Apartment 26

Nov. 14, 1992 started out like the last few days, cold overcast, and snowing.  They sat in their apartment watching TV for the most of the morning and they did their normal household chores in the afternoon: dust, vacuum the entire apartment, and wash clothing. By four pm, they were exhausted and relaxing to country music playing on their clock radio on the open counter by the dining room. Bob sat across from his wife with his back towards the dark hallway leading to the two bedrooms and bathroom. The front room Venetian blinds were closed, leaving most of the apartment semi-dark, except for the light above the dining room table and from the kitchen. Lou smoked a cigarette and drank her coffee. She coughed a little as she relaxed from the long day of cleaning.  She glanced up at her husband and noticed a woman standing behind him. “Bob, there’s a strange woman standing behind you!” she exclaimed, as he turned and didn’t see anyone behind him.  “There’s no one there, Lou,”  he replied as he looked over to the front door and noticed the door was locked, dead bolted, and the chain lock were all securely in place.  “There’s a woman behind you!” she insisted.  The woman was in her mid-forties, short and heavy set. She had blonde hair that came down to the middle of her neck and her blue eyes were cold and evil.  Lou was visibly scared. “Bob, give me the cross, now!”  He grabbed the cross hanging on the wall next to him and handed it to her. She put down her cigarette into a green glass ashtray and thrust it towards the woman.  The woman smirked evily like it didn’t phase her.  “That won’t protect you from us,” the woman said as she backed up and disappeared into the pitch black hallway.  “Bob, there was a woman behind you,” she restated nervously.  Bob got up and held onto his shaken wife.  “I believe you. I’ll check the apartment.”  “Don’t leave me.”  “OK.”  “Bob, please put on some church music.”  He turned off the radio and limped over to their yellow ghetto blaster and slid in a Christian cassette tape. He pressed play and walked back over to his chair. Like his wife, Bob, never believed in ghosts. Their son, Rob, claimed their former house at Higgins Lake, Michigan was haunted, but they never believed his claims. Lou believed now, after her first encounter. It took Bob a little longer. For her, it took several hours to calm down and they listened to one tape before they went into the front room to watch Channel 12 News.

 

From 6pm to 8pm, nothing happened. They watched the news and several sitcoms before Bob used his remote to change the channel to Channel 66 to watch the Fox program COPS. Both front room lights were on the entire time and they dimmed them down to the bottom lights and bathing the room in a dim yellow light. As the music on the Fox Network’s popular show began playing, Lou suddenly noticed a man and a woman, materialize on the sofa, watching the reality police show. Four children appeared suddenly, ranging in ages from six months to seven years old. Three of the four children were girls. They were blond and dressed in pajamas. The man was a brunette and the woman was blonde, who turned and stared at Bob and Lou.  Lou was the only one at the time to see them and watched the seven year old girl getting up off the sofa across from them and sat down on Bob’s lap.  “Bob, there’s six people in here. There’s a little girl who looks like Sarah sitting on your lap.”  Bob felt a little weight and cold on his lap.“What is she doing?”  Lou looked at the seven year old little girl leaning back and cuddling up like a grandchild does with her grandfather. She smiled contently as the show came back on.  “She’s just cuddling up to you.”

 

Bob started experiencing a cold sensation on him, but that’s all he could feel. Lou watched the others sitting there watching the show. They never ventured away from the sofa for the three hours that the Andersons watched their programs. The little girl on Bob’s lap got up and walked back over to the others.  When she passed by the lamp by the window her lower half disappeared.  Lou was trembling as she lit another cigarette and studied the six intruders in her apartment, noticing their eyes were cold, dead, and evil. Their appearance at eight pm forced her to realize that her son was right. By 11pm, the Andersons went to bed with all the lights out, the ghosts disappeared only for the moment.  At two am, Lou woke up feeling like someone was trying to strangle her to death. She felt this sensation before, a year earlier, and it happened on and off until now. She could feel icy cold hands wrapping themselves around her scarred neck and forcing herself out of bed. The icy hands let go of her as she turned on the lights in the bedroom. Bob woke up and glanced over at her.  “What’s wrong, Lou?”  “I couldn’t breathe like someone was choking me,” she explained wheezing slowly, coughing her breath.  He got up and walked her out to the kitchen and made themselves a pot of coffee. She lit up a cigarette while Bob threw two cups into the microwave and set it for two minutes. After the microwave beeper went off, he brought her a cup of coffee and they sat there relaxing and waiting for Lou to regain her breath. They sat in the dining room listening to the radio until they were ready to go back to sleep.

