Pests...

There are rumors of ghosts around here. See, we live in an old building that used to house psych patients. There are people who have reported odd events and waking up to see a face inches from theirs. Now, I take all these stories very lightly, but then this very down-to-earth Canadian told me she has been a little freaked out and I got uncomfortable. We spent a couple of nights where all the old-timers from Callan Park Palace told us newbies all the stories they had heard and any stories of their own. The second night of this, I went to my room and got in bed with an old New Yorker planning to do a good deal of reading. About 90 minutes later, I hear a knock at my door. I get up and open to find Gill standing there. Now Gill and I are civil, but she’s been totally silent with me since the complaining disaster.

As I’m writing this we just had a massive scare!!! We’re four girls sitting in the common room watching a romantic comedy when I notice a weird sound like someone exhaling very heavily. I looked at Jeanet, nope, not her. Suz, nope, not her. Then Jeanet notices, too, because she sat straight up very quickly and started looking around at us. We paused the movie because the other girls couldn’t hear it, and sure enough, there was a very loud breathing sound coming from inside the room…! We made sure it wasn’t one of us, and then we totally panicked. It sounded like someone had gotten stabbed in the lungs and was dying, breathing their last breaths. It seemed louder by the windows, so Suz flung one open and sure enough, it was coming from right outside the window! With the recent stabbing and all, we flipped. We ran down the hallway to find a flashlight to try and see something. We recruited four girls, including Trish, the down-to-earth Canadian (and current cripple from dropping a knife on her Achilles tendon – ouch) to come as back-up. The eight of us ventured back to the common room and on our way noticed the main door wide open…! We then proceeded to freak out, huddled in the common room (strength in numbers, never mind that 7 of the 8 are total sissies) until the level-headed and oh-so-cool German girl, Martina, came in and said, “That’s just a possum!” Sure enough, we sent out a couple of girls with weenie flashlights who reported that it was just a possum. PHEW! But it is still making the most horrendous, drawn-out-death breathing noises.

So back to the ghosts. Gill is standing outside my room and says, as she’s looking over my shoulder at my window, “Abby? Are you okay?” “Uhhhm, yeah, why?” Without further ado she moves towards my window past me and asks, “What do you have hanging outside your window?” “Uhhhm, nothing.” She obviously doesn’t take my word for it, because she is looking outside my window for something. She looks confused so I say that I sometimes hang a dress or a shirt inside my window to dry. She says, no, it was outside my window. So I asked if she was sure it was my window and not Jeanet’s or the ironing room to either side. Nope, she could see me reading on my bed. I asked what she thought she saw, because I’m curious and she hurriedly says she thought it was a nursing uniform, but that she was mistaken and it was obviously a reflection. She left very quickly and it all happened so fast that I didn’t realize what she was saying until she was gone. So then, after the two nights of ghost stories, I closed my window and locked it for the first time since the stabbing, and slept with it closed all night. She keeps saying it was a reflection, but I’ve stood out on that porch many times since and looked at my window in all levels of light and not once seen anything that resembles a nursing uniform… Oh, and now the possum is doing it again.

And ghosts aren’t the only pests around here. We have cockroaches. Massive cockroaches. The other night I was in my room after a shit day, a real zinger, reading a New Yorker, relaxing on my bed. All of a sudden out of the corner of my eye I see this brown figure streak across the opposite wall up by the ceiling. Thankfully we have 12 foot ceilings, but still. It was a massive cockroach, and it has long feelers. It stopped in the corner, so I snagged some girls on the way by in the hallway to see if they could help. Three girls packed in to my little room armed with Raid and drowned the sucker. They say you shouldn’t smoosh cockroaches because they squirt out thousands of eggs – instead you should spray them or trap them. It was taken care of, but since then (six days ago) there have been four other sightings. I slept with my lights on and bought myself a can of Raid to stand by my bed. Spiders and grasshoppers I can take, and I can even take dying, wheezing possums, but cockroaches NO.