As people who read this blog know, I like to make sure those who submit stories are at least somewhat reliable, even if I can’t verify their stories myself. The following odd incident is one such case. I have known the man involved for several years now, and can attest that he’s not delusional or inclined to manufacturing fictions. His story appears to be true.
After divorcing from his wife, he purchased an apartment in an old building in a city in the northeast United States. Even given bad market conditions, he was surprised at how low the asking price was, especially since the apartment building was built in the twenties and is both locally and nationally known among architects.
His story in his words:
I lived on the fourteenth floor. During my first week of habitation I noticed nothing unusual, except for a very faint smell that might have been of burning oil. But since I kept the windows open often, and it was in a pretty populated urban area, I attributed this to the normal ‘smells of the city.’
The only other odd thing was the behavior of my neighbors. They were very reserved. Normally new residents at least make a pretence of welcoming a newcomer, but not so here. It wasn’t that they were hostile to me, just uneasy. When I told them what apartment I had purchased, this was usually followed by an uncomfortable silence. One or two made some comment like, “Oh, that apartment. It was vacant for a long time.”
The first incident occurred at night, around three in the morning. I had gotten up to get a drink of water in the small kitchen, and when I was returning to my bedroom I felt something tap my shoulder once. Of course I turned around, startled, and there was nothing there. I chalked it up to my imagination and went to bed.
A few days passed. I work freelance and was spending most of my time in the apartment. One night I had worked late and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. The light was on and the only thing I noticed, in retrospect, was that strange smell of burning oil. Again, something tapped me on the shoulder. I spun around, peering into the small hallway outside the bathroom. There could be no doubt that something had touched me.
I put it out of my mind and went to bed. I can’t remember precisely what time I woke up, but I immediately noticed a sensation of someone gripping my ankle. I lay still, my heart pounding, trying not to move. Had somebody snuck into the apartment? I waited, and the grip became tighter. Finally I jerked my leg. The grip broke, but as I sat up in bed I saw something shadowy dart silently from the room.
My lights went on and stayed on for the rest of the night.
The next day I made a thorough investigation of the entire apartment. The old dumbwaiter had been sealed over and painted over many times. It couldn’t be opened. There were no air vents, since the apartment had been built in the twenties. Air circulation was through the open windows. But then I found something strange just above the floor in one of the closets.
It was a small metal door or hatch with very peculiar, spidery design on it. There was a small ring on it, and I pulled. At first it resisted, and then it popped open. I was on my hands and knees with a flashlight, and instantly the small space was filled with that burning scent. But strangest of all was that a faint breeze was coming from the opening, and on it I could hear faint whispering sounds. I couldn’t make out a word of the whispering, but it was definitely of human voices. I wondered, could it be some “sound catch” that simply picked up conversations from other apartments? If so, why had it been built?
That night, as it turned out, was my last night in the apartment. I was awakened in the middle of the night by piercing pain on my foot.
Something was biting me.
I shouted and lashed out with my fists, but of course there was nothing there. Nothing except deep, red bite-marks on my foot. From what I could tell, they were human.
I moved out the next day. Needless to say, I haven’t been able to sell the place. I have done some research, and the previous inhabitant was a recluse who had lived there for over forty years, apparently dabbling in the occult. He came from a wealthy local family, though he was the last of his line and never married. Apparently when the authorities found him dead in his apartment, the walls were scrawled with decades’ worth of lunatic ravings, prayers, and strange verse, all written with a red marker.
Before moving out permanently, I did one thing, however. I photographed the strange little door and brought it to a specialist in folklore and occult at the city’s oldest university. He took one look at it and shuddered. It was a complex German sigil that he himself had studied. It was called the “Teufel Hex”, the “Devil Hex,” and sometimes the “Witchdevil.” No modern Pennsylvania Germans have ever heard of it, and references to it in old written sources are practically non-existent. It seemed to have been utilized by a very small, cultic community that flourished in the Pennsylvania “upcountry” sometime in the mid-1700s, which at that time bordered on the wilderness. By 1800, the community, whose origins were apparently in the Rhineland, had died out. The professor had never been able to explain the purpose of the “Devil Hex.”
I’m an agnostic and a skeptic, but as a matter of principle I refuse to rent the place to anyone who hasn’t heard my story. So far I have no renters, which is probably for the best.