 

The next morning, Bob didn’t go to church in Swartz Creek, a town five miles south of Flushing, and kept a close eye on her. He opened the Venetian blinds to let in some light and the memories from the night before were still fresh. Throughout the morning and afternoon, nothing happened. She could feel them inside the apartment. They made lunch around noon, but Lou was still too upset to eat.  All she could think of was the six ghosts and the woman who appeared first that night. Bob tried to get her to take a nap but she refused, too scared because something might try to strangle her again.  She sat in her rocking chair and rocked herself to sleep while they watched the NBC’s NFL games. Bob watched the games until he fell asleep. Both of them woke up about three-thirty and Bob closed the shades. They ate some leftovers and switched channels  to Channel 25 and waited for 60 Minutes to come on after the late NFL game was over. About five-thirty, they walked into the front room with two new adults following them. Another male and female in their late twenties dressed in jeans and sweat shirts. They sat down and stared at the Andersons, watching their every move. The children did the same thing, and their expressions were a cold blankness that radiated out into the very edges of the apartment. Lou noticed them, and had Bob turn on both front room lights. When the lights flooded the room, the eight ghosts slowly melted away. It worked for a while until they turned down the lights to the night lights on the two lamps. The eight ghosts re-emerged, staring at them. The children re-focused their attention back onto the TV while the Andersons sat nervously watching the games and their programs all night.They went to bed. Bob set his alarm for 2:30 am to get up to go to work at McDonalds. They slept uneasy until the alarm went off and they walked out to get some coffee. They noticed the ghosts once more sitting on the sofa and on the floor watching them. Bob ate a bowl of cereal before getting dressed in his red striped shirt and dark gray pants. Lou watched both Bob and the intruders, anxiously wondering what would happen when Bob leaves at 3:30.  “They’re back.”  “I know,” he answered. “I had a feeling they would come back.”  “I’ll call you to see if you are alright when I get into the store,” Bob said, kissing her and walking out the door for work.

 

SHADES

When the first eight unearthly visitors appeared in Apartment 26, they were not the only ones there. An imposing six foot three, tall man dressed in black and wearing fifties-styled sunglasses was with them. He was a brooding man, that radiated evil and orchestrating the hell that the Andersons lived with from November 19th to November 30th, 1992. Shades, as Lou Anderson called him, was the leader of the entities. He never spoke in the first few days, but the ghosts followed his instructions.

 

In the early morning of November 18, 1992, was the coldest morning of the late Fall, so far that year. Lou sat alone as she always did after Bob left for work. The eight ghosts multiplied to sixteen, seemingly over night. Shades stood in the corner by Bob’s chair with his right hand raised waist high. Suddenly, without warning, blue “stars” flew out of his hand creating a light whirl pool. She watched the light show, while the ghosts began to grow restless. All Lou heard was the echoed screams in her mind; and they disappeared as dawn broke over the apartment complex. She shook in fear as the Today Show broke the silence. Her nerves danced throughout her body, as she puffed on the last few millimeters of her cigarette.

 

To her,  Shades became her worst nightmare. She called Rob, as he sat watching the Sally Jesse Raphael Show before going to his one o’clock class. He answered the phone, quickly sensing something wasn’t right, and his mother began to talk with him.  “Rob, do you remember how you used to tell your father and I about the ghosts at Higgins Lake?” she stated with a strained, nervous voice.  Rob didn’t know where the question came from, but responded,”Yeah, I remember. You told me there were no such things as ghosts.”  There was a short pause before Lou spoke about the entities in her apartment. “Well, your father and I now believe you.”  Rob was almost thrown back when his mother described the events leading up to that morning.  “Have you tried talking with them...asking them why they are there?”  “Something is telling me not to.”  “Why don’t  you place a piece of paper on your table write a question on it, why are you here?”  “I’m scared.”  “Have they threatened you, yet?"  “Shades, the leader of the ghosts, summoned up blue lights and made them dance around your father’s chair.”  Rob knew something wasn’t right. This was the first time he had heard or read about an account of a haunting like this before. “How many are there now with you?”  “Twenty-five of them.”  “I’m coming over and sit on the couch for a while. I want them to know I can sense them and try to drive them out.”  “Don’t.  I don’t want you to come over...maybe they’ll go away.”  “Mom, once they are established there, there isn’t anyway to get rid of them, but through the use of Rite of Exorcism.  Just think about it, mom,” he explained.  “I’ll call you back tonight if it gets worse,” Lou said nervously.  “They listen to us all the time. I got to go. Love you, Rob.”  “I love you too, mom. Bye.”  Lou hung up the phone, as it was almost time for Bob to come home. She lit up a cigarette and watched her shows.

