Our Family's Friendly Ghost

In 1981, I lived in an apartment with my four children, two boys, and two girls, who at the time were 11 (twins), 12, and 13 years old. After recently settling into our new apartment, we began to hear a knocking outside of our apartment. We opened our apartment's door to see where the knocking was coming from and realized it was coming from a fire door at the end of the hall. When, I opened the door, however, there was nobody in sight. This eerie situation did not terrify us, however. It was more of a mystery we needed to solve.

We soon realized the knocking was happening every night, between 11 and 11:30 p.m. Each time I looked into the hall, the fire door would be shaking and the bar to open it would be rattling as well! So, I decided to run out of my apartment, as soon as I heard the knocking one night. I ran down the hall to the knocking and rattling door, yet as soon as I threw open the door, the knocking would stop! The nightly knocking continued to boggle the five of us, so we decided to talk to our neighbors about the occurrence. We asked a woman living on the floor below us if she knew who came in knocking like that every night, however it seemed as though the woman was very hesitant to discuss the situation. All she said was, "Just ignore that. There's nobody ever there," with recognizable agitation in her voice. This, of course, made us even more curious to solve this mystery.

The knocking was noticed by several others, including other people living in the apartment building, as well as my niece who stayed over one night. The morning after her stay, my niece asked "Who was knocking like that so loud at night?" Unfortunately, we could not give her an explanation, of course. We continued to tell the story to friends and family, yet few seemed to believe our story was true. So, another evening, we decided to investigate further. One night, shortly before 11 p.m., my children and I took a tape recorder with a microphone attached to it, and we placed the tape recorder just inside our apartment, with the microphone outside of our closed apartment door so we could record the knocking. 11:30 passed, and we still did not hear the knocking. This was unusual, because the knocking occurred every night - at least every night I was home. Soon after 11:30 passed, I got an uneasy feeling, and so, I brought the microphone back into the apartment. Even though we heard no knocking, we decided to play the tape anyway, and once we played the recording, we heard the knocking on the tape!

After that mysterious experience, we attempted to ignore the knocking and accepted the knocking as a friendly ghost. However, curiosity got the better of me, and my children and I decided to investigate the situation further. We remembered that another tenant in our apartment building mentioned a fire that there was a fire in the building years ago. After remembering this, my children and I went to the library to look at back issues of local newspapers to research the fire. We discovered the fire was in the apartment we lived in and that part of the building had to be rebuilt because of the damage. We also found out there was a single fatality from the fire. The fatality, however was not a human being. It was a dog. This was the only fatality, though, according to the records.

After discovering this, there was still knocking on the fire door, each and every night I was home, during the six months we lived at that apartment, yet we simply ignored it. After we moved out of the apartment, we moved into a trailer on a piece of property we were working on building a house on. My husband lived there with us, as well. Upon moving into the trailer, we heard the knocking again! It was on the living room door of the trailer each night, and my husband heard it, too. I, however, was the only one who would get up to check out where the knocking was coming from on our trailer's door, and not to anyone's amazement, there was no one in sight. One night, my husband said, "I don't know why you keep getting up to check because you know there's never anybody there." After he said that, I stopped getting up to investigate the knocking, and as soon as I stopped, the knocking ceased. Still to this day, though, I consider the knocking that followed us from one home to the next the sign of a friendly ghost.