Asklemmy

When I worked for a telecom company I used to get stuck working double shifts (system maintenance cycle at night) because I had seniority. Rather than go into the office or the data center I worked from my apartment when I could get away with it.

At this point in life I lived maybe fifteen minutes off the DC Beltway in NOVA. This is somewhat relevant.

So, one night I'm waiting for Sylantro patches to install and the cluster to fail back over and I saw a bunch of shadows moving at speed through the window. The odd thing blowing in the breeze at night wasn't unusual but this was a pack. Then I heard a crash upstairs and shouting in at least two languages, English being one of them. Never did find out what the other one was because it was too muffled.

I found out later that somebody living in my apartment building two or three floors up had been raided. I asked the folks I knew on the local police force, and they said it wasn't them. I kinda suspect that it was the FBI. Anyway, he worked for somebody's government and was in the States on a diplomatic visa, and he was also involved in human trafficking somehow. I never did find out specifics.

I've had a few ghost encounters in my life but this one is the easiest to share. In Copehnagen I was couch-surfing on a 3rd floor flat. The roommates told me the building was haunted. At exactly 1:30 every night you could hear someone walking all the way up the 4 floors in the stairwell then all the way back down and the door would slam. I heard it every night that I was still awake. The steps had a distinct limp which was noticeable and also interesting how the door would slam. That door had a hydraulic on it- it couldn't be slammed like that if you tried. The roommates cautioned me not to open the door to look as this would "upset him" and then they would find their things go missing. After 'upsetting him' in the past, they found their wallet in the VCR, the remote in the freezer- things like that. So I never peeked.

Then one night we had another couch surfer. Up at 1:30, he hear the limping step and asked about it. I said "That's the ghost" and as I said the word 'ghost' our front door FLEW open and the footsteps stopped. It was so freaky.

I once accidentally looked at a mirror

Night owls? It's 7.30 AM. Timezones are a thing ;-)