 

It was five pm when the ghosts re-appeared from their hiding places. She also noticed streaks of black, literally running down their faces as though they were crying. Their eyes were solid black and cold as ice. The little girl, who sat on Bob’s lap suddenly aged into a well developed sixteen year old girl. She stared evily at Bob as she strolled over to him and began rubbing her hands all over him. Bob sat in his chair as Shades stood near the TV, watching the girl trying to sexually arouse Bob. Lou demanded the ghost to leave her husband alone. The girl rubbed her hands around his privates, but found out he was impotent due to his diabetes.  “Get her away from you, Bob. She’s touching your groin!” Lou exclaimed, as Bob got up and walked away from the ghost.  “It didn’t work, did it Shades,” she thought as she smoked her cigarette. “Bob has diabetes and he can’t get aroused.”  Shades moved in front of the television and the light from it caused his waist-down to become invisible. Bob went into the kitchen to make some coffee, as he felt an icy cold sensation racing all over his body and he realized it was from the entities. The entities’ faces started to blacken with white streaks still present on their faces. Throughout the night, Shades taught the little children how to levitate objects around the apartment, which the Andersons witnessed repeatedly. First, it started with pens and pencils and worked up to heavier objects, such as a digital clock on the table in front of the window. The Andersons spotted more entities outside the window, standing at eye-level watching them. The only problem with that was, the fifteen foot drop from their porch down to the bottom of the hill, where they stood.  Shades turned himself into a small boy when the Andersons were not looking, and when Lou looked back, there was a small boy sitting on the rug watching TV.  “There’s a boy on the rug,” Lou informed Bob as he brought her out a cup of coffee.   The boy turned around and grinned hellishly at them. He wore those sunglasses and she knew it was Shades.  “Trying a new trick, I see,” Lou stated, gaining some courage.  “Well, you think your smart, but I know you now.”  Shades returned to his normal appearance, as he continued to instruct the children, adding some satanic phrases to their growing powers. The Andersons ignored them until they had to go to bed.

 

On November 19th, they woke up at their usual time and Lou couldn’t sleep due to her fears of the ghosts. They walked out and Bob got ready to go to work. They turned on the TV and the ghosts appeared not inside the apartment, but outside standing fifteen feet to twenty feet tall, staring at them. It was Shades, the woman from the original six, and another man she had never seen before.  The stars returned, striking the windows with some force to shake them, without breaking the glass. Bob heard the banging, as he made a pot of coffee. “I want you to call Rob and have him pick you up if they threaten you,” Bob instructed his wife. He sensed something  was going to happen.  It was Rob who had it, and he was the only one who could protect her until sunrise at his downtown Flint apartment. They ate and drank their coffee as the entities stopped their activities for now. New entities emerged inside the apartment and were distinctly different from those who came out of the woodwork November 15-18. They were black, as though they were dipped in tar and breathed like monsters. They only stayed in the background waiting for a signal, and they melted back into the dark recesses within the apartment where the light didn’t penetrate. Bob didn’t feel like he should leave her, but he knew Rob would come over to pick her up if necessary. He kissed her and left for work.  Lou sat alone waiting for the expected attack. She sat in the light from the kitchen, as Shades materialized through the window and approached her. He pointed his right index finger at her left ear, and a light, or as Lou called it, a laser fired into her ear. All she could feel was a burning pain that raced through her ear down her shoulders. He backed away as he sent more blue stars up into the air and they began glowing and exploding like the Fourth of July.

 

