This next series of events revolve around an old house in Oakland, Pittsburgh, where I lived for ten years. It was a stone's throw from the Carnegie Museum and Mellon's old house, which is now Chatham College, where I went to school. It is a very old part of the city. The house was from 1913; I knew it was haunted my first night there. It just felt dark and wyrd, the shadows on the walls seemed to play tricks on your eyes; but I had no extraordinary experiences there until January, eleven months after I had moved in. I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. It was very dark. I had to go through the living room. The house was very big, and at that time, we were living on the second floor. On my way back, I knew someone was in the room with me, but the room was black. Something that was not there hugged me. I should not have reacted the way that I did, I'm afraid, but I totally freaked out. I think that is a pretty natural reaction when confronted with the unknown. But, I felt very violated. Maybe if it had occurred at a different time in a different way, I would not have freaked, but just afterwards I kept brushing myself off as if a thousand ants were crawling over me. It was very real. The dog, MacDuff, would not venture on the second floor. You know what he did there? I don't even want to tell, because it is disgusting. MacDuff was very aware of the spirits. I say spirits, but to this day I am not sure if the house had at least three spirits, or if it was inhabited by a demon, because demons appear in many guises, whatever they feel You will be most vulnerable to. MacDuff crapped in a circle twice in that very spot where I was hugged. He never did that in the house. I think he was trying to mark his territory to banish it. I have a friend whose ex-husband came to visit. Once we moved in to the rest of the house, that room was shut off, and there was a pile of old furniture kept there. Only the cat would get in there and howl, because she was in kahootz with them. But my friend's husband went in the room, even though I told him not to. He had no prior knowledge as to the happenings in there. He said somebody went through a lot of pain in there, had died of kidney infections there. Another wyrd thing about that, that again, he couldn't have known about, was that I had suffered kidney problems after moving in to the house.
So, the next couple of installments will concern that house in Oakland where a lot of strange things occurred. Two girls had tried living on the third floor. One lived there for about a year, the other only a couple of months. Neither of them ever spent a single night up there, not alone. One was always at her boyfriend's, the other with her family. They said they were too scared. They'd get on the phone, crying...then leave for the night. So, it wasn't just me.
