“We were to learn that the nightly sounds first started immediately after the murder occurred. And, worse yet, the killer had never been found.”

My buddies and I were just out of college and looking for a place to stay. We thought it’d be fun to live together in a big house, and we were excited to get a lead on an available place on the outskirts of town.

When we first got a glimpse of it, I can’t begin to say how disappointed we were. Big, sprawling, not well kept, and in need of a paint job – long, long overdue for a paint job.

The interior wasn’t much better. We all stood there and shook our heads and joked about what a dump it was. When the real estate agent said OK, I understand your disappointment, let’s go, we just looked at him. In unison, we said we’d take it.

Hey, we were just out of college. This was perfect for us.

Of course, what the agent neglected to tell us were the unearthly sounds we were to hear at all hours of the night. And we weren’t exactly delighted to hear that a murder had taken place there several years earlier. We were to learn that the nightly sounds first started immediately after the murder occurred. And, worse yet, the killer had never been found.

We were freaked, to say the least.

I was up late one evening in my room when so help me, I saw my top desk drawer open and close, open and close, open and close. It scared the hell out of me and I was too frightened to make a sound. I wanted to yell out for help, but I was tongue tied. I had seen this kind of thing in movies, and I couldn’t believe it was actually happening. It was surreal.

Weird things like that continued to happen during the year and actually we began to have fun with it. The ladies who we’d bring over would often cuddle closer to us as we explained the strange goings on. And they were always impressed that we were brave enough to live there. Hey, we’ll take all the flattery they’ll throw at us.

And one more thing: we asked the landlord if we could split the rent with the ghost(s) that shared the place with us. He said sure if we could collect it from them.

S. Ryser
Cleveland, Ohio