Personal Experiences

From: David E. Johnson david.johnson@round.com
Story type: Ghost
Location: Chicago, Il
Source: Email Submission

This is a personal experience that occured in Chicago, Il, around 1982. My grandmother had died a few months before we moved into an apartment building that was at least 40 years old. We"d been there for a while, but each time I had gone down into the basement (which was under a former store that occupied the first floor of the apartment building), I had always had the feeling that I was being watched, and that someone was in the basement with me. It felt like it was a male presence, in his mid-thirties, with dark hair and a mustache, and he was always just behind a set of stairs that came down from the side of the first floor. It felt like he was peeking around the side of the steps.

One night, I was in our apartment watching TV, and my brother was asleep in the bedroom which was in a direct line with where I was sitting, so I could easily see into the room. Suddenly, the light in the room came on (it was a suspended light fixture, with the pull-string type of switch). I called out and asked my brother if he was awake. No answer. I went into the room, and found him sound asleep. I turned the light off, then jiggled the switch to see if it had been partially pulled. Nothing. There was no short in the light either, as nothing happened when I jiggled the light fixture.

A short time later, the next door neighbor (next apartment) came over, and while we were talking (again, near the TV set), the light came on again. I asked him if he saw that, he said yes, and I told him that it had happened a short time before he had arrived. Again, I went in to check, and found everything the same as before. I could tell by my brother"s breathing that he was asleep.

A few weeks after the light incident, I was in the apartment next to mine, having coffee. It was during the winter, about 2:30 A.M, I was wearing a sweater, and there was a space heater in use about 10 feet away from where I was sitting at the kitchen table. I suddenly started shivering quite intensely, despite the coffee, sweater and heat. My friends asked what was wrong, and I only answered that I was freezing. Right after I started shivering, the front door to the apartment popped open, even though it had a spring-activated lock that required a person to twist the knob and hold it in that position in order to open the door. We got up and checked the hallway, but there was no one there, and no breeze was felt.

After these two occurrences, I"ve not had any more experiences like these.