A number of years ago, as a poor student, I was renting the top 2 floors

of a house with 7 other school chums. We thought ourselves lucky to

get the house for such a low rent, plus all utilities paid for. With 11

of us, we each paid about $75.00 a month.



The house had it's fair share of windows facing east and west, so it

should be a brightly lit house in the daytime, but, somehow, the house

was always rather dark and dim. We could never figure this out. Often

at night, we'd hear bumps and creaks, we always put it down as the old

100-125 year old victorian style house settling down until one night...



It was a Friday night, just around spring, exams were done with, Winter

was almost over. We were all really overjoyed and happy. We felt that

we did well in our exams. That evening, 6 of us went to the movies, had

dinner. After the dinner, we headed home. The celebration continued.

We were drinking pop, some of the guys were drinking beer. We were all

laughing and joking in the kitchen, when we heard the door open, and

footsteps coming up the stairs. We thought, Jenny and Sue were home,

they had opted to go to a fellowship rather than join us at our

celebration. We called out to the 2 sisters to join us, when we

recieved no answer, Tom poked his head outside the kitchen, the dim

hallway was empty. We figured, incredible as it sounds, they probably

did not hear us, so, Tom went upstairs to the girls' room. A few

minutes later, he came back downstairs looking very puzzled. The girls

weren't home, yet, we heard someone open the front door and come up

those stairs. We shrugged it off as the house settling down or a

streetcar coming by shaking the house.



A week later, as I was sleeping, I woke up quite suddenly. Unsure what

woke me up, I switched on the light. Looked around, peeked outside the

door, nothing. I went to the kitchen to get myself a glass of water, on

the way, I met Francis who had just as suddenly woken up. We made some

cups of soup and talked for about half an hour and then headed back to

our respective rooms. Frank shared a room with Alex. As I couldn't

sleep, I sat in bed reading when suddenly, I heard a loud, high pitched

cackle. I froze, my eyes quickly scanning my small bedroom...nothing.

When I heard movement in the next room, I ran to the door, swung it

open, just as Francis and Alex were about to crash into my room. The

guys' looked rather angry, they thought I'd given that laugh. I swore

that it wasn't me when Dave and Rich joined us, while John, Sue and

Jenny came running down the stairs from their rooms. We'd all heard

that cackle. Alex and Francis, the oldest of us, calmed us down and

gave a very logical explaination about what happened. We figured that

the tenants renting the basement and first floor of the house were

partying and the sound carried through the vents to our rooms. Sounds

reasonable right. The next day, we called in on our neighbours, no one

came to their door. Puzzled, we went to the house next door, our

landlord lives there. Our landlady told us in a rather cold voice that

the other tenants had gone home for the summer vaction, we were the only

ones in the house.



Things went fine for a couple weeks. Then one night, while we were

having dinner, a sudden cold air came from nowhere and the lights got

dim. We stared at each other, we all looked very nervous. The already

dim hallway was black as night. Suddenly, a low, very evil sounding

laugh started, it's volume got higher and higher...and that evil cackle

joined it. Just as suddenly, Rich gave a loud yell. The lights went

back to the way they were before. There was no one but us in the

kitchen. After that point, the conversation on the dinner table was

"Why did Rich yell out?" and "How soon do we move out?". Rich swore

that he felt someone grab his throat, squeezing it etc... Eventually,

we decided to stay on, the rent was very cheap, and we couldn't afford

anything higher. Besides, we were good friends who didn't really want to

part company. Most of us were from the same town, etc....



The next day, we had to call an ambulance for Rich who had suddenly

developed a dangerously high fever overnight. At the hospital, Rich was

diagnosed with throat cancer. A very strange thing as he didn't smoke

and there was no history of cancer in his family. The fever was not

explained, the doctors did not know what caused it as it went away soon

after he was admitted. Rich was hospitalized for about 2 weeks.

Sometime after the first 3 days, Rich decided that he didn't want us to

visit anymore and had arranged for his things to be packed and moved to

a storage facility until he gets out of the hospital.



A few days after Rich had moved out, Alex and I were on Dinner duty.

When we heard the front door open and slam shut, we figured the others

were home. We hollered out at them that Dinner isn't ready yet. Our

announcement was greeted with silence. Immediately, Alex and I froze

and stared at each other, our eyes, mirroring the horror we felt. We

heard footsteps coming up the stairs...we both peeked out at the

hallway...nothing. NO ONE was coming up those stairs...the footsteps

reached the top of the stairs, the carpet depressed as the footsteps

came closer and closer...Alex yelled at the "nothing", "Stop! Go away,

leave us alone!", the footsteps just continued. We both felt a sense of

foreboding, danger, as though whatever it was that was approaching us

was evil. The footsteps got to the middle of the hallway when Alex,

said in a hoarse whisper, "Get out of here kid!", grabbed me very hard

by my arm shoved me away from the kitchen door, ran toward the large

kitchen window, grabbed a chair, smashed the window and practically half

dragged and half threw me out the window. We were on the second floor,

but we were past caring, all we knew was we had to get away from that

thing. The jump gave us some bruised limbs and a couple sprains. We

looked up at the window...a shadow was at the window, then the whole

kitchen slowly grew darker and darker until the window looked like a

black gaping hole in the house. Suddenly, the lights came back on in

the kitchen again. Inspite of the fact that all we had on were T-shirt

and Jeans, Alex would NOT let me go back into the house, it was late

spring, and the temperature was still very cold. Alex made us wait on

the porch until the others came home. An hour or so later, when the

other guys got home, Alex made me wait outside as they trooped into the

house, got me a jacket, packed our things, called a cab and we all

headed for a motel on the lakeshore. We rented a room and stayed there

for about a week until we found other accomodations.



The next day we went back to the house to talk to the landlord and pay

for the window. The landlord was not thrilled with us. His wife

started cursing and swearing at us. We'd told them, take the last

month's rent and here's extra for the window, she called the cops on us!

Luckily for us, the cops were quite understanding and polite. The

landlady insisted that we did more damage than the window. We entered

the house to look. What a change! The whole place smelled dank and the

walls...the paint looked like someone ran something sharp over it. It

really gave us the creeps. The landlord took one look at the walls,

turned pale and refused to come into the house. His wife ranted and

raved all the way through the house though. She wanted the police to

charge us with destruction of property, etc. Her husband, normally a

quiet man, glared at her and told her in a rather loud voice to shut up.

Surprisingly she did...for a while. As the landlord, with his wife

yelling and nagging at him all the way into their house, the older

police officer gave us a weak smile and mentioned that many years ago

once, in the late 1800s a man and his wife who drank rather heavily

lived in the house we rented. One night, they got a call, the couple,

in a drunken fit, had killed their children and the husband's mother,

after which, the husband killed the wife as they were fighting, stuffed

the bodies into the closets, and hung himself. Apparently, the police

frequently got calls from people who had lived in that house about

intruders that weren't there. The police officer had grown up a few

blocks away, and he mentioned that he has never known the house to be

occupied by any family for more than a year at a time, or less. We were

in the house for about 2 months.