With spooky season creeping up fast, the houses of Providence have begun to appear a little more haunted, the eerie glow of the moon lingers a little longer each night, and the werewolves of Federal Hill continue to howl tirelessly. A black cat probably shadows my walk home each evening, I’ve almost definitely seen a ghost in the stacks at least twice, and several cans of beer mysteriously went missing from my roommate’s fridge on Saturday night…I’m pretty sure I could even smell vomit on Sunday morning, so something has to be up.
While my landlord may have explicitly said, “This house is haunted” back in August, I know my porch steps didn’t start creaking until a week ago, and while my roommate told me she didn’t touch it, I’m pretty sure the couch moved like 4 inches overnight. Apparently, my landlord was telling the truth…but you’re not convinced? Maybe the house is just old? Maybe I just didn’t notice before? Wrong. The most telling feature of my personal haunted hell of a household is the recurring chanting – It’s a dead giveaway.
On occasion, I mosey around my house late in the evening and am greeted by relentless thumping permeating the walls and floors. Closely followed by indecipherable chanting, the chaos persists for hours. This is, without a doubt, the ghosts. They’re in the walls, they’re under the floorboards, I’m sure of it. There is no other feasible explanation for the cult-like groans and methodical pounding that shakes the foundations of my home almost every weekend.
Luckily, the mayhem has never seemed to bother the tenants who live above me, members of Brown’s rugby team. In a bizarre coincidence, the chanting has always happened on a Saturday night just a few hours after their team has won a game and exactly when they are due to begin their celebrations in the basement we share. They always disappear downstairs a matter of moments before the chanting begins and reappear a matter of moments after the disorder subsides, somehow masking the sounds of chaos with whatever celebrations they get up to. I guess it explains why they still don’t believe me when I tell them the house is most definitely haunted.
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