T-Shirt Tug Marks

Since Halloween is approaching, I’ll share a little ghost story with you. This is the only real encounter I have come across, although it is possible to be explained away- especially if I were to invite the team from Ghost Hunters to investigate, but it was definitely eerie in the moment. (The kids and I love to watch that show as well as Ghost Adventures, but we call that guy Scooby Douche- well hubby and I do, NOT the kids – I’m not THAT bad.)


My hubby and I lived in an apartment in a building of 8 apartment’s right next door to a large hospital. It was a building built in the 1920’s, I would guesstimate. Our door was in the kitchen and it still had a glass window in it which is a very odd thing for people to be able to look right into your apartment. (At the time we fashioned curtains from dish towels to cover it up – we were poor when we lived there. Well, MORE poor) My hubby worked nights and I worked a job during the day and volunteered at the hospital at night – (yes, I was crazy!) The basement was where our laundry was as well as very old wooden storage units that were more like stalls or large wooden cell like crates. It wasn’t a place I spent a lot of time in, as a matter of fact, I only did laundry in broad daylight and the hubby did more of it than me (that’s how you train em early girls – “ohhhh, the basement is soooo scary”…..”Will you do it?”….. “ “Pretty please???”)

I was home alone one day (DAY, not night) when I heard music coming from the back bedroom. It was very old-time music and being just out of college, not something we would have tuned on the radio, and it bothered me enough to make me stealthily walk toward the bedroom in a freaking out manner. The radio was on, but it was an OLD clock radio of my hubby’s that hadn’t been used in a long time, not plugged in, under the desk in a box, but yes there were batteries in it. I turned it off and just chalked it up as a very weird thing or hospital signal interference. Not sure how much long after but our kitchen cabinets which were the kind that closed by magnets would randomly pop open when we were not in the room. It never happened previous to this time, so again, weird, but we chalked it up as old metal cabinets and the building shifting.

One day the hubby went into the basement to fold the laundry (did you hear the swoosh of my whip?) and when he came back upstairs he was very white faced, so much so that I immediately knew something was wrong. He said he felt someone tug at his shirt while he was down there. Blew it off the first time (yep, that’s a man for you – the FIRST time he blew it off) thought maybe it was a spider or something (again, all the more reason not to go into the basement) but the second time it was much stronger and no one was there with him. Needless to say he FLEW up the four flights of stairs. I asked him to turn around because he was wearing a white t-shirt and you know how if you tug on a t-shirt, there is still a little bit of material that stays gathered together? Well, you could clearly see the tug mark in his shirt. Now we were pretty shaken up, I NEVER went in the basement again, and he did, but as little as our laundry would allow. My Mom had weighed in on the theory that lots of spirits probably passed through our building being so close to the hospital. When I say close I mean so close that when the helicopter landed on the building, our apartment would shake, rattle and roll.

The catalyst to this is that one night my hubby came home from work (3am) and wanted to load the car up with the TV he had bought his Mom for Christmas (we were going to leave first thing in the AM or when I woke up, and head back home for the holidays) He came up to our room and woke me up in a frantic state. (picture this: at the time we were BOTH sleeping in a twin bed- well it was actually the trundle bed from my bed back home that randomly would collapse if you moved to much. – we didn’t really sleep much together considering he worked til 3am and I was up by 5:30am but again, we were POOR) He told me that I had to come downstairs with him and hold open the door to the basement because on his first attempt the door slammed shut (not a door that did this normally, being very heavy) and there were some major noises coming from within the basement. He was very freaked out. In the end, I had to hold that door back from shutting as it was pushing on me, and it had gotten extremely COLD in the hallway, and I never saw a guy run so fast up the stairs carrying a large TV in my life! We packed our stuff and were on the road by 3:45am heading back home. We moved out of the building not long after.

Happy Almost Halloween! How are YOU?