Page 28 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - April 2024

28 Our Haunted Apartment in Montreal

Our Haunted Apartment moved out, she recounted, she’d lost and had to pay the landlady on the spot,
both her jobs, and she and Andrew had draining our meager accounts. Just like
in Montreal broken up. Andrew, Anna and me, Kurt had

evidently decided he’d had enough of the

Continued from Page 27 After Kurt took over the apartment, apartment and escaped just months after
Andrew and I headed our separate ways. moving in, consequences be damned.

“De La Roche,” Andrew texted me back I got a job and moved into a crash pad
after I wrote to him. “Fuuuu…...” with a couple dudes I had met. The place I was at home one day recently with my
had broken glass on the floor and puke in two kids at our house in a Montreal
“I dreamt about the little girl three the toilet, but it felt like a meditation suburb. After spending some time writing
times,” he told me during a phone call. retreat after the hellish experience of De this story while they watched TV, I called
“The first time, she was standing on a La Roche. them into the kitchen and we sat down for
rooftop and her eyes were bleeding. I a snack. Suddenly we heard a shrill yowl
don’t remember the others.” In the months that followed, Kurt would from our normally quiet cat, as if he was
call me up now and then to score weed. I in pain.
He recalled that a friend of ours had slept visited the apartment a few times,
on the couch and woke up in tears after smoking with Kurt, keeping my eyes on The three of us raced down to the

dreaming about a little girl, too. He the cabinets. basement to find our black-and-white cat
remembered the episode with the CD staring into a corner, no longer making a
changer and Ray Charles clearly. One time, after he’d been there a couple sound. “Snowflake?” I asked gently. The
months, as we were passing a joint back cat turned to us, looking spooked. “He’s
Andrew also told me things I hadn’t and forth, he suddenly asked me: “Has never made a sound like that before,” my
known. “I almost died twice there,” he anything weird ever happened to you in seven-year-old daughter said.
said, both times from falling asleep with this place?”
lit cigarettes. He blamed himself, not any “Maybe he saw a mouse,” I suggested.

unquiet spirit, for waking up to find his Cautiously, I replied that some odd
pillow on fire. But he told me he had things may have happened when we Slightly uneasy, I told my kids it was time
never drifted off while smoking any time were there, without getting specific. I to head back upstairs when I noticed my
before or after our time at De La Roche. asked him what he had experienced. three-year-old son was drawing on a
whiteboard.
“Something bad happened in that place,” “It’s the weirdest thing,” he said. “Last
he speculated. “That was a long time ago, week, the lights started turning “What are you drawing there, bud?” I
and I can still see that little girl.” themselves on and off. It went on for a asked.
while.” I listened and nodded, but kept
“That place was so fucking creepy,” my mouth shut. “Dis is an apartment,” he said,
Anna told me over the phone. “My two mesmerized by his work as he carefully
clearest memories are the Ray Charles A few weeks after that, he called and told dragged an orange marker across the

thing and the kitchen cupboards.” me the puppy he bought would often sit board. “And dis is a map to it.”
facing into the living room corner,
In her recollection, she had been home barking at the ceiling. Kurt also told me I hadn’t told him what I’d been writing
alone napping and awoke to find all the his girlfriend—who, he said, had hated about. []
cabinets and drawers open, as I had. the apartment from the moment he got
it—now refused to sleep there. “She says
“But wait,” I stopped her. “The way I she felt someone touch her on her
remember it, I came home late one night shoulder,” he said.

to find the stereo blasting, with all the
lights off. When I turned the lights on, all I never heard from him again after that.
the kitchen cabinets were open.”
A couple years later, I got a call from
“Hmm. I was sure I was alone,” she said. Andrew telling me we had been
“Maybe it happened twice?” summoned to court.

It’s well known that people can create “What? What for?”
false memories based on suggestions
from others. It’s possible I heard the “The landlady from De La Roche is
story from Anna, and my mind combined suing us.”

it with the late-night music episode. Or
maybe my story, told to her and Andrew It turned out Kurt had pulled a midnight
20 years ago, snuck its way into her move, illegally abandoning the
memories. Or maybe it did happen twice. apartment a couple months before the
end of the sublet period. It had taken
Anna agreed that many bad things years for the case to wind its way through
unrelated to the haunting happened while the court system. The day of the hearing,
we were living there: by the time we we were found liable for the unpaid rent