Spooky apartment number 87

by Rupa Patel

Beware of my haunted apartment. Built over fifty years ago, the Viking Park apartments have been around as long as Diablo Valley College. Complete with a wide variety of paranormal activity ranging from disappearing objects to mysterious puddles of water, apartment number 87 is definitely haunted. A year ago, when I first moved into apartment number 87, I was happy to find a spacious two bedroom, one bathroom apartment with vaulted ceilings in both the dining room and living room. Little did I know that spaciousness was not the only trait that I was getting with this apartment.

The mysterious occurrences began slowly. I was raised with the idea that there is a place for everything and everything in its place; so when objects started to disappear, my curiosity was aroused. As a birthday present I received an expensive gold and diamond Anne Kline watch. At the end of the day, when I got home from work, I would take off the watch and put it securely in my jewelry box. Living by myself, it never occurred to me that my watch would not be in its proper place, secure in the jewelry box. One morning while getting ready for work, I went through the master bedroom into the walk-in closet which housed my jewelry box. Opening the box, I was shocked to discover that my watch was not in there. Believing that I may have been losing my mind, I searched every room in the apartment for the watch. To my dismay, I could not locate it. After sitting in the living room, staring at the bare coffee table, trying to collect my thoughts, I went to work upset at the idea of losing a very valuable watch. In the evening when I returned home, I was shocked once more. My watch was resting on the otherwise empty coffee table, as if it had been there the entire time. Over the year of my residence in apartment number 87, my watch has been moved from the jewelry box onto the coffee table nearly ten times. Every night that my watch disappeared, I had placed my watch in the jewelry box. Since I lived by myself, I did not know how my watch reappeared on the coffee table.
If the disappearing and reappearing watch was the only strange occurrence, then I would not be so sure to call the apartment haunted. In the living room I have a brand new Sony stereo system. One evening, I decided to clean the apartment while listening to some classical music. I placed the CD in the stereo and pressed "play". After cleaning the living room I proceed to the kitchen. The music suddenly stopped playing. I walked over to the stereo, thinking that either the plug had fallen out of the socket or the CD was done playing. Since the plug was still in the socket, I examined the stereo itself. I felt confused and startled because the button was moved from CD mode to tape mode. So I moved the button back to CD mode and the CD began to play. Turning my back to walk into the kitchen, I stopped short when the music halted. Again the button had been moved from CD mode back to tape mode. I turned the stereo off and gave up trying to play classical music. Fifteen minutes of absolute quiet passed before classical music, playing from the stereo, broke the silence. My heart began to race as I ran to the stereo and pressed the "stop" button. Just to make sure that the music would not start again, I pulled the plug from the socket. I have since moved the stereo into the extra bedroom which had been converted into an office. Three or four times a month, I would wake in the middle of the night to find the stereo on. I would walk over to the stereo and turn it off. Minutes later, the stereo would play again. The "on/off" game would only stop when I would unplug the stereo. I called my friend who was an electrician and described the problems with my stereo. He responded by saying, "It's just a short!" I did not buy that reasoning. If it was a short, then how was the button moved from CD mode to tape mode?

My mind was open for an explanation of the mysterious watch and stereo incidents. None could be found. The most unique incident was the puzzling puddle of water that appeared in the kitchen. Before I would go to bed, I would take a bottle of water from the refrigerator in case I would get thirsty in the middle of the night. If you were to walk through the entrance of the kitchen on linoleum covered floor, you would feel a slight dip indicating an uneven surface. Around five in the morning, I awoke to start my day by going into the kitchen to grab another bottle of water to drink with my vitamins. My eye spotted a puddle of water which appeared to have no source. Baffled, I check the sink for a leak and could not find one. The refrigerator was checked next, with no distinguishing leak, either. The dishwasher had never been used, but I still checked it and found nothing. Looking upward, I searched for a mark denoting a leak from the ceiling and found the ceiling to be leak-free. The puddle itself was roughly two feet in diameter, but the amazing part was that the puddle rested partly inside of the dip. Although I am not a science major, I still knew that the puddle should have, by all laws of nature, settled into the dip, and not rested halfway into it. Later, after I mopped up the puddle, I took a bottle of water and poured it next to the dip. As I suspected, the water did fill in the dip, meaning, that something else had control of previous puddle which held the water from shifting into the dip. I often find bizarre puddles of water in my kitchen early in the morning. Still, the puddles have always been resting halfway in the dip. My father came and spent the weekend with me once, and offered an explanation regarding the puddles. He made the suggestion that either the sink or the refrigerator was leaking. However, when my father witnessed the puddle with his own eyes, he fell short of words.

Together, those events had defied all basic explanations by visitors. Doors that had been shut tightly before I went to bed are wide open in the morning. While using the bathroom sink, I saw, reflected in the mirror, a shadowy outline that made me turn around and call out, "Is anyone there?" Apartment number 87 is frequented by a phantom. All the peculiar episodes have led me to warn people, beware of my haunted apartment.

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