THE GHOST OF YOU STAYS

I've lived in my apartment since 2002, and not once have I heard about the fact that apparently the building is haunted. I know it used to be a notorious den of inequity. As it was described to me (and I may mix up what goes where), it used to be drunks on the bottom floor, junkies up top, and that was mainly because the drunks couldn't make it up the stairs. Now it's a fairly chill location, with lots of families. I still hear rumors of the dramas upstairs where studio apartments have community bathrooms, and there has been the occasional removal of a dead body, but all in a day's work, right? I enter nothing, nothing enters me.

Well, in the last five days, no less than two people have said to me. "You know that place is haunted, right?" I asked for some clarification, and there were no specific stories, but one said, "Google it. It's documented."

Sure enough, I got a couple of hits off it. They all have the exact same text, oddly enough, and again, no super specifics, but according to Haunted Places in Oregon:

"Portland - Fairmount Apartments - Malevolent and benevolent hauntings. This is a building that is located on the corner of NW 26th and Vaughn Street in northwest Portland. This is the last building standing from the centennial celebration of the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1905. It was once a grand hotel and it now an apartment complex. Some of the residents over the years, have reported seeing apparitions late at night, while others have felt somewhat of a threatening presence mostly on the lower floors especially in the halls. Upstairs, the presence is not as threatening."

I feel cheated. I live on the ground floor with the hardcore spirits (because I'm a drunk, not a junkie). Either I'm too badass for them, or I'm so immune to the noise you hear in downstairs apartments, I don't notice. There have been times where Sadie will meow in such a way that is deadly serious like she's trying to tell me something and I laugh at how earnest she seems, and maybe this whole time she's been trying to tell me, "We have to get out, motherfucker."

Maybe one day I will join the ranks and terrorize this place. People will report of a ghost with Elvis hair reading passages of The Everlasting, which would be fitting given the title. We all laughed at the bar yesterday when I showed how my phone had been programmed to remind me on Valentine's Day to "kill yourself," but it won't be so funny when I materialize in some guy's apartment and leave ectoplasmic ooze on all of his DVDs I think suck.

Completely unrelated, Sequential Tart has a new review of 12 Reasons Why I Love Her. Read it here, and enjoy this excerpt:

"The twist is that the chapters aren’t in chronological order.

This technique lends the work a suspense that otherwise wouldn’t be there, and I found myself flipping back and forth in the book trying to figure out when each chapter took place to flesh out the chronology on my own and to figure out if they stayed together or not — and I didn’t find it annoying; I found it intriguing."

Current Soundtrack: Camouflage, Relocated

Current Mood: scared (but not really)

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All text (c) 2007 Jamie S. Rich