Is Anyone in Here?

Now some stories are made up for fun and some just to spook you, but children this story is true. I'm not sure when it quite started, i think it was always there. That feeling of never really being alone in the apartment. But when you turned to glance and focus on what you saw out of the corner of your eye, it would be gone before you could focus. But this story is about one particular incident which may have put a face and name with the shadow.

4am during a summer when I was in my early 20's my then roommate Miguel came running out of his bedroom and into mine. He was pale and frightened and without breath. I asked him quickly;

"My God Miguel what is it? Are you alright?"

"Theres someone in my room!" He shouted at me while breathing heavily and trying to calm himself down.

"What? That can't be. I didn't hear anyone come in and surely the people downstairs would have woken up, or their dogs would be barking at the slightest noise. You must have been dreaming." I said and got up to walk him back to his room.

"No I'm telling you I saw a guy in my room. I was sleeping and woke up to this feeling of being watched. I opened my eyes and standing at the side of my bed was a guy, he looked about our ages. He was wearing a high school teeshirt, baggy jeans, and had long black hair. When I looked at him I swear I couldn't move." he said with seriousness.

"Because you were dreaming and once you woke up you could move and came in here. But you thought it was real. I can imagine, it sounds like a horrible nightmare." I comforted him.

"No! Listen!" he shouted at me with fear in his eyes, "This wasn't a dream. I was frozen with fear as he stared at me and then he turned away from me and walked into the closet in my room. Just then I jumped up and made a run for the door."

"Well lets go in and have a look." I said.

We walked out of my room and made our way through the living room, then the kitchen and to Miguel's room. I opened the door and walked inside the room, Miguel would not follow, but stood in the kitchen with a rolling pin just in case he would need to use it. I saw no one in the room or anywhere near his bed. I then walked over to the closet, pulled the drapery aside and saw nothing but hanging coats, sweaters and shoes toppled one on top of the other. I even (remembering my spy novels) pushed on the wall behind the closet to see if it were a secret passage, but of course it was not. I walked back into the kitchen and assured him that there wasn't anyone in his room at all.

The sun was coming up and we both decided to start our days since it was well into 5am. Miguel and I decided to have our coffee on the back porch and enjoy the cool summer morning. Just then I noticed our downstairs neighbors Dave and Deb outside with their two dogs, doing what doggies do outside in the morning. I hollered down to them a hello and an offer for morning coffee. The accepted, brought the two dogs in the house and joined Miguel and I on the porch.

"I heard someone run across the kitchen at around 4am. Is everything OK?" Deb asked curiously.

"Well yes actually something weird did happen. You should tell them Miguel, it happened to you." I said.

Miguel told the story the same as he had told it to me. Not leaving out any detail and making sure Dave and Deb understood his seriousness. The further he got into the story the more uneasy Dave and Deb would look. The description of the man he saw put them over the edge. Dave said to Deb, "It couldn't be? Its not possible."

Deb replied, " Who really knows what is possible?" Miguel and I looked at each other and I asked, "What do you mean?

"An older couple used to live in the apartment you live in. They died together 5 years ago, no one knows how, they were just found together in the kitchen." Deb said. The couple had two children. The first one a daughter who moved away and the other a son. The son's name was Greg was a bit on the wild side but was the apple of his mother's eye. I believe you are now sleeping in Greg's old room Miguel."

"So you think this guy Greg showed up to freak me out or something? Does his still have a key to this apartment. We should change the locks." Miguel said with determination.

"It is impossible for it to have been Greg, he's been dead for 10 years. As a matter of fact it was right around this time of year when he died. You know what wait here for a second, I think I have the obituary in a folder somewhere. " Dave walked downstairs to search and I got this creepy feeling all over me. Deb and Miguel continued to talk and I got up to walk back into Miguel room. I got to the closet and moved the piles of shoes only to reveal some loosely placed carpet. I lifted it up, there wasn't anything but a painted wooden floor. My eye caught was looked like writing in the floor that had been painted over. I pulled the carpet up even more and there it was. A name carved in the floor of the closet in Miguel's room and the name was Greg.

A little creeped out I walked back out to the porch to tell everyone what I had found and as I opened the screen door Miguel was frozen and all the color had gone from his face. I called to him twice but he didn't turn his head, he just focused on the small piece of newspaper he was holding. I looked over his shoulder at it and it was Greg's obituary with a picture. A young twenty-something man with raven black hair long and sleek, wearing a high school teeshirt. As we both looked at the picture Deb began to speak, "He never took that shirt off I tell you. That teeshirt with a pair of jeans was like a uniform for Greg. Such a shame what happened to him that summer. Drowned, wearing that same teeshirt."

After that day Miguel started sleeping in the living room and eventually moved out of the apartment. Though he had never experienced anything like that again, and whether it was Greg or not, Miguel refused to even talk about the incident. Years later when I spoke to him he said to me, "I couldnt stay there anymore. I knew he didnt want me there, and even though nothing physically hapened to me it was like he was always watching."