I live at the Gaylord, in Koreatown. It's an ancient building, [by American standards, at least,] erected in 1908 to serve as a hotel, and later converted into an apartment complex. The lobby is filled with black & white photographs of its glory days, of balls and galas and an the Marx Bros shooting a film. It is also, near as my roommate and I can tell, literally filled with Gay Lords, fabulous middle-aged men with impeccable style.
Our apartment manager is such a Gay Lord, a tall man in his fifties, with close-cropped snow-white hair and many earrings. He wears fitted pants with collared, button-down shirts, with vests and a fob watch. He walks with his back straight and his chest out like a rooster, and is possibly the most charming and intimidating person in the building and a complete sweetheart. When we were late on rent one month, he was nothing if not accommodating and understanding. My roommate and I slunk into his office with our tails between our legs, whimpering softly, and, afraid to meet his eyes, stutteringly explained that we would be late on rent because of our respective job fiascos. He shrugged and told us to pay when we could; he didn't even ask how much we could pay immediately.
Our apartment is haunted as shit. This comes as no surprise to us; the building has over a hundred apartments, and is over a century old. When my roommate and I were first coming by to look at it, we would hear a different story about someone dying every time we'd come by.
The first apartment we looked at was offered to us at a discount because the previous occupant had passed away. We were let into the large studio, and we spun around in the well-lit room, giddy with excitement. We stepped into the closets and peeked into the bathroom and hopped up on the kitchen counter. We admired the view from the window.
"It's perfect!" we said to each other, and then, "wow, this is how all horror movies start out."
"I bet there's a dead body hidden in the wall behind the closet." "Someone probably got stabbed in the shower, Psycho style."
"Oooh, what's this small brass door on the kitchen counter?" "I dunno, it's stuck, won't open." "I bet on the full moon, at midnight, it'll pop open and smokey tendrils will come out and sneak into our rooms and possess us."
The apartment manager, at the time a kindly old witch, pretended not to hear us.
We went with a one-bedroom apartment, because we need our space, and I like to bring guests over to shag; a studio would not be an option. They were out of dead people's one-bedroomers, so we got a standard one, on the fifth floor, overlooking the pool. My roommate lives in the bedroom, as she is the more private one of the two of us, and I stay in the living room. We have no furniture save the bed I sleep in, and a cabinet in the bedroom. The roommate sleeps on a mattress on the floor, while my bed doubles as a couch and table.
Our haunting is strange; whatever lives here likes to break glass. The day we moved in, an entire box of glass shattered when we gently set it down, and since then, it has been breaking everything else as well. The other day, my roommate was standing the in the kitchen, cooking, and I was on the couch, typing, when we heard a crash. A bottle that had been standing on top of the refrigerator [in the center, too, not on the edge] had flown off and landed in the middle of the kitchen floor and shattered. We spoke out loud, asking it to please stop breaking our shit because we like it and it's dangerous to scatter broken glass all over the floor when we're barefoot almost all of the time.
It complied for some time, but by now it has broken every wineglass in the house, half of our bottles, and even a few ceramic dishes. Some of these things were done subtly, others with absolutely no discretion. Once, I had set a glass on the floor next to my bed. As I stood up and walked past it, my toe nudged it. My roommate was watching, and she saw it slide forward an inch before it exploded, shattering into a million little pieces. It was a thick-bottomed glass, and should not have shattered in such a way unless it was dropped from at least eye level. Two months later, we were still finding slivers of glass around that spot.
We don't know what it is or what it wants. It seems most likely that it simply wants attention; breaking things is a rather petty and childish thing to do, and we assume that as it hasn't actually tried to hurt us, it is either unwilling or unable to do so. We joke that it is an Ancient Family of Mice that has learned to project their spirits and wreak havoc that way.
The shenanigans must cease; we're tiered of drinking our boozahol out of coffee mugs, and we didn't have an abundance of dishes to begin with. We don't want to resort to an extermination of any sort, as they were here first and besides, it's not a nice thing to do, but we're running out of options. A seance seems to be a good idea, and has been suggested by more than one party. In the mean time, we cheerfully yell "Mazal tov!" at the crashes. Our apartment manager is such a Gay Lord, a tall man in his fifties, with close-cropped snow-white hair and many earrings. He wears fitted pants with collared, button-down shirts, with vests and a fob watch. He walks with his back straight and his chest out like a rooster, and is possibly the most charming and intimidating person in the building and a complete sweetheart. When we were late on rent one month, he was nothing if not accommodating and understanding. My roommate and I slunk into his office with our tails between our legs, whimpering softly, and, afraid to meet his eyes, stutteringly explained that we would be late on rent because of our respective job fiascos. He shrugged and told us to pay when we could; he didn't even ask how much we could pay immediately.
