I believe in ghosts because I cohabitated with some kind of supernatural entity back when I was 19 and even though I know it is absolutely not in line with science at all, it was still extremely real. A story!

Back in the early aughts, I lived a flat on Pepperell St in Halifax with two friends, near the bread factory and around the corner from Freeman’s. You could still smoke indoors back then and we would stay up all night studying at Freeman’s, chain smoking and drinking black coffee

We had the upstairs of an old two-storey house, built sometime pre-WWI. It was close enough to the university that there were lots of students around, but far enough that some of the surrounding houses were family situations. I had a female roommate (K) and a male roommate (I)

Things got spooky almost right away. We would hear piano music close enough that it seemed like it was in the house. We assumed that it was the downstairs neighbours, but when we finally met them the first thing they asked was who in our apartment was always playing the piano

There was a spot in our hallway that was always cold, no matter how hot the day. Visitors who crashed on our couch described waking up to feel a presence; one said she felt someone touching her feet, and she never stayed with us again. Oh well, old house, you know?

But then something truly weird started happening: our male roommate kept getting locked out. He was freshly out of the closet, feeling himself, and was often out late at night at the bar. No big deal except he would come home and wouldn’t be able to get in

Our door had two locks on it: a lock by the handle that you could open with a key, and a chain lock. And every night at around 3 am my roommate K and I would wake up to our other roommate pounding on the door because the fucking chain lock was on again

It was super annoying! Male roommate thought we were doing it on purpose as a prank, but who wants to be woken up every night from a deep sleep? K and I thought maybe one of us was doing it reflexively and that we could break the habit if we were careful

So every night before going to bed, K and I would go down to the door, lock the key lock and say to each other “ok, see, I’m not putting the chain lock on.” Then at 3 am the pounding on the door would come, because the fucking chain lock had somehow locked itself in the interim

Then, one night while male roommate was out, I woke up to K calling my name. I should mention at this point that she is a very sensible, rational type. Her voice was absolutely panicked. I went into her room and she asked me to please get into bed with her and spend the night

She wouldn’t tell me what she’d seen, she just insisted I spend the night in her bed, which I did. In the morning she told me the whole story: that she’d woken up to her door opening, and, thinking it was me, asked what was wrong. The person in the doorway even looked like me

Long nightgown, long hair. It was dark, of course, so she could mostly just see the outline. Then the shape turned towards her and in a weird glowing face there were black holes where the eyes should have been. That was when she started screaming for me, and it hastily retreated

There were a few more nights of sharing beds after that, but we reached a sort of détente with the ghost. We realized that most of her actions were against men (there were boyfriends who also got locked out, and most of the living room couch haunting happened to dudes)

We decided that she was probably this Edwardian ghost who thought she was protecting two women living in her house from all the men. Who knows? It was a narrative that seemed to make sense to us. After male roommate moved out, she pretty much disappeared, so, you know.

The only other truly spooky thing that happened in that flat was one day when we had to go down to the basement and we flicked on the light switch only to have nothing happen. We realized ALL the bulbs had been unscrewed just enough to hang in the sockets but not connect

We asked the downstairs neighbours and our landlord but none of them had any idea about it. It was just an isolated thing but it was truly WEIRD. Still, I loved that apartment. One of my favourite places I’ve ever lived.

Anyway, that’s my story of the time I lived with a misandrist ghost. I hope she’s moved on, but I suspect she’s still out there, locking men outside in the dead of night and trying to protect young college girls

Our downstairs neighbour was a biology major and VERY against anything that couldn’t be explained by science. Sometimes we still troll him by being like “hey, Brian, remember the ghost??” to which he will reply “THERE WAS NO FUCKING GHOST” complete with forehead vein bulge