Collection of Spooky Stories

Evil Apartment

In this creepy apartment story, a college graduate moves into an old apartment building in New York City, and finds that something entirely evil lurks beneath.

How did I get here, locked away in the mental health ward of the New York City Hospital? I shouldn't have told my parents what happened, or have gone to the police when they refused to believe me. I know that what I saw was real, but the doctors have planted seeds of doubt in my mind. I must write this down – to organize my thoughts. There must be a way to prove to the world that what I experienced was real, and to protect others from sharing the fate that I so narrowly escaped. Evil lurks in the darkest, deepest corners of New York City, and it is only a matter of time before innocent people are killed.

It was the first day of work and of course I was late. Rushing through my morning routine, trying to ignore my apartment's rattling and gasping pipes as I showered and brushed my teeth. The last thing I needed was for a pipe to explode in the apartment I had just moved into the previous night. I navigated unopened cardboard boxes as I made my way to the ancient oak wardrobe that had been left in the apartment by the previous tenant. "Thank God I took the time to iron my clothes last night." I muttered as I pulled on my best blouse, a grey pair of slacks, and slipped into my favorite pair of black flats. I checked myself in the mirror, fixed my posture, and forced a smile while trying to ignore the paint peeling from the walls and cardboard chaos laying on the floor behind me.

If only I could go back in time, back to the carefree days of living in luxury dorms with my friends at New York University. Unfortunately, I graduated, and the fairy tale of college was over and I now had to face reality. I took out too much in loans to afford NYU, and now I was living in a rundown apartment building in the worst part of Brooklyn. My friends, most of whom had wealthy parents, moved on to luxury apartments in trendy Manhattan neighborhoods – they promised me that they would visit, but I knew that would never happen. My new apartment was only a few miles away from them, but the divide between New York City's rich and poor meant that I might as well have been living in China.

I took a deep breath, resigning myself to my new life, and stepped out of my apartment, hoisted my fake designer bag onto my shoulder, and walked down the hallway towards the archaic elevator. "Being an adult sucks" I muttered.

My apartment building, Washington Terrace, was all I could afford. I tried to imagine the building when it was first built, back during prohibition, but I could not see past the blackened and sagging wooden floors, crumbling plaster walls, and rusted metal pipes that always seemed to be moaning, hissing, and dripping. I lived alone on the thirteenth floor, and apart from my landlord and a few monstrous cockroaches, had not yet met any of my neighbors.

Standing at the doors to the elevator, I pressed the button for the ground floor a few times before I realized that the button lights were burned out. I passed the time waiting for the elevator by trying to guess how many apartments were on my floor. I counted twelve doors on my floor, which meant that there were likely two-hundred and forty separate units in the building. I'd only lived here for a few nights, but it seemed strange that I hadn't seen or heard any of my neighbors. No loud music, footsteps from the apartment above, or any children running down the hallways. Maybe it was mostly retirees that lived here, that might explain the deathly silence.

There were technically two elevators servicing the twenty floors of the building, but the landlord, Ms. Leary, told me that elevator "one" had been out of service for years. She would not give any details on when, or if it would ever be fixed. Not that it matters much, since no one else seemed to live there.

I stood staring at the elevator doors, lost in thought, and jumped as the elevator doors slid open with a loud bang to reveal a tiny elevator with clouded mirrors covering all three walls. I stepped in, and pushed the black button with the letter G, for ground floor. A minute passed, and the elevator doors had not closed yet. I pushed the button a few more times with my thumb, but nothing happened.