Haunted Apartment Chills Occupants and Neighbors

Near the shore of Lake Pontchartrain in Old Mandeville is a set of ramshackle apartment buildings with a decidedly seaside feel. It is a close knit little community and many of the residents have lived there for years. Apartments stand in blocks of three or four; some are two bedrooms, some three. The entire place can’t be more than 20 years old.

But one particular apartment has managed to rack up quite a history in that short amount of time. The story goes that apartment number 4A is most definitely haunted.

Approximately eight years ago it was occupied by a middle-aged lady and her paraplegic son. Confined to a wheelchair due to injuries he had sustained in a car crash several years earlier, the son was limited to navigating the small upstairs area of two bedrooms and a bathroom, day after day, while his mother had free run of the entire apartment.

As is natural in cases of immobility, the young man soon sank into a deep depression. Despite the good care and attention of his devoted mother, the man became more and more distant, withdrawing into himself and his own private world. When he would speak it would only be to say with a sigh that he wished he could “just walk downstairs and out the front door.”

Eventually, his mind wracked with depression and guilt, the young man gave in to his own self-pity. Taking a hunting gun from a rack on the wall - a weapon that he had previously used to hunt deer and other wildlife - he now turned the instrument of death on himself, with dire consequences. The shotgun blast through his mouth shattered the top of his skull and spilled his brains all over his bedroom wall. The blast was so potent that it actually punctured a hole in the wall in the adjoining apartment. Amazingly, however, the blast did not kill the tragic young man right away and his mother came home from errands to find him slumped in his wheelchair but still clinging to life. An ambulance was summoned and in a strange way the young man got his wish: he finally went downstairs and out the front door. He died en route to a local hospital. His mother, naturally disinclined to live in the apartment that had seen so much of her son’s suffering and despair, moved out shortly after his death.

According to sources, a quiet, dark haired woman with the interesting sideline of being a Pagan priestess next occupied the apartment. She apparently made little effort to hide her beliefs, but she was not what anyone would call a “mixer” and kept mostly to herself. Other residents would see her come and go with a nod of hello or goodbye as the case may be, but no one really got to know her. As it turned out there was barely any time for anyone to get to know her. She didn’t remain in the apartment long. Within a year she had tendered her notice to move, and was gone in less than a week after that. Those who did know her better than the rest reported that she told them strange tales that led them to conclude that she, at least, believed she was being driven out of the apartment by an angry ghost. “He’s angry, and he comes and goes,” she is reported to have said. Some residents didn’t find this surprising at all, though it is unknown whether anyone shared the history of the apartment with the woman while she was there.

In the high demand area of Old Mandeville the apartment did not remain vacant for long and soon a young couple settled in with their toddler daughter. It was then that events in the apartment became really strange, and soon they would not be confined to just that one apartment.

From the beginning the young wife, Kate, was uncomfortable. Her husband Brent worked long hours at a local superstore and she was forced to remain home alone with just their toddler for company. From the outset she always had the feeling she was never alone. This was especially apparent when she would take her daily shower. While the water was running she was certain she could hear someone whistling in the hallway outside. She could never make out a particular tune, although it varied. She experimented with the faucet, thinking it was a problem with the showerhead, but even during long baths, she would hear the distant sound of whistling and an unidentifiable tune.

Then she began to notice the strange behavior of her daughter, Savannah. Left alone in her playpen while Kate worked nearby, Savannah would carry on and interact with something that Kate could not see, but had the distinct feeling was there nonetheless. Savannah would sometimes roll around as if she were being tickled and squeal with delight, reaching in the air for an unseen object above her. Kate, knowing that children have very active imaginations, at first didn’t put too much stock in all this. But soon Savannah’s cooing and playing would take a frightening turn.

Folding clothes in her bedroom while Savannah slept in her crib in the next room, Kate was bolted to her daughter’s bedside by screams of pain. Rushing to her, Kate found Savannah crying inconsolably but there was at first no obvious reason or cause. That night, while bathing Savannah, Kate noticed what appeared to be raised pinch marks on her daughter’s back and thighs. Unfortunately, Kate assumed a culprit and this one wasn’t supernatural.

Brent was a hard working man at his blue-collar job, but everyone knew he had a temper. The long hours in the superstore environment were something he dreaded but resigned himself to in an effort to sustain his young family. Brent had a habit of playing too rough with little Savannah and now Kate thought she had evidence of his particular form of “stress relief.” Brent denied ever harming the toddler but Kate was unconvinced until the time when Brent was sent out of the state for a week of training and the marks appeared again on a distraught Savannah.

At around this time the haunting became even more dramatic. Kate would turn her back on her kitchen sink and hear the water turn on behind her back. Folded clothes placed neatly near the staircase would be strewn on the floor when Kate wasn’t looking, and not just knocked over but literally dispersed all over the room. Toilets flushed upstairs when she and her daughter were alone downstairs; cabinet doors out of reach of Savannah were found open and items moved around. Once a five-pound bag of potatoes went missing for two weeks, and was found returned, neatly in the spot in the pantry where Kate had looked several times.

