The Story with Dick Gordon; 2012-10-31 Riding Out Hurricane Sandy in a Lighthouse; A Bump in the Night. Part 3

I'm Dick Gordon, this is the story, and this next one is by far the most requested story from our archives. It's a story that you might have second thoughts about if you're living alone, or if you're the kind of person who doesn't like things that go bump in the night. Amber Dawn wrote in to say, in my 20th year I moved to a quiet mountain town in Washington to be close to my brother and his family. I rented a one bedroom apartment down the street from his house. I lived there for six months until I discovered a man living in my crawl space. Amber's story begins the day she moved into that new apartment. So the first night in every new apartment is kind of creepy anyway, but I remember going to bed and I could have swore I heard footsteps upstairs and there was nothing up there but an attic. And I was going to say, you're on the top floor of the apartment building. Right. Right. So the first night it's all quiet, creepy, new space, and then I thought I heard footsteps

and I was like, well, that's weird. I wonder if maybe there's a maintenance guy up there or something. And so I talked to the landlord the next day and she was like, no, there's no way anybody can get up there. And I was like, oh, okay, it's probably just squirrels. I was like, okay, I'm crazy. Were you okay with that explanation? Well, I'm a little nutty so that would be the norm. But yeah, it just stayed in the back of my mind though that, you know, I could have swore I heard footsteps. Amber Dawn was no stranger to living on her own. She'd been doing that since she was about 15. So as she wrote, when she was about 20, she decided to move a little closer to her brother. Was this little farming town in the foothills of Washington State's Mount Rainier? And soon after Amber moved in, she got the sense that there was something or someone living above her.

Shuffle with that was that she was already in the top floor of this little apartment complex. You know, so I always had some noise on. It was only at night when I would turn everything off and take a bath and read because I'd read before I went to bed. And that was usually the time that my mind would start to go back to that. Was there any connection between whatever space was above you and your apartment? You mean like a door? A door, a stairway, anything like that? There was a crawl space door. It's like a panel that just pushed up into the ceiling that could be like taken off and that would create a hole between or my house in the attic upstairs. These are the sort of access spaces, the size of an old school desk, right? Like two feet by three feet or something like that? Yeah, it was, I think maybe two feet by two feet, like it was a square. Yeah. And where was it? It was in my bedroom. And so you'd have noticed that when you heard the footsteps?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I always was kind of looking up there at that crawl space door. The whole time I lived there, just in the back of my head, I would always look up at that crawl space door. But yeah, I mean, when I could see it from my bed, I could see it from the bathroom. How would you get up there, Amber? Would you have to like pull over a ladder or a chair in order to push up the panel? Well, I had a dresser that was like not right underneath it or anything, maybe like two and a half feet away from it. But yeah, I mean, it was in the ceiling. So I would have to, I mean, if I was going to get up there, I would have to move something underneath it. And did you ever do that? No. I think I was afraid to know what was up there. I had to wait until the middle of a really bright day, pulled over a chair, pushed it up and looked around, like just to sort of put those demons to rest.

That didn't occur to you, right? Well, I was working two jobs and I had a dog and two cats. You know, despite being alone, I was pretty busy and I don't know, during the day I didn't think about it. Soon though, Amber Dawn had to think about it when it became clear that her imagination was not playing tricks on her. The way I would leave my apartment, it would be different when I came home. So... Like what? Well, like if I had a door closed, that door might be open. Or I'd buy a six-pack of soda and I'd have one and when I came home from work, there would only be four. Or like cans of food were missing or things were just like a little bit out of place. And so I thought my brother was coming to my house and he lived so close to just come in and eat lunch and... Did he have a key, Amber? Yeah. Okay. Did you call him on this? I did. I did, I called him and told him that I couldn't afford to feed him and not to come to my house and eat my food and he thought I was insane.

Wait a second, what did he say? He's like, you're crazy, I'm not coming to your house. I'm like, I have food missing, I know you've been here and you just kind of laughed it off. And so you're thinking what? I thought he was doing it. I was. And my brother and my nephew would come over and they would mess with me. I would go to the bathroom and I'd come back and they would move the chaachki and I'd be like, wait a minute. That means out of place here, that's the big joke. One day Amber Dawn had to confront the fact that those scraping sounds she'd heard and the changes in her apartment didn't have an easy explanation. She had a puppy, she'd taken the leaving her in the bathroom while she was at work. Being a puppy, she chewed through the toilet line one day and I got a call from work to come home because she'd flooded the bathroom. Well, I mean, just water all over the floor, yeah, yeah, there's water all over the floor and it's leaking into my downstairs neighbor's apartment and when I got there, the

landlord, you know, she had the door closed still because the puppy was in there and when we opened the door, my puppy, Thia, she was in the sink, like in the bathroom sink and she's a small little puppy and so I was just like, well, how did she get up there? Was there a logical explanation, like up on the side of the bathtub and then to the shelf and then to the sink or? No, because there was a space between the toilet and the bathroom counter that was about two feet and so I'm just like, that's weird that she's up there but, you know, again, I was like, no, that's crazy and I'm nuts for even thinking that. You know, if this was a horror movie, this would be the point at which the music starts to go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. When did you discover that the crawl space was more than just a crawl space?

