or worse—that it hadn’t happened at all, and I was just crazy. I thought back to the guys in the Lake Erie cabin who really didn’t believe me when I told them I swear someone was in the room. My boyfriend just laughed at me and kissed my forehead. “Well, I’m glad you are safe.” His brother didn’t say much. Me at the table with Jamie—all our drunken friends trying to one-up her with their own stories. Yeah, I have to be careful what I say and who I talk to.

The day was bright, the pavement was hot so early in the morning. I had a million questions running through my mind. So if I wasn’t sexually assaulted, which I’m sure I was not, how did I get pulled close to the closet? Was it a man or a group of people? How would they have gotten in?

Was I sleepwalking? I’d shared enough living spaces with people over the years to know that if I did sleepwalk, there would have been signs or mentions of it previously—unless this was new.

Was there an extra door to the place? I stopped and turned back around. I was only a couple of minutes away from the property, so I went back. Later, I found out that a friend had seen me walking to school and was heading my way. He yelled hello, but I turned to go back to the property. As he approached, he said hello again, and I looked at him but said nothing. I carried on with analyzing the building.

I honestly don’t recall that, but my mind was so preoccupied with so many things that it’s conceivably true. He said I looked at him like he was a ghost and as if I was “someplace else,” which checks the shock box.

In my recollection of the events at school, I spoke to no one. My head pounded. I couldn’t focus, but I just wanted to get this test done. I remember people coughing, scribbling, sniffling, and rustling papers. Everything was so loud. The ticking of the clock. Every noise hammered at my head. Yes, this was a concussion. Another fear crossed my mind: slowness. Everything would be slow for months with a concussion. I started to panic a bit. I can’t have another concussion. No!

It’s possible people spoke to me, and I was so focused and in shock that I don’t recall any of it. I remember going into the class, pulling out a seat, writing the exam, and leaving extremely quickly. I also distinctly remember feeling like something was with me.

It clung to me all day, not like a fog, nor a shadow, but more like smelly hairspray. I couldn’t shake the feeling. It was a presence. A weight. I don’t know if it was the crash after the adrenaline, the confusion, or something darker. It’s like I could sense it before me—on the chair before sitting down—and yet still there after I glanced back, making sure I had everything.

After the test, I couldn’t go to my other classes. I was starting to crash from the high of the night. I hadn’t eaten for hours. My test was done. My thoughts went to this: I didn’t get raped. Then I’d argue with myself. There must have been a door. I have to find out about an extra door. But wait… if there is an extra door, you still need to get a test. No, I swear I pulled my pants down. I feel much more pain in my head and shoulders. But someone picked you up. But the chain was on the door. Someone picked you up. There is something messed up in that closet. But what about a door leading in?

And again, my thoughts: Potato chips. Avocado. Rape. Akachuka akachuka. Closet. I squeezed my eyes shut. The closet. Somehow, the closet story was one I was refusing to even acknowledge. Nothing happened. You got sunstroke, had a seizure, and smashed your head in an epileptic fit against the floor.

And the blanket? And the box? You kicked the box. Impossible, unless I woke up facing the other direction. You threw the blankets off because of the heat! No, also impossible. I sleep with blankets all year round. I was under a fan—I wouldn’t throw the blankets off. It was a bad nightmare. Yes. A bad nightmare.

Eventually, I ended up across the street at the grocery store, looking for avocados. They were all hard rock green. I then went to the deli and remembered: the landlord’s office was tucked into a corner, attached to the store itself. I hadn’t eaten and I didn’t order anything. This was too pressing. I caught a reflection of myself in a window. I looked like I hadn’t slept in weeks. My hair was messy. My face was puffy and pale white. I walked in, pale, worn, eyes hollow, swollen-looking.

The landlord looked up from his desk and blinked at me, concerned.

I sat down across from him and said—quietly, cautiously—
“Has anything… ever happened in that building? Do you know the history?”

He’s watching me closely, head tilted just a little, brows drawn in curiosity.

“Did something happen?” he asked. “Did you see something? Someone?”