Lou held onto her ear, and all she could think of was calling Rob and getting the hell out of there.  She reached over and speed dialed Rob’s home number. His phone rang four times and all she got was his answering machine. “Rob, this is mom. Please pick me up…please hurry.”  Rob woke up slightly and went back to sleep.  Lou called again and received the same thing. She begged Rob to pick her up. She waited until she called a third time, waking her son up. He answered the phone. She begged for him to pick her up.  He said he would. Getting dressed, he drove out to Flushing to pick her up. When he got to his parents’ apartment, he found his mother scared out of her mind and willing to leave. She was dressed and had her coat on when he walked into the kitchen. Rob noticed something blue glowing on the window that grabbed his attention. It was concentric rings the size of a small car tire with an "X" through it.  It pulsated for a minute before dimming down.  She left the light on, and they retreated out of the apartment. Lou complained to her son about not answering his phone. He tried to explain to her about his lack of sleep, because he worried about their safety after they informed him about the unearthly activities in their home. Lou locked the door when suddenly Rob felt a tingling sensation, which he had lived with at Higgins Lake, and felt a cold chill behind him to his right near the exit.  “Come on, Mom. They are closing in.”  She pulled the key out of the deadbolt lock, and they fled down twenty feet to the half flight of stairs.  He helped his mother down, because of her weak legs from the stroke she suffered in 1989. They walked out to his blue 1990 Geo Metro that was parked by the sidewalk leading up to the building.  He helped Lou into the car when he spotted shadows slinking across the dark lawn towards his car. He slammed the door and jumped into the driver's seat before starting the engine and tearing out the parking lot. When they arrived at Rob’s small one bedroom apartment on Court Street near downtown Flint, it was six am and still quite dark. He helped her down to his basement apartment, and she sat outside his door smoking a cigarette in the visitor area. She sat there for ten minutes, before coming in and drinking a cup of instant coffee. She started to explain nervously about the laser Shades used on her ear. She heard Karin, Rob’s wife, getting up and getting ready for her classes at UM-F. She said hello and went to take a shower.  Rob showed off his pet gerbils, rat, and fish to his mother to calm her nerves down enough to go back to Flushing. He skipped his morning classes and drove her back to the apartment where the daylight gave her some peace, until Bob got home from McDonalds. Rob left for his home and study, before heading off for work at the college.

 

It was midnight when Bob and Lou called Rob and had him drive them over to his apartment. He arrived to find the parking lot lights on, but not the ground level lights. He walked up to the security door and buzzed up to his parents’ apartment, and they let him in. He rushed up to the apartment as they fled out of their home and raced past him. He stayed between them and the ghosts inside the apartment, acting like a barrier. As they fled, he felt eight entities closing in on him.  “Get to my car now,” Rob barked at them.  Rob pulled back from the door, slamming it shut. Bob locked the door as the three of them retreated for his car. When they approached his car, Rob sensed more entities closing in all around them. They moved by the parked cars, and the dark lawns where pines and deciduous trees grew by the buildings.  “Come on, they’re closing in!”  Bob sat in the back seat as Lou climbed into the front seat. She slammed the door shut, as Rob felt the entities closing in about twenty feet from his car. He jumped in and tore out of the parking lot. It took Rob twenty minutes to drive back to his apartment. They finally entered the apartment building, sensing nothing was wrong. They sat down in his living room for ten minutes, as Rob made some coffee for them in his microwave and brought the two mugs out to them.  “What did they do this time?” Rob asked quietly, not trying to disturb his wife.  Lou took a sip from her coffee mug and explained, "I was walking to the front room when an unholy face lunged out at me from the wall.”  “Anything else?”  "Shades was teaching the children satanic rites.”  Rob sat down on the floor, as Lou took a double-take when she saw a seven year old girl walking into the front room and sit down next to her son. Five more ghosts gathered in the front room. One stood behind Bob, another in front of Lou on her right by the gerbil cages, one by the windows , and another by the stereo.  “They followed us here,” Lou cried in utter panic.  “Ignore them. They won’t do anything here.”  “Why are you so sure they won’t?”  “I’m just sure,” Rob said picking up his three metal crosses on a metal necklace and shoving it into the little girl’s face. “The Lord Jesus Christ commands you to be gone from this place.”  “She’s laughing at you,” Lou commented as the ghosts continued staring at them.  “What else is she doing?”  “Staring.”  "Ignore them. Its a game they are playing,” Rob replied, picking up more than six ghosts in his small one bedroom apartment.  He turned on the TV and picked up his putter he used to practice his putting skills around the house, and began swinging it at the spot where the girl was sitting.  “She’s getting angry about that,” Lou responded.  “So what!  What can she do to me?”  Rob’s parents sat in the apartment for three hours before they had him drive them back to their place.

 

