As much as I love to blame my house for being haunted, I am seriously considering the possibility that it is most likely just me. I am sure everyone has paranormal experiences but it seems like I have enough to, well, blog about. And that is strange. Before we bought our house we rented a two bedroom apartment in the center of our town. If anyone is familiar with the town that I live in, they know that one of the most haunted and well-known attractions has always been a theater downtown. Actually rated one of the most haunted buildings in SC. There are many stories and legends about the theater but none that I have ever taken to heart or feared. It was actually a tradition when I was little that my grandmother take my cousins and me to the performances there. We always had front row seats and I have always believed this contributed to my love for the arts. I never felt uncomfortable there, although it was always freezing cold. Looking back, it is one of the most memorable things about the theater and there is probably a logical reason behind it, it is just always something that stuck out to me.
The alleyway to the right is the one that we shared with the theater. Our windows looked
out onto the murals painted on the walls. And they were way creepy, by the way.
The apartment that we rented was amazing. It was huge, with extremely tall ceilings, and interior brick walls. By the time we moved in, Maycen was not even a year old yet. The only downfall to this apartment was that we shared an alleyway with the theater. We had 2 windows in the entire apartment. One window was in Maycen's room and one in ours. The set up was strange and I will try to explain it the best way that I can. Since the ceilings were really high, the windows were huge. However, the bottom of the window started at about eye-level for me, as well as the ground outside. So, when you looked out the windows and someone was standing in the alley, you basically had to look up because we were like street level. It's very hard to describe but hopefully you get the picture. For this reason, I kept the blinds closed. If someone was standing outside of our window, they could literally look down and see everything in our bedrooms and that creeped me out. Also, because of the lack of windows in the other rooms in the apartment, if you turned out the lights it was completely black. As in I could not see my hand in front of my face. Even in the middle of the day it could be pitch black, which was amazing for afternoon movie time but creepy when it came to bedtime. And I still have a strong fear of the dark which was inconvenient but every night I made sure Mayce had a night-light and that the lamp in our bedroom stayed on.
After a couple of months of being there, I started to get really uneasy feelings. It always seemed like someone was on my heels when I walked around or watching me, I guess. And then the nightmares started.
I have always had crazy dreams since I was little but usually within a few moments of waking up, I would have forgotten details of it or not given it much thought. But when the nightmares started in the apartment, they mentally kicked my ass. They were so vivid and so detailed that I would wake up sweating and sometimes crying. It started happening so frequently that I feared bedtime. I would get really anxious and find reasons to stay up. One of the dreams I remember vividly and it started in the apartment. I was in bed and I hear the water running in the bathroom. I sat up on the side of the bed and stared at the bathroom door. It was almost like something was pushing me to open the door but I was still so terrified, even in my dream, that I kept resisting but I could not look away. And then on the brick wall beside the bathroom door, which was painted white, a girl's face starts slowly coming through the wall. YES! Creepiest site ever and I still get goosebumps thinking about it. And it isn't some creepy looking girl, it is just a small girl (maybe around 6 or 7) and her face, and then slowly her body, is just manifesting out of this wall. And I want to scream but I still can't look away. So she materializes in front of the wall and she is standing there in the cliche white little gown with the ribbon in her hair and she just stares. So, dream Amber asks, "What do you want?" and she stares for a minute and then suddenly flashes and she is two inches from my face and says, "I'm here." And I
The nightmares began to intensify and I was get an average of 4 to 5 hours of sleep each night. I was miserable. And each one was completely different and unrelated. Every time I tried to talk about it I would get the same responses. People would tell me that I needed to stop watching scary movies or that my diet could affect my dreams. But here is what I learned: If your mind is telling you that you are uncomfortable and that something is wrong -- listen. I have never been one for horror films, especially before bed and I am not a midnight snacker but I still made excuses for way too long.
I started to realize that something was wrong when I awoke to a baby crying over Maycen's monitor. The weird part was that it was not his cry. It almost sounded like a newborn. I listened for a second and then got up to make his bottle. When I opened his door, he was sound asleep. I could still hear the crying on the monitor. There had to be a reasonable explanation. Maybe the monitor was getting crossed with someone else's. I moved Maycen into our bed and turned the monitor off. The next morning I ran into our neighbor taking his trash out when I asked who else in the building had a baby. He quickly responded that there were no other children in the building and that he had known the other tenants for years. I didn't tell him the real reason why I was curious because after all of the nightmares I'd been having... I was starting to believe that I was starting to lose my mind.
A picture that I found of our bedroom in the apartment.
A couple of weeks later I was awaken by one of the scariest sounds I had ever heard in my life. I was 100% sure that someone had broken into our apartment. Over the monitor, it sounded like someone was destroying Maycen's room. It took me a second to process what I was hearing but when I fully came to I could certainly make out the sound of the drawers in his changing table being pulled out and thrown onto the floor. Knowing that my child was in that room, something came over me and I ran. Looking back, I don't know why I didn't wake Cody. And if it were a real invasion, I probably would not be here today. In that moment, though, I didn't care. I just wanted my child. I threw open his door and saw... nothing out of place. Not one thing. And he was sound asleep. I was in some state of shock. I just stood there like a deer in headlights. I checked his closet, the window, everything. I had fully prepared myself to walk in on a trashed room with an intruder still in it and the fact that nothing had been touched and my child was sleeping peacefully... it still baffles me. I was so shaken up that Maycen actually slept in our room for a few weeks afterward.