Our apartment is haunted as shit. This comes as no surprise to us; the building has over a hundred apartments, and is over a century old. When my roommate and I were first coming by to look at it, we would hear a different story about someone dying every time we'd come by.
The first apartment we looked at was offered to us at a discount because the previous occupant had passed away. We were let into the large studio, and we spun around in the well-lit room, giddy with excitement. We stepped into the closets and peeked into the bathroom and hopped up on the kitchen counter. We admired the view from the window.
"It's perfect!" we said to each other, and then, "wow, this is how all horror movies start out."
"I bet there's a dead body hidden in the wall behind the closet." "Someone probably got stabbed in the shower, Psycho style."
"Oooh, what's this small brass door on the kitchen counter?" "I dunno, it's stuck, won't open." "I bet on the full moon, at midnight, it'll pop open and smokey tendrils will come out and sneak into our rooms and possess us."
The apartment manager, at the time a kindly old witch, pretended not to hear us.
We went with a one-bedroom apartment, because we need our space, and I like to bring guests over to shag; a studio would not be an option. They were out of dead people's one-bedroomers, so we got a standard one, on the fifth floor, overlooking the pool. My roommate lives in the bedroom, as she is the more private one of the two of us, and I stay in the living room. We have no furniture save the bed I sleep in, and a cabinet in the bedroom. The roommate sleeps on a mattress on the floor, while my bed doubles as a couch and table.
Our haunting is strange; whatever lives here likes to break glass. The day we moved in, an entire box of glass shattered when we gently set it down, and since then, it has been breaking everything else as well. The other day, my roommate was standing the in the kitchen, cooking, and I was on the couch, typing, when we heard a crash. A bottle that had been standing on top of the refrigerator [in the center, too, not on the edge] had flown off and landed in the middle of the kitchen floor and shattered. We spoke out loud, asking it to please stop breaking our shit because we like it and it's dangerous to scatter broken glass all over the floor when we're barefoot almost all of the time.
It complied for some time, but by now it has broken every wineglass in the house, half of our bottles, and even a few ceramic dishes. Some of these things were done subtly, others with absolutely no discretion. Once, I had set a glass on the floor next to my bed. As I stood up and walked past it, my toe nudged it. My roommate was watching, and she saw it slide forward an inch before it exploded, shattering into a million little pieces. It was a thick-bottomed glass, and should not have shattered in such a way unless it was dropped from at least eye level. Two months later, we were still finding slivers of glass around that spot.
We don't know what it is or what it wants. It seems most likely that it simply wants attention; breaking things is a rather petty and childish thing to do, and we assume that as it hasn't actually tried to hurt us, it is either unwilling or unable to do so. We joke that it is an Ancient Family of Mice that has learned to project their spirits and wreak havoc that way.
Another group that seems to inhabit our apartment is a lot more benign; it is a group of invisible snake people. They have possessed both me and my roommate, respectively. The experiences were not identical, but similar. In each case, one of us froze stock still, a hand on our stomach, and proceeded to hiss out words we could not understand. As we would hiss, we would feel, more than hear, a soothing murmur, "it's okay, everything is alright."
We laughed about the hand on the stomach; it felt like a mistake they had made, something that was lost in translation. "They like it when you rub their belly, it calms them down!" We still felt the soothing calmness, though; we'd call it maternal, if not for the implication that our friends are female. We're not sure what they want, either, but we're not in a rush to find out; they'll tell us when it is relevant.
We're thinking about getting a kitten. His name is Toby, and when you pick him up he wraps his paws around your neck and hangs on like he never wants you to let him go. We don't know if he'll affect the hypothetical Ancient Family of Mice that may or may not live under our oven.
All in all, it is a rather crowded one-bedroom apartment, and looks to be getting even more crowded in the future, though we enjoy the company. Of course, it is strange to masturbate with the distinctive feeling that one is being watched.
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