It was six am when Bob woke up and went to work. He instructed Lou to call Rob if they started anything, and true to form, they did. Like the morning before, Rob drove his mother over to residence. Lou was showing the strains of the combination of lack of sleep and the constant mental and physical assaults by the now numbering one hundred ghosts. She started crying at seven am, when Rob watched Karin walking out the door for her class.  She calmed down for a moment and asked him, “When will they leave us alone?”  “Have you considered what I told you, you know a Rite of Exorcism?”  “Can’t talk about it. They are always listening to every conversation your dad and I have.”  “You can’t live like this. You got to get a priest or a paranormal investigator to drive them out.”  “Like a ghost buster?”  “There are no such thing as a ghost busters. I’ll try to locate one in my spare time.”  “I don’t know how long I can take this.”  Rob drove his mother back to Flushing at eight am and headed off for class. Lou walked into the apartment and she kept her blinds closed, turned on her radio and listened to some music when suddenly, a man appeared sitting on the edge of the sofa. He was dressed in a monk's robes and looking nervously around the apartment.  Lou was surprised by the ghostly visitor, but wasn’t frightened of him. He got up and walked over to her touching her hand, he could sense a lot things of about her. He wandered back over to the sofa and sat down by the arm closest to her.  “I’m sorry for frightening you,” the ghost apologized. “I wasn’t trying to.”  Lou stared at the monk.  “I see you are almost blind.”  “Yes I am.”  “I came here to warn you about Shades. He’s evil and...”  He stopped at mid-sentence and noticed something that scared him, moving out in the hallway. “He wants to hurt you and your husband.”  Why?”  I must go before that bitch comes.”  “Wait!”  The ghost disappeared for twenty minutes before re-appearing back at his original spot.  “Why?”  “I’ll tell him to leave you alone. Please leave this apartment before it's too late,”  the monk replied, before disappearing when Bob walked in through the door.  She informed Bob about the monk.  He sat down at the table  “We got to move out of this apartment.  I’ll go down and talk with Helen after my nap,” Bob remarked, taking his coat and tie off for the day.

 

THE ANDERSON'S PLIGHT

Bob walked down to the basement office. He wandered past the storage area and turned into the open door. He noticed the large office had a round table with comfortable chairs on the left-hand side of the door. As he strolled in deeper into the office, he saw Helen Hatcher sitting behind her desk, typing into her computer.  “Hello Bob,” she stated coldly.  Bob sat down in a chair in front of her desk and he tried to find the words to ask her to move them into another apartment.  “My wife and I would like to move out of our apartment and into another one elsewhere in Somerset,” Bob told her as he could tell something was wrong with the situation.  “What’s wrong, Mr. Anderson, with the apartment?” she inquired, forcing a smile.  Bob squirmed a little, as he tried to put his situation into words. “We’re having some problems…”  “Like what?”  “We have ghosts in our apartment. It started a week ago and it's been getting progressively worse every day,” he explained, almost in tears.  “I don’t believe in ghosts, Mr. Anderson and I don’t have any apartments with two bedrooms available in this building or in Building Three Hundred,” Helen stated with a condescending tone in her voice.  “What about Mrs. Stiger’s apartment? She died two weeks ago and it's open,” Bob replied getting a little fed up with Helen’s foot dragging.  “I see you really want to move out of your apartment. I will see what I can do for you. Please don’t say anything about what you are experiencing up there.”  Bob got up off the chair. “Please find us an apartment soon.”  He left Helen in her office and limped past the storage room and felt a presence emerging out of the storage area. He sprinted up the stairs and back into his apartment. He wandered in and sat down at the dinner table, where Lou sat smoking and watching TV.  “What did she say?”  “She’ll try, nothing open or so she says.”  “She’s lying.”  “I know she is, Lou.”  “We can’t stay here any longer. They are going to kill us if we stay.”  “Do you want to move out?”  “Rob said move or try to get someone to perform an exorcism.”  “Rob’s crazy.”  “Is he?”  “No.”  “I’m going out to feed the birds before it gets dark,” Bob stated, getting up and grabbing several small plastic bags of  bird feed out of the hall closet, as went outside to feed the song birds. Once outside, he climbed up the hill to their small porch where several bushes grew at the edge of the bird feeders that hung on their lifeless branches. He began pouring seeds into the feeders while Lou watched from within the apartment. She noticed several small brilliant flashes of light that suddenly exploded at the bottom of the hill and in the middle of the court. She was scared when she spotted Shades and two new men standing, watching Bob. Lou opened the window and told Bob to get back in the apartment. He rushed back inside the apartment as the three entities disappeared.

 

It was four pm when the Andersons received a knock on their door. Bob got up and walked over and answered it. Rich, the complex’s maintenance man, strolled in and headed into the front room.  “I have some information about this apartment after we talked a couple of days ago,” he said as he sat down at the table. “Before I started working here in 1986, a cleaning woman named Val claimed she saw ghosts in this apartment.”  “Really?” Lou replied with some stress echoing out of her voice.  “From what I have gathered, she didn’t like being up here, or down in the storage area.”  “What happened down there?” Bob questioned, trusting the maintenance man like his own son.  “She claimed a ghost was standing inside an empty storage cage with a glowing pentagram on the wall behind it,” he informed them. “I am concerned about you living here.”  “Could you try getting us relocated into another apartment somewhere in the complex,” Lou pleaded.  “I’ll try to get Helen to let you move elsewhere in the complex,” Rich said, getting up and leaving the apartment.  He closed the door behind him and Bob glanced at his wife.  Lou said quietly, “They knew and didn’t say anything about it.  We must move out of here as soon as possible.”  “Can’t do anything until Monday.”  “I know,” she answered.  “I don’t care if we lose our security deposit.  I just want out.”

