A Twilight Zone...

At first glance my apartment seems to be pretty average. I mean, aside from having the sink and shower jammed in a hallway separate from the "toilet room," three different kinds of "hard wood" floors, and no closets to speak of, the apartment is New York normal. At least, I'm assuming.

But lately I've been noticing more and more strange occurrences which are enough to leave you afraid to be alone at night. I'll begin with the less threatening.

For starters, my apartment is not quiet. My room faces a roof top and there are no people to walk by or cars honking outside. But there are strange noises the apartment itself makes. I don't know what it is, but every so often there is a vibrating coming from the toilet room. For those of you who don't know, this is just a tiny room and a toilet. That's it. And it vibrates. It's like some machine somewhere in the building turns on and it vibrates my toilet.

Also, there's my fridge. It rings a bell. It's not like it knows when dinner is ready or anything, it just does it on its own accord. It sounds sort of like a cow bell ringing for five or ten seconds and then it stops. I don't have any idea what that's about. Oh hey! As I sit here writing this it just rang again.

These noises are odd, but I'm used to them now and they don't bother me.

It is only in the past few weeks that really bizarre things have started to happen. I've slept with my window cracked open pretty much since I moved into this apartment, but lately weird events have been taking place.

About a month or so ago I heard a screaming outside of my window. At first I thought it was nothing, this is New York, but when it happened again I had my hand on my phone in case I wanted to call the police. It was a woman, but she was screaming like she was really pissed off about something. This was at about 12:30am. I haven't heard it since.

Three times I've been woken at really odd hours: 2am, 1:30am, 3am, from someone somewhere singing. Sometimes it sounds like a ballad being sung alongside some music playing. Other times its just someone softly singing somewhere. I can't tell if it's a guy or a girl, but they need to cut it out. Or else it's just the ghost who lives on the roof across my window.

The most bizarre occurrence: The water splash. It was around 10:30pm on a Saturday night when I first heard it. Someone was dumping something outside of their window and it was landing on my fire escape! Then I heard someone coughing and I thought, "eaw! Someone's totally throwing up!" I grabbed K to come and listen, but by the time she got into my room, it had stopped. Now, this didn't happen all at once. It was like whoever was dumping liquid out was continually filling up a bucket. I must have heard five or six different splats. Stranger than this, a few weeks later I woke to the sound again! But this time it was a week night and it was 2am in the morning! What the heck are they doing?! I have yet to figure it out.

When I woke the next morning there was a baby blanket hanging on my fire escape. I don't know if it was dropped there or put there by someone, but it was really creepy. Three days later it was gone. I'm pretty worried about having my apartment broken into here; I know four people who have had burglaries in New York. And my window doesn't lock. So you can imagine that I'm a little spooked by this night time activity that seems to resonate right outside my window.

On top of this, the neighbors in the room right above me are incredible noisy all night long. It sounds like they are rolling bowling balls across their floor. K has never heard a thing. I'm not sure if this is because she can sleep through anything, or just has really bad ears.