The Fourth Floor Visitor

Three nights ago, I invited two coworkers over for a late dinner in my new apartment on the fourth floor of the Ridgewood building. The place had a weird vibe, but the rent was too good to pass up, and the view of the city lights was decent. My friend Marcus, always the eccentric one, brought a Ouija board after we’d finished a bottle of wine. I laughed it off, but he insisted we give it a try, claiming he’d had ‘experiences’ before. My other friend, Priya, was skeptical but curious enough to agree.

So we sat around my heavy oak coffee table, fingers resting on the planchette, candles I’d found in a drawer flickering around us. The room hummed with the distant traffic below. Marcus asked if any spirit wanted to communicate. The planchette didn’t move. I rolled my eyes, but then the lights flickered, and a cold draft swept through, making the candles gutter. ‘Just the old wiring,’ I said, trying to sound calm.

Then the planchette slid to ‘YES’. My heart lurched. Priya gasped. Marcus grinned, drunk and thrilled. We asked for a name. The planchette spelled ‘MARTHA’. Nothing creepy about that, I thought. But then Marcus asked, ‘How did you die?’ The planchette flew to ‘MURDERED’. A sick chill ran through me. I wanted to stop, but Marcus pushed on: ‘Who killed you?’ The planchette spelled ‘ROY’. A heavy silence fell. I pulled my hands away and the board slid to the floor, the planchette spinning.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept hearing footsteps in the hallway, soft and deliberate, pausing outside my door. I told myself it was a neighbor. But around 3 a.m., I heard a faint whisper through the keyhole: ‘Roy… is you…’ I bolted upright, drenched in sweat. The voice was muffled but distinctly old, like a record playing from a dusty gramophone. I didn’t answer. I pulled the blanket over my head like a child.

The next morning, I called Marcus, half-laughing, half-terrified. He said he’d had a nightmare too: a woman with a broken neck standing at the foot of his bed, pointing at the door. Priya texted that she’d felt ‘a heavy presence’ in her flat.

I tried to brush it off, but strange things started happening. My keys would move from the hook by the door to the kitchen counter. The radio would turn on by itself, tuned to static. My phone rang with no caller ID, and when I answered, I heard a hollow breathing and then a man’s voice: ‘Roy’s not here. But I am.’ I dropped the phone.

Last night, I was lying in bed when I noticed the door to my closet was ajar. I was certain I’d closed it. A musty smell, like old wood and decay, seeped out. A hand, pale and skeletal, pressed against the crack, and a face with hollow eye sockets peered at me. I screamed, and it vanished. But on the closet floor, there was a small, rusted locket with a faded photograph of a woman and a man, and on the back, scratched: ‘Martha & Roy, 1947.’

Now I sit here, writing this, the light burning. I haven’t slept in two days. I’ve locked myself in the bathroom, but I can hear tapping on the pipes, rhythmic, like a code. And I swear, the reflection in the mirror just moved without me. I think Martha is still here, and she’s not alone. She’s waiting for something, or someone. And I fear that when I finally leave this apartment, she’ll follow. I don’t know how to exorcise a ghost, but I know I can’t stay. I just hope whatever I’ve stirred up doesn’t follow me out the door.