I lived in a house with spooky overtones, haunted maybe or just in need of renovation? Gargoyles in place out front, it was one of many in a small side street in North Melbourne. They were old, attached Victorian terraces, not yet gentrified. They looked scrappy and sad, and I occupied one with a guy working at a local hospital.
It All Seemed Normal
At the beginning, I loved the house. C was easy to get on with, messy but manageable, and after leaving my first queer relationship, I craved a place where I could breathe, exist, and live without expectations. Simple felt right.
We had two dogs, which felt like a bonus. I loved their company. Especially after leaving my dog, Banjo, with my ex while I moved through several places before finally renting in North Melbourne.
The first hint of offness was an odd one. I struggled to find the house every day, despite the street being short. It was playing peekaboo. I would often drive past it 2 or 3 times before spotting the gargoyles out the front.
They were a bunch of attached, Victorian terraces, it was very. It gave me a moment, a pause to say huh? On more than one occasion.
Then Odd Stuff Started
The dogs started acting erratically, they sensed something. But there was nothing there. They would run to a window in the living room, barking and scratching. We thought mice, rats, or other creatures. Nothing. We checked soo many times.
They would not move from this spot, for hours and hours. When we physically tried to move them, they resisted and ran straight back. The walls were brick, no space for creepy crawlies. C and I checked everything, inside and out baffled by the dogs behaviour.
And we couldn’t stop them.
The window opened onto a small open area, my room was behind a window on the other side.
Wait There Was More
That window in my room that faced this open area? The curtains wouldn’t stay closed. Hear me out. NO MATTER what I did, the curtains would slowly open. Not all the way, just enough so a peeper could peep inside.
I tried to even peg the two sides together, desperate times. By the morning it would always be open. It felt like I was being watched. Not scary watched, just odd. At no time did I ever feel afraid.
My Housemate Went Into Hibernation
C began to never leave his room except to go to work, he retreated into hibernation. His girlfriend was concerned and spoke to me. This was not him normally. He complained of no energy, just wanted to sleep and when his girlfriend tried to speak to him about it he became verbally abusive, and eventually threatened violence.
Could have been lots of things.
It felt like the house was falling apart around us and he wasn’t coping with something. He couldn’t articulate either. A hole appeared in his bedroom floor.
The House Targeted a Friend
I had a friend S, she would visit A LOT. We were tight and worked together, we would often chill at mine. The one thing I struggled with S, was her complaining about her weight. I had no issue with her size but she did. Now I figure if you have a problem, address it, don’t make it into a daily crisis.
She struggled with asthma, and I would encourage her to take action to make herself happier, like don’t smoke, not easy I know. She had the support from outside, but inside her she wasn’t making the changes. So I was frustrated with being her trauma dump site and once I became angry with this, something odd happened at the house.
I was seeing her off one night, I was at the front door she was halfway down the stairs. We were chatting about the changes she wanted to make in her life, nothing heated. When it looked like something was pushing her away from me. S was confused as she moved in slow motion, ending up on the ground, ankle twisted. I was not in reach of her physically.
It was the strangest thing to watch happen. She shared she felt a steady pressure pushing her, and left that night limping and puzzled. Her ankle took months to be okay.
This was the second to last time she visited that house.
The Toilet Imploded
The last time S visited the toilet (the only one) imploded, she didn’t get a chance to sit, it collapsed on approach. It looked so odd, the way it broke. I believed her when she hadn’t been seated when it happened. There was a major sharp edge that would have caused damage and there was none.
The same day a hole appeared in C’s bedroom floor where nobody was standing.
Time to move?
My Psychic Friend Shed Light
Talking to a psychic friend W on the landline (mobiles were rare then) she told me she had something urgent to share but not on the phone. The phone cut out. I called her back, W and her partner had recently visited the house and she wanted to share something she had noticed.
We made a time to catch up away from the house, she insisted, and the phone cut out again.
W told me that centuries earlier, a witches’ coven had met on this land (where the house was built) and that their energy still lingered. She could feel them. W said they were protecting me, while everyone else was fair game, which she used to explain the unexplainable. I thought about what she said, it was way in left field.
I tried talking to her about it on the phone a couple of times after this meeting, to get more info, I was skeptical. Every time I mentioned what was going on in the house, the phone would cut out. When we talked about other things, the phone worked fine.
Weird huh?
I Was Out Of There
Things kept happening in the house and around us. A man was murdered at the end of the street, our next door neighbour was robbed and they accessed through our yard. Nothing was taken from us, the back door was unlocked, the dogs were not there at the time.
It started feeling unsafe, my housemate was getting worse, things kept breaking. Whether the house was haunted by a coven of witches, another entity, or was just old and tired and falling apart. Time to go, something didn’t want us there, and I wasn’t going to question, I just moved.
I don’t know what happened to C after I left.
Peace OuT