8.22.2008

More Than a Human Visitor

Informant: Female/24/Japanese-European ancestry
Location: Makiki, Oahu

One sunny afternoon Jane was doing her laundry while her roommate, Sara, took a nap in the next room. The laundry room was next door to their apartment, so on this particular day the door was unlocked. Jane retrieved her clothes from the dryer and went to her room to fold her clothes, but she forgot to lock the door.

Once in her room, she thought she saw something in the hall in the corner of her eye, but when she looked up, nothing was there. After a few minutes she heard Sara talking to herself. She figured Sara was just having another odd dream since she was saying “Hello? Who are you? What is your name little girl?” Jane didn’t pay any attention to it and kept folding. A few minutes later she heard Sara say, “No not on that. Let’s go watch it in the living room on the tv.”
That got Jane’s attention.

She put her clothes down and was about to go into Sara’s room when Sara appeared in the hall with a nine year old girl carrying a DVD. She was guiding the girl into the living room and asked Jane why she let the little girl into the apartment. Jane couldn’t believe the little girl was there and said she didn’t let her in. Just as Sara got the little girl to the living room, the girl lost interest and walked out of the apartment without a word. Sara followed her into the hall and saw a woman calling for her. They assumed the woman was the child’s mother. She apologized for the girl barging in like she did.

They shut the door and started to talk about what happened. Neither one could believe it. Apparently when the girl walked into Sara’s room, she went straight for her computer to play a DVD. It was odd because it seemed like the girl knew exactly where to go in an apartment she had never been in. She never said a word to Sara either. They decided to forget the incident and write it off as a bazaar day.

Six months went by, and the building went up for sale. Jane and Sara had to move out. They needed a break from packing and cleaning, so they went to a friend’s house to relax. Somehow the conversation was focused on ghost stories before everyone was about to leave. By the end of the conversation no one wanted to go home alone, and Jane and Sara were glad they had each other.

On the drive home, Sara asked Jane if she ever felt weird in their apartment. Jane asked her what she meant. Sara said that she felt a bad presence in the apartment. She started to notice it around the time the little girl appeared in our apartment. When she was in the bathroom in the morning, she often didn’t want to wash her face because she didn’t want to close her eyes. Or when she was in the shower at night she didn’t want to close her eyes, and sometimes felt like someone was on the other side of the curtain. The shower curtain that they had was opaque so she could tell no one was there, but she felt like someone…someone bad…was in the bathroom with her.

Jane just stared at her in shock and Sara tried to convince her that she wasn’t crazy, and went on to tell her that when her sister visited a few months after they had moved in, her sister had the same experience, and said that she didn’t feel comfortable in the apartment. After a few moments, Jane told Sara that she knew exactly what she was talking about and felt the same things. Jane however thought it was because it was her first time living on her own, and the times that she felt those things, Sara wasn’t at home. So Jane shrugged the bad feelings off as just being afraid of being alone at night.

By this time the two roommates were close to their apartment, but neither one wanted to go back at this point. So Jane kept on driving. Sara continued to tell her that she felt a really bad feeling in her room. She often felt a presence in her closet, a female presence. She even admitted that one night when Jane was away for the weekend, she was so afraid of sleeping in her room that she slept in Jane’s bed. She felt safe in Jane’s room. Jane told Sara that many times she would pick up the mail or have something she wanted to leave for Sara and went to put it in her room, but always felt like she shouldn’t be in there. It was just an eerie bad feeling. Jane shrugged if off thinking it was because it was Sara’s room and she just didn’t want to be invading her privacy. But Sara told her that was how she felt nearly every day stepping into her own room.

Sara said that every now and then when she woke up in the morning, she would feel a pressing on her chest and she wouldn’t be able to move, get up, or say anything. Eventually she found out that if she swore out loud or even in her mind, it would go away. And sure enough, every time she did that when she felt pressed, it would almost instantly stop. The two girls agreed that they felt the bad feelings only in the bathroom, Sara’s room, and the path that led between it.

It was really late and Jane was too tired to drive anymore, so the two roommates went home and did their best to forget what happened. They couldn’t believe that they each felt this way for months but never talked about it until that night. But they were sure glad that they would be moving in a few weeks.