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I'm a very logical person. Some days, It's a stretsh for me to believe in anything beyond the physical world. That alone is enough to amaze me. As of a few weeks ago, however, I believe in ghosts.

I don't want to believe in ghosts. I sincerely wish I still had a reason not to, however, certain events have forced me to change my perspective. No, that's not right either. It happened before there was an event, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm still overly excited about the sliding glass door that slammed itself this evening.

When I moved into this townhouse, I was not aware of the fact that there is a crawlspace underneath the apartments, and if it was not for the bizarre behavior of our electric heaters, I still would not know about it. When we first looked at the apartment, everything was in working order, but the day after I moved in, the heater started blasting at 84 degrees. It took two electricians replacing everything but the wires themselves to fix it, and it's still 10 degrees above where the thermostat is set. they said that if this didn't work, that they would have to go into the crawlspace to look into it further.

The crawl space? I had no idea there was one, but the property management electricians seemed to be pretty creeped out by the place. Sure enough, in the closet, there was a square where the floor lifted up. This is the sort of thing that would usually instantly intrigue me, but for some reason I let it be for another week. I didn't even tell my roommate about it. However, after about a week, on a gorgeous spring day, I decided that I ought to peek into the crawl space.

It took me about 10 minutes of prying at it to finally get it open. I can't quite describe what came next. A musty smell. Shades of grey and blue. Something passed right through me. Absolute horror. I slammed the lid. I kicked at it, I pounded. In an instant my curiosity had turned sour, replaced by a heart-racing, hair-raising feeling of dread. I knew that a girl had died down there. All day, my heart would not slow its beating. I believed, no, I knew we were haunted, and all I had to go on was a feeling.

I told my roommate about the crawlspace that night, 14 hours later when my eyes were still as wide as saucers. Since then, We've recieved a bit more evidence. He believed my story, but didn't see anything to worry about. I told him that we could never open the crawl space without my aproval, and he seemed to understand this too. We've opened it once, which resulted in a cold touch on my face and a light across the room switching on. Ever since then, we've been experiencing strange lighting occurances. Lights that we always turn off will be on when I get home, and lights that are only operated by a wall switch will be turned off on the lamp itself. We dismissed all of this with a "well, maybe we just don't notice how often we flip switches here and there," which is a lie, because we do notice.

Tonight, however, came that which we could not ignore. John and I were listening to Miles Davis and cooking our dinners (broiled ribeye steak with apple and potatos for me.... mmmmm) when all of a sudden the heavy sliding glass door slammed shut. I thought it was just John stepping out for a cigarette, but when I turned around, he was right in front of me, staring at me. "Did you just hear that door slam?", he asked. Somebody must have shut it, I told him, and I still want to believe that, but I went out into the alley with him, and saw no evidence of life in any of our neighbor's apartments. They all had their doors locked and their blinds drawn. If they had entered within the past minute, their vertical blinds would still be swinging, but they were all still. It was just after midinight. They were all asleep. Even if they were awake, we know that none of our neighbors are the type to just run by and slam our back door.

Whatever or whoever it is, something did close that door, and I guess I'm just going to have to live with