 

It was nine in the morning when they were driven out of their apartment once more by the entities. The ghosts were totally black and their activities were becoming more violent. They were picking up small objects and levitating them towards Lou. Others moved around them, touching them physically that wasn’t right. Rob kept his parents at his place until midnight, but his parents spotted two or three ghosts staring at them inside of his own apartment.  Lou informed Rob about how the entities were changing both his father's face, as well as his own.  “Just laugh it off,” Rob stated as Lou ignored the new mental attacks.  “We’re going to a hotel for the night,” Lou stated as she wanted to stop bothering her son with their problems.  He drove them back to their apartment and they left for a hotel to get some much needed sleep.

 

It was Monday, November 24th when the Andersons temporarily moved down to a one bedroom apartment next to the office which Helen and her daughter, Vikki, used as a spare office. Rich moved the Andersons bedroom and TV into Apartment One. Helen informed them they were to be moved into an available two bedroom apartment within a week. The ghosts followed them down and started a new phase in their assaults. It always consisted of women trying to have sexual relations with Bob. The night they started to sleep in the temporary apartment, two women crawled into the bed with the Andersons. Lou saw the blankets move and she began screaming, “You can’t have my husband!”  She jumped out of the bed, as Bob slid over to Lou’s side and jumped out of the bed. Both women sat up, naked and staring angrily at her. “He’s ours and there’s nothing you can do to stop us,” they said in unison. Their eyes burned with all the hell fires inside them. The two women, who were in their twenties, faded into the shadows. “He’s mine,” Lou replied violently.  “We’re leaving this place as soon as possible.”

 

Tuesday Morning started their final leg of their torment. It was, as though the answers to why these unholy invaders came, seemed to stare them in the face. It was seven am when Rich walked into the apartment unannounced and uninvited, while Bob was at work. He surprised Lou, as he sat down at the desk sitting by the dining room light. "If you want to rid yourself of these ghosts just say Psalm____ and if you wish them to return then say Psalm____,” he suggested to Lou, as he suddenly stood up.  “Why would I want to bring them back?” questioned Lou.  "It can help you understand things,” Rich stated angrily.  “I won’t be able to help you in the future since my Pastor and I think you are in need of some professional help.”  “For what?”  “There are no such things as ghosts.”  “Wait a second!  You gave me instructions to exorcise them out and call them back…”  “Who is going to believe a crazy woman?”

 

He left the apartment, making Lou wonder if he knew more than he was saying . She was frightened of Rich. She treated him like her own son and he pretended to help them as a Christian.  “Maybe Rob was right about not trusting Rich, Vikki, or Helen,“ she thought to herself.  “He made the suggestion that they knew something was going to happen and allowed it.”  She watched TV for about an hour when Rich and Vikki stormed into the apartment. Vikki walked over to the phone on the desk and dialed out. She spoke to a person who ran the regional section of the corporation that owned Somerset Apartments for ten minutes. After she hung up, she turned to Lou and stated what was going on.  “You and your husband have until the end of the month to move out of Somerset. My mother and I have concluded that you are mentally ill and have made statements about this haunting to another tenant, Mrs. Reicher.  We feel that this is slanderous towards us.”  “What did I say?” Lou demanded knowing that Mrs. Reicher was a drunk, but never said anything to her because they were not friends.  “You said there were ghosts here,” Vikki remarked coldly.  “We want you out because of your mental problems.”  “We don’t have anywhere to go?“  “It doesn’t matter!  You have until the first to be packed and moved out of here,” Vikki demanded. Rich will drive you out to your husband’s workplace to inform him about what we decided.”  Lou grabbed her coat and Rich helped her out to his company truck. He drove her down River Road to Elms Road.  He stopped at the intersection and then turned right towards Swartz Creek and not left for Flushing Road.  “You’re heading the wrong way,” protested Lou.  “It would be so easy for me to make you disappear and no one would even know you were with me.”  He turned around in a doctor’s office parking lot and drove back to Flushing and dropped her at McDonalds.  She walked into the restaurant and Bob ran out from his work station. He found her sitting at one of the booths crying uncontrollably. She informed him about what happened and he told his store manager he had to leave. He punched out to deal with what happened. He retrieved his coat and took Lou home so she could calm down and start their search for another apartment to live in.

