The Saga of Apartment F

Gather 'round folks, I have a tale to tell- one of mystery, strangeness, and unexplained phenomena. ...Or I'm just being overly dramatic and trying to find something to give my mundane life a little spice...you be the judge.

I live on the second floor of a two story apartment building. I moved in about two years ago. At the time I moved in, a family of three was living in the apartment directly below me. There was a very young woman (I'm guessing 22 at the oldest but could have been even younger), and her two children- boys about the same age as my kids, then three and five. I never really had any serious problems with them. My only complaints mostly stemmed from the fact that it seemed the young boys were very much unattended most of the time. They would roam the apartment complex, and I had to stop leaving my kids' bikes on our porch or the boys would mess with them. Whenever my girls would go out to play, these boys would follow them around, and there was never any adult supervising them. It got to the point I didn't even want to go outside with my kids because I didn't want to be trapped into supervising these boys too.

One day my kids and I were taking a walk around our complex. The boys were out...they were always out...not an adult in sight. Someone rounded a corner walking their dog. It was a large, black lab, but it was on a leash and it was friendly. The youngest of the boys began screaming and whaling, terrified of this dog. The dog's owner tried to reassure him that the dog was friendly, but to no avail. Here was this poor kid, maybe three or four years old, in an abject state of terror with his mother nowhere in sight. The dog and its owner just moved on as quickly as they could.

These boys used to also like to follow me and the girls up the stairs to our apartment and they would sometimes act like they wanted to come inside. One day the two boys knocked on my door to ask me if I had any food. I don't know if they weren't being fed at home or if they just wanted inside for some reason. I also once witnessed them trying to open cars in the parking lot. That one instance, their mother did happen to be present and told them to stop.

Then one day the mother and the boys just disappeared. Her car was not out front. There was no sign of them for weeks, but I could see there was still a lot of their stuff inside. There was food on the kitchen counter. Notices started to pile up on their front door, and it became obvious the apartment was abandoned. Eventually, management cleaned it out. It was full of garbage, but they ripped out all the carpet and put in hardwood floors (which I'm quite jealous of, I want that in my unit!), and replaced the fridge and gave the inside a fresh paint job. It looked like a brand new apartment.

It sat empty for nearly six months. But this is where things started to get weird.

I have two cats, Boris and Gary, though at the time I only had Boris. Boris likes to go outside, and will get destructive if I don't let him out from time to time. He never strays very far from the apartment building and never stays gone for more than a few hours. One day I let him out as usual. In a couple hours, around the time he usually returned, I opened the door to call for him. No Boris. So I waited a while longer then tried again. Still no cat. I thought at first that maybe he was just off having adventures and he would return when he was ready.

A day went by. He still hadn't come home, so I went out to search for him. He is usually good about responding to his name, so I called and called for him. Then I heard something. I said his name, and I heard a muffled "meow" in return. I knew that meow. I called again and the same thing.."meow". I followed the sound and it sounded like it was close, but it was definitely muffled. I searched around, absolutely perplexed. I could hear him but I couldn't see him.

Then finally I saw where he was. He was inside the downstairs apartment. He was yowling at me through the window and trying to scratch his way out. Bear in mind that at this point the apartment had been empty for weeks. It had been locked up tight. I called maintenance and explained the weird situation and thankfully they showed up within minutes and let me in to the apartment to fetch him. But how he got in there is still a mystery to this day. 

Then, just before Thanksgiving, a new tenant moved in. It was a little, old, Mexican lady and her boyfriend. Actually, I'm not sure if the boyfriend lived there or if he was just over a lot. She was really sweet. Her Church would sometimes have food drives and she would bring me stuff that was left over- snacks, fresh fruit, etc. 

Her boyfriend on the other hand...he was a strange one. He would be out on the front porch smoking in the middle of the night and yelling into a cell phone. Since I don't speak Spanish I don't know what these conversations were about, but he was always yelling. Yelling in the phone, yelling at his girlfriend, just yelling, yelling. Even when he was inside I could hear him through the floor. I always knew when he was there. When the lady was alone, the apartment was quiet. When he was there, there was not only the yelling, but the t.v. would be on at an ear splitting level. There would be music blasting through the sliding glass door and vibrating the walls of my apartment. 

One night they were having some sort of party. They had a grill on the front porch- which by the rules of our apartment management grills have to be at least 10 feet away from the building. This one was not- it was directly on the porch, underneath my balcony and the smoke was infiltrating my apartment. The music was blasting. I didn't want to be "that neighbor", but this time I called in a noise complaint.

The police showed up about an hour later. The weird part was they were there a looooong time. I would expect a noise check to be a quick thing- "Please turn down the music", "Ok, Officer"...done and done. For some reason the cop was there at least half an hour. I still don't know why. 

I realize this all makes me sound like a really nosey neighbor, but as I said, my life isn't very exciting.

A few weeks pass. Other than being a little noisy, I had no further issues with them. But then I noticed a few weeks went by that were unusually quiet. I learned from another neighbor that the little Mexican lady had broken up with her boyfriend. I thought, "Good for her!" And went about my business, enjoying the new peace and quiet.

It didn't last though. He was back about a week later. More yelling. One time I saw him empty the trash out of his car and just dump it in the street. A real class act. 

One day I went out to take the garbage to the dumpster. He stopped me and said, "Did you know the police were here last night?" I must have been out cold during the night because I had no idea. I told him as much. It was hard for me to understand him through his thick accent, but he said something along the lines of "It's just like what they tried to do to me in Texas!" I just said something back like, "Man that sucks" and just went on. I didn't know what else to say.

Then things started getting really weird. Both of them would disappear for a couple weeks at a time. I would think they moved out, but then there they were. While they were gone, notices would appear on their door for past due rent. (I didn't snoop, they were just placed in a way they could be easily read from a distance). There was also a furniture rental company that was looking for them for past due payments on their furniture.

This pattern continued for a few months. They would be home a couple weeks, then gone a few weeks. Notices would pile up, then they would be taken down. The final time was the weirdest though. They disappeared for nearly a month. The notices were on their door as usual, but when they came back they didn't take them down. They just left them up there. I gather they were trying to make it look like they weren't there. They kept their blinds shut tight, and rarely ventured outside of the apartment during daylight.

Then finally they left and never came back. In the middle of the night they loaded what possessions they could into a truck and never returned. 

Last week a new tenant moved in. I haven't met them officially yet, but they seem like nice people. Should I warn them the apartment is cursed?