The Haunted Apartment

On my last post I told you a story of an event that happened to my dad when he was a young man in Mexico. This time I will tell you of my experiences living in an apartment that I believe was haunted. This happened in San Antonio, Texas (which, by the way, is the greatest place to live bar none). My family and I lived in an apartment complex for years. I am going to withhold the name of the apartments, but those of you who know me personally will know exactly where it is. It is the events that occurred that fueled my interest in the paranormal.

Things started slow enough, and I have to say that nothing ever felt threatening. We would hear strange noises which we credited to old plumbing or the faulty AC system. Then we started noticing small items disappearing, like the salt shaker from the kitchen table. But when a salt shaker goes missing, you don’t blame a ghost. You simply assume that someone else picked it up and forget about it. Except that other things followed; they would disappear and then reappear in the exact spot where they were. Again, I know what you’re thinking: someone used it, then put it back where it belonged. It’s easy to put things like that behind you and go on with your daily lives. But other things soon followed that could not be easily explained away.

Now, growing up in a Mexican household, we constantly had relatives from Mexico come to visit and stay with us. Sometimes they stayed a week or two, other times a few months. I have an uncle named Jorge who would visit us frequently and stay a few days. When he would stay with us the couch was his bed and in the summer my brother and I would put blankets and pillows on the ground in the living room and have us a campout with my uncle. During the school year when everyone left for school and work my uncle would move to one of the beds and sleep a while longer. One day he told us that something very strange happened after everyone had left the house. He said that after he had fallen asleep in my parent’s bed, he began to feel as if someone was on top of him. He reported the feeling of someone rolling over him. By the time he let us know, it had happened more than once. He also told us that every now and then he could feel someone pulling the covers off him. At first none of us knew quite what to think of what my uncle Jorge was telling us. No one else had experienced any of this and we wondered if it was due to jetlag. Well, my questions were answered one night during one of our “campouts.” My mom was taking food to work the next morning and before going to bed said that she might be waking me to help her carry stuff out to the car. I agreed and we all went to bed. I was fast asleep when I was suddenly awoken by someone tapping my arm. I woke and pulled the covers off my head expecting the lights to be on and my mom standing there. Instead what I saw was darkness and all I could hear was my uncle and my brother snoring. No one was there. I covered up and went back to sleep.

Things got really interesting when the television in the living room began acting up. One morning my dad said that we needed to make sure we turned off the TV in the living room before going to bed. He said that one of us had left it on a couple of times. My brother and I were sure that we had never left it on so we just said, “OK” and thought that would be it. Then one night sometime after midnight we heard my dad storm out of the bedroom and began yelling that it was too late to be up watching TV. He stopped and quieted down after seeing my brother and me coming from our bedroom. He said that he had heard someone turn on the TV and had assumed that one of us had gotten up during the night. The TV then began acting up during the day. The channel would change on its own, or the set would turn off. One day I came home from school and my brother was already home. As I walked in the door the TV turned itself on. I asked him if he had the remote hidden behind his back, but he didn’t. I walked over, turned the TV off and turned around. As soon as I did, it turned itself on again. I flipped it back off, and it turned on yet again. After turning it off a third time, it turned on and immediately the channels began to flip. I reached behind it and unplugged it. Now, the skeptics might tell you that there must have been some electrical problem with the TV that could explain away what was happening. Fair enough, except that after we moved out, the TV never once did any of those things. (In fact, I still have that TV today.)

Now a TV with a mind of its own might be the thing that would normally stand out in a story like this, but not this time. There is one more incident that stands out for me. It happened on a Saturday morning. My mom had to work that day and it would just be the men of the house. I was the first to get up and I headed for the bathroom. As I stood there washing my hands I saw someone walk by the door and head to the kitchen. I didn’t turn to see who it was but assumed it was either my dad or my brother. I finished washing my hands and headed to the kitchen. No one was there. I looked in my parents’ bedroom and there was my dad, in bed, snoring. Back in our bedroom my brother was still fast asleep in his bed. Who did I see walk by? I don’t know, but SOMEONE walked by the door.

When I tell most people about the haunted apartment, they ask how we were able to live there that long. Like I said, none of it ever felt threatening. One more thing, my brother would constantly hear someone calling his name. The rest of us would be in the kitchen and he’d come running from the bedroom asking, “What? Did someone call me?” But none of us had called to him. This happened more than once and after a while it became something we dismissed.