Something In My Apartment

I want to tell you about this apartment I used to live in, and maybe someone can tell me what we were dealing with. Way back in 2000, when we first got married, my husband and I lived in an apartment in Summerville, SC. At first, nothing was strange about it, but soon after we moved in, we adopted a cat, and soon after that, we adopted another one.

We had the second bedroom set up as a "cat room" where we put the litter box, food and water dishes, the cat tower, and other toys. They were pretty rambunctious, as cats are, so at night, we would put them in their room while we slept, so we wouldn't wake up to the apartment being destroyed.

At night, we would hear this metallic tapping sound coming from their room (the wall behind our headboard was shared with that room, so just on the other side of the wall). It would happen almost every night, and would go on until we fell asleep. And it only happened at night, never during the day. We couldn't figure it out, so we joked that they were building a spaceship and planning their escape. We also chalked up random missing items to their imagined spaceship.

After a while, we started letting the cats roam the apartment at night, although all their stuff stayed in that extra bedroom. One night, as we were trying to get to sleep, we heard a crash in the kitchen. We were in the habit of leaving the dishes on a towel on the counter to dry overnight, so we knew that one of the cats had knocked them off. That was the sound, crashing dishes. It was late and it didn't sound like anything actually broke, so we just groaned and said we would deal with it in the morning. The next morning however, we got up and there was nothing in the kitchen or anywhere else in the apartment. We had apparently put the dishes away the night before. No idea what that crashing sound was.

The creepiest thing happened one night when we were watching t.v. in the living room. The cats were playing, chasing each other and hiding and jumping out at each other. We were on the couch, and there was a loveseat about three feet away from the wall. The cats stopped, one on each end of the loveseat, both staring at a spot just under the window. At first, we assumed they were about to pounce on each other, but after a while, we started paying attention and realized that they were both completely stiff (not particularly unusual for that kind of play) and couldn't even see each other, nor were they trying to.

We got up and my husband went to one side and nudged the cat with his foot, but she didn't budge. A little creeped out, I went to the other side and picked up the other cat, thinking that this would break his concentration. But it didn't. He stayed completely stiff in my arms, not taking his eyes off that spot. Even his tail was like a stiff rod. My husband kicked his foot through the air in the spot they were staring at and suddenly they both just relaxed. The one in my arms just went almost limp and jumped to the ground and just wandered off like nothing happened. Same with the other one.

Another thing that had nothing to do with the cats, and we didn't even talk about it until years later, is that we were both freaked out in the bedroom. Sometimes when I was trying to get to sleep, I would close my eyes and see a dark figure standing near the foot of my bed. It was against the opposite wall and slightly off to one side, but it was always in the same spot. It wasn't tall, maybe four feet, and it was solid, not shadowy. When I opened my eyes, it wasn't there, but when I would close them, it was back again.

Other times, I would come home from work in the morning (I worked nights and he worked days) and go into the bedroom to change and not be able to stay in there. This was daytime, not predawn hours. Sometimes it was fine, and I would just change and go to bed, but other times, I just felt really uncomfortable and not want to stay. I just told myself I wasn't tired yet and went to watch tv in the living room and slept on the couch until the afternoon.

Of course, I didn't say anything to my husband about it because I was a grown woman, apparently too afraid of being alone to sleep in my bed. I felt ridiculous and just passed it off as I fell asleep watching tv. And when I came home sometimes to find my husband asleep on the couch, I just assumed he had legitimately fallen asleep watching tv.

Years later, after we had moved a few times, we were watching some ghost show or other, and there was a story about a Native American legend in the area which described this thing I remember seeing in my mind. I don't remember anything else about what they were saying because both my husband and I were leaning forward, pointing at the tv, saying, "I saw that!" We had never mentioned it to each other, but we both saw the same thing on those nights, and both of us could only see it with our eyes closed. He also told me that when I found him sleeping on the couch, it wasn't because he fell asleep. It was because, like me, at certain times, he felt like there was something in the bedroom with him and he just couldn't stay.

One last point. The hall leading from the living room to the back where the bedrooms and bathroom were, had a turn which blocked any light from the front rooms, so it was dark back there. When we watched tv at night, any time one of us would go to the bathroom, our male cat would scurry out of wherever he was hiding and go with us. While we were in there, we could hear him scratching around in the litter box, so we knew what he was doing. He would usually be waiting at the bathroom door when we came out to walk back with us. On the occasion that we were out before him, he would stand in the bedroom doorway and meow until one of us came to escort him back. After we moved, he was never like that again.

So does anyone know what this entity could have been? I've searched online, but I can't find any reference to anything like that in the area. According to the show we were watching, it's an evil entity and it's known to local native people. Unfortunately, I don't remember most of the show because we got sidetracked comparing notes about our experiences.