Everyday Paranormal Experiences, Interview #1
The Davenport Poltergeist
Just south of Salt Lake City and resting in the shadows of the Wasatch Mountains, Philip was preparing for his girlfriend (who wished not to be named) to move into his tiny apartment with him. It was a one bedroom, but for him and his girlfriend, it was big enough. His girlfriend moved in, as planned, and with her came a lot of clothes and furniture and other space-taking items that Philip had not counted on. Soon enough the 1 bedroom was no longer suitable – especially since Philip’s girlfriend came with, among many other things, a cat.
Though Philip now is a quintessential cat-person and can’t imagine his life without his three cat-boys, cats were not his favorite at the time his girlfriend moved in with him. It wasn’t long before Philip started to notice how his life had suddenly changed – not for the worse, but definitely for the stranger. He first chalked up the strangeness to the cat, because cats are strange, and react strangely. But then he started to see things.
It started out with the shadow of a man seen from the corner of his eye, turning to see whom the intruder was left him confused by the absence of anyone or anything. The shadows pestered him, always giving him but a glimpse of a man in the corner or passing by a window at night. The cat seemed to see more, but was infuriatingly mute on the subject when questioned.
Before long, the strangeness was furthered by the cries of a baby in the closet when, of course, there was no baby in the closet upon inspection. Philip wrote this off as the noisy neighbor’s brat, probably in the closet of the adjoining apartment. His girlfriend, who was also experiencing similar incidents, was not so sure the neighbor’s even had children, but without firm evidence of anything other than the inklings of ghosts, they did their best to ignore the minor and infrequent disturbances.
Apparently paying no heed to the events did not the correct action, as Philip learned immediately upon waking in a cold sweat and unable to breathe one cold winter night. As he lay in bed, frightened and unable to draw a breath, he attempted to rouse his girlfriend who lay right next to him in bed, from her sleep. It was this attempt that truly frightened him, as he was unable to move! More than that, the pressure keeping his arms at his sides increased, and he experienced what felt like a knee on the center of his chest, pressing what little air he still retained from his lungs. Then, suddenly, the pressure was gone! Philip gasped for breath and immediately woke his girlfriend to relate the experience. She had not sensed it or heard anything at all, and was faintly skeptical of her boyfriend’s excited and rushed recounting of the experience.
Convinced that his apartment was haunted, and confident in his argument that they needed a larger apartment anyhow, Philip moved. They moved from his one-bedroom apartment to another building in the same complex where they would have more space in a two-bedroom apartment – and be free of whatever malcontented spirits resided within.
Philip’s bed in his new apartment was positioned in such a manner – unintentionally – so that he could look out his bedroom door and into the bathroom across the hall. Through the mirror in the bathroom, Philip could see both into the next bedroom and the living room down the hall – a perfect lookout for someone concerned with home defense.
It was also a terrible vantage for those not wanting to see the ghostly apparitions making themselves at home!
Not every night, but often enough that Philip took care to close doors and avoid getting up at night, the ghost – Philip’s assumed attacker, would wander from room to room. He had followed Philip from one apartment to the other! He sometimes stopped to glare balefully back at Philip, or look in on them as they slept. Most often he was seen sitting on the couch in their living room, a cheap, second-hand item they had picked up at a garage sale when his girlfriend had first moved in.
Philip described the ghost as a middle-aged man wearing a trench coat and fedora, like he stepped out of a 1940’s private detective flick and into his apartment. He was moody and noisy and always lurking around the next corner to allow his shade to send shivers down Philip’s back. After several months of cohabitating with this passive-aggressive fiend, Philip began to notice that the calm times of activity were when the ethereal pet dick was lounging on the couch – or at least giving the impression that he was lounging on the couch. In contrast, it seemed the ghost’s fury was at its peak when Philip or anyone else was on said couch.
Needless to say, the couch was given to some poor fool – and with it, the fedora-sporting davenport poltergeist. This wasn’t the end of Philip’s ghostly and ghastly experiences, but they ceased to see the apparition, they no longer heard a crying baby, and cold shadows no longer lurked through their little apartment home.
It would seem that some tortured spirit loved his sofa more than his fate, and thus was tied to it. So often we expect a haunting to affect geographical locations such as a house, cemetery, or asylum, but can simple and everyday objects – like a couch – be haunted just as easily? And if so, is your ghost-free home simply waiting for a second-hand dining room table to spice things up and introduce you to the paranormal?
Next Week’s Everyday Paranormal Experiences, Interview #2: “Lonely Alien Highways”
On the Article Series:
I myself am a huge skeptic of all things paranormal or extra-terrestrial and I tend to take most tales of either with a huge grain of salt – sometimes even an entire salt shaker, depending on the tale that’s being weaved. I have even had a couple ghostly and otherworldly experiences myself, which I may relate in later stories – and I’m skeptical of those! Is what I experienced the truth of the experience or is there an empirical explanation that I simply have not yet unlocked? Regardless of my skeptical nature, ghost stories and alien encounters have always fascinated me as they have all of humanity for thousands of years.
It is this fascination that I wish to convey in a unique and different paranormal or alien experience every week – Thursday, to be exact. I will be conducting interviews with everyday people to hear their stories and relate them back to you, the Paranoid Gamers. Perhaps I’ll be interviewing some of you, as well.
Do you have an experience of a haunted item, place, or person? Have you been visited by aliens or heretofore undocumented intelligent life – terrestrial or extra so? If you’d like to share your experience and possibly have your tale published in this series of articles, please contact me and we can relive your experience.
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Philip
August 9, 2012 @ 8:11 pm
This is a great experience, retold by a great writer. Hearing this account sent shivers down my spine, and I am the one they happened to.
Rustyn Clark
August 10, 2012 @ 7:57 am
Thanks for the story, Phil! It was fun to write.
Michael McDowell
August 28, 2012 @ 10:23 am
Very well-written and evocative. One small thing though, this was more likely an object-bound spirit than a poltergeist, as it was oriented with the couch, direct in its approaches, and blah blah. Good work!
Daniel Flatt
October 14, 2012 @ 2:24 pm
I’m not sure about the things Philip saw, but I do believe that what he experienced in bed was actually sleep paralysis.
I would be interested to know if he always saw the spirit whilst in bed. If so Philip may actually have a chronic sleep paralysis problem, partially awake yet visions of his still asleep brain overlayed over real life.