And this was not the first time that the presence was so real that I felt someone had broken in. One afternoon, it was around the time Cody was supposed to come home from work and I decided to jump in the shower while Mayce was napping. I left the bathroom door open and hopped in to quickly wash my hair. While rinsing, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a dark figure quickly "walk" past the door. I assumed Cody had just gotten home from work and was making his way to the other bathroom. I finished up and was drying off when the figure went past again very quickly. I called out for Cody and got no answer. I knew at this point, knowing what I had experienced, Cody wouldn't be trying to prank me so I just made a dash for Maycen's room and locked the door. I called Cody on his cell and he just so happened to be pulling into the parking lot. He rushed in and told me that the door was still locked when he came in and that he didn't see anyone or anything.
You know the part in the horror films where the character comes to the realization that what has been going on is actually paranormal and they can no longer make excuses for it? Even though you've been yelling at the screen for the past 30 minutes that something is seriously wrong! Yes, this was that moment for me. I could no longer come up with a reasonable explanation for what was happening. It was the most helpless feeling having something harassing you that may not even be real, and if it was... who would believe?
Cody was becoming genuinely concerned about me. At this point I was a few weeks into my pregnancy with Oliver and I was hardly sleeping. I got a job as a waitress, working mostly night shifts, to earn some extra cash and take my mind off of things. For a while, it worked. I was so exhausted by the end of the night that I was sleeping a little better and since my shifts were late, I wasn't spending a lot of spare time around the apartment at night. A few days passed and I was beginning to feel like my old self. But, of course, that quickly changed.
The head of our bed was positioned below the ledge of the large window. When I would read at night, I could prop my head against it and the street light in the alleyway would come through the blinds. This particular night, Cody was watching TV in the living room while I read. It was fairly late and I was finishing up a chapter when the street light shining on my pages was interrupted by a shadow. I only had on a small lamp, the rest of the room being lit by the light outside, so the room got dark very quickly. I turned to look up and saw this dark figure almost pressed up against the glass of the window. Because the blinds were opened slightly I could make out the body of a man, but no features. Just a large, shadowed figure. I backed up quickly into the center of the bed and was unable to take my eyes off of the window. I was petrified. Was this a person? Was this a ghost? All I can remember was that it fell completely silent in the room. It was like I could no longer hear the TV in the living room, only ringing in my ears it was so quiet. And then I heard what sounded like an old hymn. Whatever this thing was standing up against the glass of the window was singing! And this is the part where I lose most people when I tell this story. It sounds insane. But yes, they were singing. It was a very low, sad voice but the words were clear. All of this happened within a matter of seconds and all I could do was scream. The singing would not stop and I jumped off of the bed (fell off of the bed, actually) and ran for the living room. The only word that I could manage to form was "outside" and Cody was already out the door. The singing came to a complete stop and all fell silent again. Cody returned saying that there was no one in the alleyway or the parking lot. I honestly don't know if this was paranormal or if someone was just messing with me. All I know is that it was one of the weirdest experiences of my life and that to this day, I still have nightmares about it. The sound of the voice and song alone was scary, but one of my deepest fears is someone being outside my window -- so this hit home for me. I was done.
At this point, Cody assured me he didn't think I was crazy but even I felt ridiculous. I was experiencing these things that I really had no way of proving and if I were him... I wouldn't have believed it. I think that he most likely thought that it was an actual person harassing me from outside rather than something paranormal, but he never said that out loud.
And then finally, Cody had his experience. I was on the way home from a later shift when Cody called. His voice was really shaky and I could definitely tell something was wrong. He said that he had gotten up to get something to drink and was leaning over looking into the fridge when all of a sudden it sounded like something came running down the hall, across the tile kitchen floor and up behind him. He said that he could actually feel it on his neck and that it felt so real he actually thought he was about to be attacked by something or someone. At the time, he was not one to admit that he felt like it was a ghostly experience, but after that I think that he was on my team.
The discussion of moving was already in the works. I was stressed, little things were beginning to happen around the apartment more often, I was hearing weird sounds... I was just ready to go. It just so happened the apartment across the hall was available. We spoke to the landlord who said that he had no issue with us just switching apartments. As soon as I received that news, pregnant and all, I began moving our things across the hall. It is so odd to think that even though it was the same building, our next apartment had a completely different vibe. We stayed there for the next year and I don't think I can name one paranormal experience. I was back to my old self. I was sleeping through the night. It was such a relieving difference. All was well.
I eventually had my friend, Bethany, over to go walking downtown with me. Like me, she is a firm believer in the paranormal because she has had experiences of her own. She has also been an actress in that particular theater for years in the past. As we walked past it, we got on the subject of the theater and its history. Before I told her any of my own paranormal experiences, she began sharing some that she had had in the theater years prior. She said that during a lot of their rehearsals the people that were in control of the sound would stop the production from time to time because they would hear the sound of a baby crying in their headphones. Mhmmm... you read right. A baby crying. I can't remember in detail the rest of our conversation but there was mention of the entrance of the theater being almost like a passageway to a morgue at somepoint. I will have to actually do research to back that up but it was something that she had heard and I had also heard from other people in the past. We talked about her experiences in the theater and things that would happen and we got on the subject of the alleyway. Now, I don't know how accurate this is but there were rumors that there was an actual murder in that very alleyway involving a pregnant woman. I honestly don't know how true that is but it is very creepy to think that maybe those are the cries heard over the headphones and the monitor.
Needless to say, it wasn't much longer before we moved and even though it was a terrifying chapter in my life, it is always interesting to talk about.
I hope you enjoyed the stories! Please comment and let me know which one you thought was the creepiest. Remember to share your spooky stories with me so that I can put them in my upcoming blog!!
Thanks for reading and make sure the closet door is all the way closed before going to sleep.
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