I shook my head. “No… but my friend saw a ghost.”
That was the only thing I could say. The only piece of truth I felt safe admitting out loud.

He nodded slowly. “There have been sightings there.”

I leaned in. “Can you elaborate?”

He hesitated, shifting in his seat. “I don’t remember all the details. But this happens. People see ghosts, you know? It’s… not that unusual.”

“Do they see them on my landing?” I pressed.

“Not to my knowledge,” he said too quickly. Too carefully.

He was dodging—holding something back. Like he knew more than he was letting on but didn’t want to say it outright.

“What’s the history of that building?” I asked.

He looked at me with a long pause, then finally said, “That building was a hub for the Underground Railroad.”

I blinked. “Wait—seriously? Like, people were actually hiding there? Escaping slavery, fleeing the States?”

“Yes,” he said. “They came through there. A lot of them.”

My mind spun. So it wasn’t just any old house. It was a hub. A sanctuary. A well-guarded secret. A place worth fleeing to.

“And the stairs,” I said slowly, “there are four stairs leading up to my apartment—but they’re enclosed. Not open stairs with railings. They’re boarded in. Why so high up like that?”

“I don’t know,” he said, moving his eyes sideways. Averting my glare.

“Is it possible there is a secret entryway to this building, like, say, from underground?”

“No. Not possible. That building has been sealed.”

“Thanks, I was just wondering,” I said and tapped the table with my hand before getting up to leave. He nodded slowly, still avoiding my eyes. I turned and walked out, and through the long window facing his desk, I looked back. He was now watching me intently. I couldn’t identify that look. Was it fear? Caution? Surprise? I looked away quickly, surprised to have locked eyes with him for once.

I kept thinking about it, even after I left. That look. His face. Those boxed-in staircases. All that space beneath them. Rooms, maybe. Hidden rooms. Hidden people. Lives in the shadows. Later on, I started looking into it on my own, researching. And yeah—people had been in there. Lots of people. Moving through, hiding, praying, surviving. Some must’ve been sick. Some probably didn’t make it. Some practiced magic.

All that emotion. All that fear.

But oddly, it made me feel calmer.

Because I more information. I hadn’t been assaulted sexually by a man. I was sure I had pulled my pants down myself. But what exactly did happen? Also, was it distrust I saw in the landlords’ eyes? Could I trust that the place was sealed? So many questions. What I know for sure:

Something happened. I pulled my pants down. I wound up on the floor. The light was on! Did I leave it on? My mind raced, yes, I fell asleep with the light on. Something threw me to the ground.

Increasingly my thoughts started to rest on the possibility: It was not a person.

I left the grocery store. The buzz of fluorescent lights and people and produce bins and loud cart noises was too much. I was feeling nauseous and couldn’t handle one more minute of all the commotion. I hadn’t slept and I had some urgent nightmare to deal with. The day was blinding—hot. One of those days where the pavement exhales hot air, where the air smells like car tires and scorched concrete. A hot dog stand nearby doing a fundraiser—smoke twirling its way up into the sky. The light hurt my eyes and head.

I crossed the street slowly, eyes fixed on that upstairs window—the extra window. The one that didn’t belong. The one on the left. I stood on the sidewalk, staring.

I live here too, I thought.

I don’t know if it was possession or just pride. Maybe it was a refusal to cower. Maybe it was madness—fueled by exhaustion, confusion, a need for control. But something in me snapped. Confidence. Defiance. Rage. Shock. Disbelief. 

Don’t go back in, I thought. Call the police. And say what? I wondered.

I marched back in.

Up the stairs.

But I did cower. I refused to even look at the living room for fear of seeing my stuff strewn about—my blankets, or something worse. A person? A man? A shadow that moves? A monster? Iopted to avoid that part of my place.

Into the kitchen I went. I was so annoyed at how crooked everything was.

I started frantically moving everything back into its place—the fridge, the stove, the table.

The bump on the floor was back to “normal size”… perhaps I imagined that.