Of course Brent thought Kate was crazy, but soon he would have his own encounter with the angry spirit. One unusually cold winter’s night, the last thing Brent did was take the trash to the dumpster and come in to lock up for the night. He recalled locking the front door deadbolts and placing a towel at the doorsill to keep out the winter draft. Then he settled in on the sofa to watch TV where he shortly fell asleep; Kate and Savannah, now sleeping together in Kate’s double bed, were safely upstairs. Brent awoke a couple of hours later shivering with cold. Thinking at first that there was a problem with the central heating system, he was shocked to discover his front door unlocked and wide open. The thought of intruders came to mind and Brent made a quick search of the apartment. Nothing unusual was found and Kate and the baby were still sleeping soundly. Something had unlocked the heavy deadbolts on the front door and left it open to the night while Brent slept just feet away. There was no other explanation than a supernatural occurrence.

Brent suggested the family get a dog. A golden cocker spaniel was added to the home, but this did little to deter the growing feeling of uneasiness. In fact, sometimes the dog caused more concern when he would bark at empty doorways or jump into the air as if trying to retrieve unseen objects - just as Savannah had done.

After several months of nearly continuous activities, the family’s patience had become strained and they decided a vacation was in order. Before departing for a weekend out of state with relatives, they asked their neighbor, a single mother with a young daughter, if she would check on things while they were gone and wouldn’t mind taking care of their new pet for the weekend. The neighbor readily agreed and the family set out for their trip.

The neighbor dutifully fed the dog and allowed it to exercise on its chain all day between the two apartments. When evening came, she put out food and then went to put the dog inside to secure him for the night. She found it unusual that the normally playful pup hesitated and lapsed into dramatics at the doorway of his own house, but she shrugged it off as its reluctance to settle down and gently persuaded the animal to go inside. When she returned to let the dog out one more time before bed, the dog seemed agitated and the neighbor began to feel guilty for leaving the dog alone, so she took the animal back to her apartment and let it sleep there for the night.

The next day passed in much the same way with the pooch spending his time playing on his lead chain for most of the time. When evening came he was again reluctant to go inside his own apartment but this time he had to be forced. The neighbor found this strange and settled in her mind that after the dog had time to wind down she would bring him back to her apartment as she had the night before.

She put her own child to bed and went to her bedroom to read a little while. Her wall adjoined the haunted apartment at the very spot where the rifle shot from the young man’s suicide attempt had punched through; it showed in her apartment as a dollop of plaster, smoothed and painted over.

At first she thought she imagined the dog howling. There was a faint whimpering and she realized that the dog must have gone upstairs to sleep on the bed in the empty bedroom adjoining hers (he had a habit of doing this when left alone there). She went back to reading but suddenly jolted up to the sound of yelping and howling coming from the other side.

Instead of rushing down and over to the next apartment, the neighbor was transfixed with unexpected fear. She heard the animal yowl and begin to run, and then SHE HEARD FOOTSTEPS CHASING HIM. Familiar with the exact set up of the apartment, she could, in her mind’s eye, envision the pet running down the stairs, and she actually HEARD footsteps chasing the animal as it howled in terror. Then, with her mind’s eye, she followed the howling dog all the way across the living room and into the downstairs bathroom where it yowled and yelped in fear.

Shocked out of fear by concern for the dog, the neighbor advanced to the top of her own stairs. The dog was still yowling in the downstairs bathroom. Fearful that someone had broken into the house, the neighbor quickly dressed and went to fetch the couple that lived in the apartment opposite hers.

Now accompanied and armed with the deadbolt key, they opened the door to the haunted apartment and barely caught the dog as it bolted toward them. Slowly they advanced inside. The apartment was as cold as ice, but nothing seemed disturbed and there was no evidence of intruders.

Needless to say, they locked the apartment and the dog slept soundly in the neighbor’s apartment another night.

When the young couple returned the following day, two strange things were revealed. On her way down her stairs to meet them, the helpful neighbor’s attention was drawn to the white wall of her own living room. It was very high, with cathedral ceilings that soared at least seventeen feet above the floor. Amazingly, halfway up the wall, and well out of the reach of a normal individual, were five deep gouges in the wall: It looked exactly as if a large claw had scraped across the wall that joined her apartment to the haunted one next door.

Not knowing what to make of this new find, and with her young neighbor knocking at the back door, she went out to speak to her. When Kate asked her neighbor if anything strange had happened, she was told of the events that had happened that weekend. Kate, now armed with information, went into her apartment and came back out.

“Well,” she said, “everything looks fine, except every picture on every wall is completely sideways.”

The neighbor followed her inside and gaped at the walls. Kate had told the truth. Every picture on the wall was hanging sideways, AND in every frame of Savannah alone the photograph itself was ALSO tilted UNDER THE GLASS!

“I don’t know why he did it, or why he wants it like that,” said Kate, “but if that’s what he wants, it can STAY that way.”

Within a month, the young family had moved out. But the terror didn’t stop there.

EPILOGUE

For the helpful neighbor, the real terror began, because now she resided in an apartment that adjoined a newly UN-occupied haunted apartment.

At first things were quiet from that side. But on more than one occasion, late at night, she was awakened by the sounds of footsteps up and down the stairs next door, and one night, lay petrified in bed as every door - including cabinets - banged incessantly for almost a half hour in the completely empty apartment. Finally, one night, the front door was found standing open by the apartment manager. No sign of forced entry and no intruders were found.

When all events were considered together, the neighbor came to the conclusion that the young man who had spent such a miserable time in that apartment came and went as he could not in life, but that he was no less angry or distraught even in the afterlife.

The apartment was finally occupied again, but by that time the neighbor, too, had had her fill of the haunting and moved a short time later.