 

MOVING OUT IS ONLY THE BEGINNING

The Andersons scrambled throughout Tuesday and Wednesday to find a place to live after the verbal eviction notice given by Vikki Hatcher.  After twenty-four hours, they found another apartment in Flushing and they began packing and shipping their belongings over to the new apartment. Their son who was feeling the strains of the situation delivered their packed items to the new place. The Andersons still fearful of the ghosts, packed quickly during the safe hours and quit before three pm. Only one time did Bob Anderson venture back up to Apartment 26 during the unsafe hours. He had to retrieve some medication that he and his wife needed for their diabetes. When he entered the deserted apartment, he caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure moving across the apartment in the opposite direction that he was heading. He grabbed the medicine and raced back out of the apartment when more entities were flowing into his area.  It took the Andersons a few days of packing before the movers came on Saturday, November 30th.  By then they were glad that they were leaving their private hell.  At first on that warm sunny day, they planned not to tell anyone where they were moving to, since Helen, Vikki, or Rich may try to harm them in some way. Bob and Lou told Rob that if anyone asks, they were moving to Swartz Creek. This worked for a while. Their move went smoothly with the help from the large moving firm and they were out of their hell by noon.  By that night, everyone in the Anderson family were happy and felt safe.  At ten pm, Rob was at his apartment watching a horror movie on CBS station when he felt a tingling sensation running through his entire body. He felt two powerful presences closing in behind him from the dark kitchen/dining room. He felt them hovering around him and knew they were searching for his parents. He tried to ignore them, but they made him deathly afraid and couldn’t handle it any longer. Over and over again, he told them that his parents moved to Swartz Creek. They stayed until midnight when they left the apartment permanently.  Rob breathed a sigh of relief, but fearful that they may return on a later date to exact some sort of retribution against him. He had several nightmares throughout the months after the haunting and on two occasions in February, two presences were felt in his bedroom at 10 am and in the front room at 9:30 pm.  Bob and Lou felt safe in their new apartment and had nothing to worry about until December 10, 1992 when the owners of Somerset Apartments filed suit against them.

 

LEGAL MATTERS  

On December 10, 1992, Bob Anderson went to the Flushing Post Office to pick up his mail. He found a letter addressed to him from the Somerset Apartments owners. They informed him they moved out illegally and owed them $785 in back rent and legal expenses. Within the letter it informed them of their new address and they had thirty days to pay the back rent. Lou was scared when she received the news from Bob and they called Rob to inform him of the situation.  Rob told them of a precedence setting case out of New Jersey where a couple sued and won against a realty agent who sold them a home that was documented to be haunted. Bob asked Rob to write it down in order to give a lawyer, when they find one to represent them in this matter. They searched for one and by December 20, 1992, they found one. He informed them that the owners of Somerset Apartments violated the law on two counts.  First, they didn’t give the Andersons one month written notice for their eviction.  Secondly, they harassed his clients and they caused the breech of contract. He knew of the New Jersey case but he informed them they broke the law unintentionally by not supplying the owners of their new address.  He accepted their case and wrote a letter that he was representing them in this matter and all correspondence would be coming to his office. By February of 1993, he informed the Andersons of his letter, which he supplied a copy to them for their records and he didn’t receive a response from the corporation. He wrote another letter informing them they had another time limit set before the courts would drop the matter. He was still waiting for a response on March 10, 1993 when the time limit expired and the owners forfeited their rights in the courts.  Bob Anderson in the end had to borrow $475 from his brother Don to pay for legal fees incurred during this affair. He repaid the debt and nothing more was said of it after the legal suit was dropped by the courts.

 

The Son Knows: An Explanation, Analysis, And Who Is To Blame For The Haunting of Apt. 26

To understand the situation at Somerset Apartments, we must first try to look at the location and rule out anything that may have brought about the haunting. Somerset Apartments were built on a hill overlooking the Flint River flowing west, before turning north and heading to the Saginaw River outside of Genesee County. The apartment complex is on the south banks, and below the hill was once an old lumber saw mill.  The cemetery for the town is two miles to the northeast at the edge of the Flushing, and all known Indian activities were seasonal.  There were no known burial mounds in the town itself. The area where the apartments is situated at is a sprawling suburbia, so this would eliminate any cemeteries that the apartments would have been built over.  The age factor would be another consideration. Built in the 1960s, the apartment complex is too young to establish any ghosts. So with these three explanations eliminated, the question of murder or satanic rituals must be looked into. During the 1970s to 1980, there was heavy drug activities in the complex until the current owners took over in late 1980.  With the drug activities, there were some scattered devil worshiping taking place, but it wasn’t organized; not then anyways.  The question of murder can be eliminated, because the last known murder within Flushing and its township happened at where the Country Club now stands. That happened at the turn of the century.  