I slammed cupboard doors. Slammed the fridge shut. Stomped around. Turned the water on full pressure. Let the faucet run way longer than necessary. Then almonds—grabbed a bag like I was snatching victory from the pantry. I went onto the balcony, sat in the sun, and ate them slowly, the crunching really loud in my head. I washed them down with ginger ale.

The closet, still untouched. That black void. A huge, giant question mark took over my soul. The curiosity, the weight, and the fear of it were too much.

Even outside, on a beautiful warm spring day—sunlight on my face—the thought of that closet made me freeze up. I felt sick. Like a deep hollow pit in my stomach. Similar to the feeling of having to run a race: nervous, not sure how prepared I am, but I’m here and I need to do it. Except this time, unlike a race, I could die or something really bad happen. 

But I couldn’t avoid it forever.

This is my home. I had to face it.

So I walked into the living room.

The closet was darker than anything else in the apartment. The wood looked black, like it had been burned or painted over in a dark, dark brown or black. And the wall I’d pried open before—the one with the sliver of light bleeding through—I had sealed it shut again, though quickly and rather flimsily when I rushed out of there.

I stood there, facing the closet—but not quite looking into it. I was about four feet from it, arms crossed. Terrified to get any closer. That’s when I noticed it: the smell.

Must. Rust. Something old and sick. Like rotting iron.

And the taste… the metallic taste. It was in my mouth again. It had been there faintly before, but now it was overpowering. Tangy. Almost bloody. Like biting a penny or breathing the air of a room where someone’s been welding too long.

I retreated backwards onto the futon. I sat there cautiously at first, staring at the closet door. Then, I put one foot on the coffee table, my arms still crossed tightly beside me. Something told me to just sit here—to watch. I was terrified, but I tried to hide it, tried to ignore the frantic pulse in my chest. I truly felt like I could trust this guidance. It felt safe.

Then a breeze came through the open window behind me. Willow branches feathering the windowpane lightly.

Not a gust.

Just a whisper.

The kind of breeze that would barely rustle a sheet of paper indoors.

And somehow… that breeze was enough.

The closet door slammed shut. Violently. Like it had been waiting for this moment. Waiting for me to see what it was trying to tell me.

I was terrified—but I was also… relieved.

Because somewhere deep in my gut, in that place where truth nudges logic, I knew that slam wasn’t random. It was a warning.

A final, clear-as-day message:

You have no business ever opening this door again.

It wanted me to see it be slammed shut.

And I did.

Avez-vous compris?

I did understand. “Yes,” I said out loud.

I was shaking. Sitting on my futon like a child who had just been scolded by the universe itself. In french, no less.  An ode to the authority in my youth. My mind was racing, searching for something solid, something to anchor me.

My headache was dissipating, and with it, a strange flush of calm settled over me. I don’t think it was a concussion after all—just stress, maybe extreme pressure. But even as the pain faded, something darker lingered. I started to spiral into the aftermath. Who would I talk to? Who could I tell? If ever… if anyone. What could I even say? I don’t even know what happened here. Still.

Just then, my phone rang.

The sudden noise shattered the silence. I jumped, my mind snapping back into reality, lost in a tangled mess of fear and confusion. The phone’s shrill tone felt like an intrusion— it imposed itself right in my brain.

Jamie—my friend. Jamie, who saw the ghost. The ghost!

THE GHOST! How could I have forgotten that?

There was a ghost witnessed here. OMG.

Jamie—who I had laughed off.

Jamie—who was scared, who had nearly cried because of what she felt in that apartment. And I didn’t care. I didn’t care that she was scared. I didn’t care that I was living with ghosts. I just didn’t care.

I didn’t try to understand it. I brushed it off like it was nothing. I didn’t want to burden her, but deep down, I knew she was the one person I could speak to without fear of judgment. She saw the ghost! There was a ghost sighted here. It didn’t even come up in my thoughts or memory. And now, I understood exactly what she’d felt—maybe even more.

Can we meet? I need to talk to someone.

About what?

Can we meet in person? Please?

