Have I told ya'll that I have ghosts in my pad? Cuz I do. Last night, one of them slammed the hall closet door.

Let me 'splain...

My apartment building was built in the 30s. I have no knowledge of it's history. However, I think my particular apartment is haunted by three ghosts...or whatever you want to call them.

I live on the second floor. I have both my front door and a back door off of the kitchen. At night, I will often hear heavy footsteps (presumably male) coming up the back steps. The steps are wooden and of course old and you could here an ant crawling up those stairs. This ghost (or whatever) gets to the top and stops. Whoever it is doesn't go back down the stairs, nor does he come in (thank God). The footsteps just stop at the top. When I first moved in, I heard him rather often. Then he petered out and now I rarely hear him at all, but I did about a week ago. I don't like this ghost very much. I've never seen him, but he gives me the willies.

The second one is also male, probably like 12 - 13 years old (don't ask me how I know. I just do). I saw him once, standing by my bed. I was kind of half-asleep, woke up and saw him and said, out loud: "What are you doing in here?" Then he disappeared. Since I never saw him again and since this first sighting happened while I was half-asleep, I really just put it down to my imagination and my being overly-sensitive because of all the weird occurrences happening in my pad...until I saw him again like two weeks ago. Again by my bed. And I wasn't asleep this time - just laying down, reading. I rolled over and there he were. He disappeared, directly.

This kid doesn't spook me, but I must say that it's rather uncomfortable when I think about the fact that there may or may not be a 13-year-old boy in my bedroom. I don't care which dimension he's living in - he's seeing me nekkid and fooling around with my boyfriend and whatnot. Eew. And where are his parents? Don't they know he's a tad young to be spying on Karen's X-Rated activites?

OK, the real pestery (and I mean that in a fun way...even though "pestery" is so not a word) ghostie is a little girl. She's probably like eight years old, maybe a little younger. She tends to hang out in my hallway, living room and sometimes bathroom. I've never really seen her, full on; at least not like I have the boy (her brother, perhaps?). I do get glimpses of her in the hallway, which is where I think she is most often...I think I get glimpses...

From the day I moved in to my rad pad, I thought something funky was going on in the hallway. It just felt...off. Other people claim to feel it, too. Now, whenever I come home I put my purse, keys and sunglasses on the same little console table inside the door. Shortly after I moved in, my keys would at times go missing - like once every few days. I would search for them all over the pad and find them in strange places - like the bathroom or in a different place in the living room. I just thought I was daffy and losing my marbles, forgetting where I was putting stuff.

Then I lost my gloves.

(Yes, I live in Southern California and I wear gloves anyway. I have to. I get cold when it's like 70 degreees out and my hands worst of all.)

I tore my pad apart looking for these gloves. I was going to dinner, it was flippin cold out and I didn't want my hands to freeze because they may be touching the face of my dinner date, later. You know, a gal's gotta be prepared for these eventualities. No luck. I found no gloves. I tore my hair out, trying to remember where I may have left them, but I knew I hadn't left them anywhere but in the pockets of my jacket, which is where I always leave them...of course, my jacket is kept in the hall closet.

Three days later, I found them...sitting neatly as you please on the back of my sofa.

I know I did not leave them there. Even if I had I would have found them. They were plain as freakin day, sitting there.

That was when I started thinking that perhaps I wasn't quite as daffy as one would imagine.

So I started talking to her; just saying hello when I get home and good-bye in the morning. I know, it's just weird. However, I also asked her to stop hiding my keys because she was making me late for work sometimes. She's not hidden my keys since.

Not that she's been quiet, though.

I like to burn candles. For lots of reasons, not the least of which is that we all look better by candlelite. I also burn them in the bathroom. That reason has nothing to do with what I look like.

So a couple of days I came home from work to find the candle in the bathroom burned completely down. I was startled, thinking I'd left it burning that morning and boy howdy I need to be careful about leaving candles burning all damn day if I want to have a pad to come home to, ya know?

However...one Sunday I was getting ready to go to my folks place for Sunday dinner (my whole family gets together like once a month for dinner. Yes, it would appear that I grew up in a Norman Rockwell painting). I did my bidness which required the lit candle. Afterward, I plugged in my hair styling tools, blew out the candle and left the room for a few minutes. When I came back, the candle was lit. Hmm...coulda sworn I'd blown that puppy out. I blew it out; made sure it was out this time. I again had to leave the potty-room for a moment. I came back and low and behold - the candle was lit again.

I've decided to stop assuming that I'm a wackadoo when bizarre things happen in my apartment.

So last night I washed a load of "delicates" after I got home. Since they were "delicates", they were hung to dry. I have no convenient place to hang my "delicates" in this pad, so when I need to hang laundry it kind of gets dispursed throughout the place. The rad pad ends up looking like a pricey refugee camp. Anyway, my point is that I was hanging laundry throughout the pad and opened the hall closet door a tad, thinking I would hang something on the door handle. I turned to go get something to hang and BANG. Closet door slammed.

No, it wasn't a breeze. This pad used to have hardwood floors. Some genius decided long ago to carpet it (damn him! I love hardwood floors). This means I have doors that are used to moving only over wood floors, not an inch of carpet. Some of my doors get stuck and can't open or shut completely, without a shove. The closet door is the worst - I've never been able to open it completely. My point is that no breeze, not even gale force winds would ever be able to move this door. It must be shoved.

Well, somebody shoved it and it wasn't yours truly.

I guess she got sick of my hanging my "delicates" in her hallway.

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