 

All these factors, in one way or another, can be dismissed except for one, the satanic rituals in the post 1980 ownership turnover.  We must look back at 1983-84 when the first people who moved out claimed that there were ghosts in the building. In 1984, when the cleaning lady, Val, claimed it was haunted. She left the complex in 1986 when she couldn’t take it any longer. 1988 was the date when Helen and her daughter Vikki took over the complex, managing for the ownership.  Rich was there by 1986. With all this, we must consider they actively knew of the situation in Building One Hundred. Helen, Rich, and Vikki knew based on what the neighbors stated to Luella Anderson. If they knew, why didn’t they warn the Andersons? The key is looking back to March of 1992, when the Andersons renewed their lease. When they did, at that point, the neighbors and even Helen turned against them. Why did Helen and the neighbors turn against the Andersons after March of 1992?  Why did the people spy on them and listen at the door to their apartment?

 

In my opinion, after further investigations, more than likely it was orchestrated by Helen, Vikki, and Rich. Furthermore, based on hearsay from people at the complex, Helen had some strange religious beliefs and others like-minded as her, would go down into the storage area dressed in black robes at midnight on Friday nights. If these claims are true, then she was holding satanic rites in the empty storage cage where the cleaning lady saw the burning pentagram.  It is my belief  that she controlled these entities, the way they appeared and how they acted; directed at first against Lou and then towards Bob. I researched this theory and found it plausible. I found three possible books that the Church of Satan and devil worshipers used to conjure up demons or “ghosts.” Based on some sites similar to this, someone brought them over there and did their bidding.  My belief is that Helen controlled them, terrorized my parents, and caused the unending hell my mother could not get out of her mind. I am still suffering from this. In this article I down-played my role in this haunting, because my actions were secondary to that of my parents.  Nothing like this has been documented in paranormal research. I hope no one goes through what my parents went through. The purpose of this article was to document the facts surrounding this deliberate haunting of my parents.

 

POST SCRIPT 2007

It's been nearly fifteen years since the incident at the Somerset Apartments happened, and there are some things that need to be followed up on in order for you, as the reader, to draw some conclusions about this incident. The two big things were the deaths of Bob and Luella Anderson.  Luella Anderson died on November 14, 1994 in my apartment of a massive heart attack. Bob Anderson died of complications due to a massive stroke in November 25, 2001. These two witnesses had been interviewed numerous times and they only gave the first names of Helen, Vikki, and Rich. Even after Lou passed on, Bob would not supply the last names to all three individuals fearing retribution from these individuals.

 

From 1995 to 2004, I worked on trying to find the names of people who resided in Apartment 26, but failed to find one name in the Flushing records. Also I talked with White Wiccans who are familiar with the black arts and they found it very plausible for a Black or Brown Wiccan to summon a demon, but eventually there is a price to be paid for controlling one or more.

 

I have not visited Flushing since the death of my father in 2001.  By the end of 2000, I concluded that I needed help or needed to pass on this research to another group of paranormal researchers, who have the time and money to explore what had happened to my parents and with others who may have fallen into the two year cycle of haunting at Somerset.  I contacted first, in 2000, the head of the International Ghost Hunters Society, about what happened to my parents. In essence, he blew me off saying nothing like this ever happened and would not help me in the research.I turned to a local Flint ghost hunter in 2002 and asked her if she would like to investigate this case.  She gave me a reply after a week saying she doesn’t deal with demonic haunting.  In 2004-2005, I e-mailed two Michigan ghost hunting societies based out of Grand Rapids and in Ann Arbor (which operate websites for their societies). They were informed of the details mentioned above and they either never replied, or said there is no such haunting cases such as this.  The only ones who were mildly interested were TAPS. I mentioned bits and pieces of the Somerset case to them on their web board and none of their sister societies in Michigan were interested in doing a thorough research on this case.

 

I would like to mention one thing during this entire investigation that bothered me. My own church, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, didn’t respond to my parents’ plight.  I am quite disturbed about their lack of acknowledgement over this case, since they handled a similar case of a pastor in Wisconsin in the 1990s. The pastor at their church never came out and never spoke to them during this incident.