She agreed, sensing my desperation—my need to speak face-to-face, unable to put the words together over the phone, especially

Not in my place. In hindsight, I think my words were choppy, fearful—like I couldn’t even string together a coherent thought. She later admitted she knew something was wrong even at “hello” and that she had been thinking about me in a rather intent way.

I stayed at hers for a few weeks, letting the distance from my apartment give me some space to breathe. She connected me with the student Aboriginal counselor—a man who practiced home saging and spirit work. When I sat down with him and told him everything, he didn’t even flinch. No surprise. No judgment. His stillness, the way he silently regarded me, made it clear: he knew exactly what I was talking about.

He knew of the building. He had been there before, worked on other files. The moment I mentioned my apartment, his expression hardened.

He had been in my space.

When I asked him to elaborate on what he’d seen, his response was swift, sharp: My job is to clarify the space, not hold onto spiritual energy.

The weight of his words settled between us like a cold fog. I thought of my mom’s insistence not to speak of spirits, her warnings to avoid talking about such things.

I moved back in after two weeks. But when I did, I felt nothing. No sense of being watched, no eerie energy hanging in the air. I was cautious and perhaps jumpy at first, but it was as if the building was just a shell, empty. I stayed for a few more weeks before I left that town for good.

The Aboriginal healer had told me that the saging was a peace offering for the spirits, but something told me that whatever lingered in that building had long since gone silent.

Looking back on this experience—

What hit me hardest, though, beyond the shock and the immediate unknown, was the crushing isolation that some people endure when they face something like this. My ordeal lasted maybe 24 hours—give or take a few weeks after the ghost sighting, the strange extra window, and all that came with it. But the worst part—the scariest part—happened in a single window of 24 hours. That brief moment when reality buckles, and you are left in an abyss of questions, with no one to turn to. You can’t even call the police ant that reality shatters your security even more. 

Some people live in that abyss for years. They are gaslit, ridiculed, silenced. Their experiences, their truths, dismissed as fantasy. The more I thought about it, the more I understood how easy it is to lose your mind in that kind of isolation. To feel like you’re standing on the edge of sanity, that something is on fire but no one will believe you if you say it. 

If I didn’t know Jamie believed in ghosts—who would I have told? Maybe I’d have mentioned it to my family, casually, on the phone. “Interesting… wow…” they’d say, and that would be the end of it. That’s all you get when you try to explain something like this to people who don’t believe. No understanding, no validation. Just words that sound empty.

It’s almost a curse, isn’t it? Its so big but you need to keep it small. My best friends—they don’t believe in ghosts. When I tried to explain what had happened to one of them, someone I had known since childhood, she just… didn’t care. She thought it was too outlandish, too bizarre to even entertain. Her disinterest, her inability to even hear me, was a second blow.

Without someone like Jamie in my life, without that one person who could sit with me, listen to me, and truly believe me, I may have been lost. My entourage may have whispered about me, about how I’d “lost my mind.” Here we go with this “ghost story”… For years, when I told this story, I stopped at the extra room I found and feeling watched. I hid the other telling details.

I’ve seen those people in documentaries. Sitting stiff in front of cameras, hands clenched, eyes wide with fear. They talk about shadows in the corner, knocking sounds in the dark, footsteps on stairs—things that seem mild on the surface but have torn them apart. They’re visibly shaken, even when their experiences sound small compared to mine. I used to think the trauma came from the event itself, the moment the boundary between the living and the dead gets blurred. But I was wrong. Modern psychology has determined that PTSD is not the result of having lived through trauma. It is the result of knowing that someone (and in this case, something) wants to hurt you.

The real trauma isn’t the hauntings. It’s the silence. The potetial ridicule. The way your reality could be dismissed, invalidated, as if your perception—your truth—doesn’t matter. And when you have to face something this dark, this unexplainable, all alone, the weight of that denial, of that rejection, can likely crush even the most resilient folk. I was lucky and came out unscathed emotionally because my ordeal was short-lived and I had support. I do not wish anything like this on my worst enemy. Most of the details in this story are factual and written to the best of my recollection. The house is located in Lindsay, Ontario, a major known location for ghost sightings.