How did it tell me about what happened on that day? That day, I had, I was sick so I called in to work and I didn't go to work that day. Sick, sick, like couldn't get out of bed, sick or what? Sick enough to where I just didn't want to go to work and I was watching television in the front part of the room and the front part of the apartment and I was around seven o'clock. I think friends was on, I think that's why I know what time it was. Sorry, Monica and Chandler are making love and I had this loud thump in the back bedroom. This is down, down the hallway at the other end of the apartment, right? So it was behind me from where I was sitting and I, you know, I have a dog and two cats so I just dismissed it, just figured it was the animals. At the end of the night, you know, I turned off the television and turned off all the lights in the apartment. All the lights? Yep, all the lights in the apartment, it was dark, I lit a candle in the bathroom and drew bath and I took off my clothes and got in the tub and I looked up and the attic

crawl space was open. And I knew I, I mean, everything slowed down. All of it, the doors opened, you know, my dog being in the sink, the missing food, everything just kind of snowballed into making sense. You come to this realization when you're lying, naked in the bath and the only light in the apartment is a candle next to you. Yeah. And so I just like, he's, he's in my apartment. This man is in my apartment and, okay, what am I going to do? It was surprising how calm I was and I think that I might have still been in denial a little bit. So I very calmly got out of the tub, I put my robe on and I, I had to walk past the closet and see either get to the door or get to the phone.

And you're thinking he's still down in the apartment somewhere. Yeah, he had to be in the closet, my bedroom closet, because like I said, the apartment was sparse, it didn't have a lot of stuff in it, there was only one place that he could be hiding. And if he'd gone back up into the, through the crawl space, he's a close did again, right? He would have closed the door. So I think that he got down and he couldn't get back up without him in the woods. Like my neck just straight out at this point. Yeah, so I'm alone in the apartment and this, this person is in my closet and it's one of those mirrored closets, you know, from the 70s. So I have to walk past it and I see myself in it and that was probably the scariest part of it. Or just like, oh my. So I didn't go out the door. That's me, that's what he sees. Yeah, exactly. I'm, I didn't go out the door. I went to the phone. I think I was still in denial. I still, no, this can't be happening.

You're crazy. This can't be happening. And so I went to the phone and I had a, a hammer and a, like a hardware drawer and junk drawer. And so I had the hammer in my hand and I was looking down the hallway where he would be coming out if he was going to come out and I was like, if he wanted to hurt me, I would, I'd be dead. He's had access to this apartment for six months. You know, I've slept here. He could have done whatever he wanted to me. So as I go, I don't want to scare him by freaking out and screaming because then he might hurt me so that I don't call it cops, you know, self-preservation, I still think you've been way more rational than I would be in the circumstances for me to be like, he's just waiting for his moment. Well, it was surprising how calm I was and I think that I might have still been in denial a little bit and I called my sister-in-law and she answered and I just said, tree sigh. I think there's someone in my apartment and she told me she's like, just get out, get

out. I'll be right there. I'm Dick Gordon, you're listening to the story. Amber Don's telling me the story of the day she discovered that a man had been living in the crawl space above her apartment on that day Amber took her puppy and left with her sister-in-law. They called the cops and she tried to calm down. We went back over to the apartment when the cops called us so that they're there. They didn't find anyone there but they found just some stuff upstairs that it looked like there was probably someone had been living up there. Like what kind of stuff? They said that they found a sleeping bag and just a little bit of food in a book but I don't know. I did not want to go up there. And your apartment's little access panel was the way in and out for whoever was up there? Yeah.

According to the department manager, there's no other way in or out of that space. Did the police ever find out who it was? I don't know. I moved out the next day. It didn't keep a close eye on this one Amber. No. It's like, okay. I'm leaving. And thinking back at that time, remember the time that you spent in that town, do you ever come up with an idea of who it might have been? It's interesting that there was one little event that, in passing, it was nothing. But when I think back on it, I think it was pretty significant. I left the apartment one day, I think I was going to the grocery store and it's a small little mountain town. There's no homeless people in this town. And I lived, my apartment building was behind a grocery store and I was walking past the grocery store and there was this guy who was probably in his thirties.

He was sitting behind the grocery store and I was like, well, that's weird that there's a homeless person. But he looked at me, we made eye contact and he looked at me like he recognized me. And I just kind of brushed off like, okay, creepy guy. But I think that was him. I think he got locked out of the apartment and he was waiting for me to leave so he could get back in. Oh, I'm shaking. I think about this and it freaks me out. This was how long ago? 14 years ago. And have you told this story often? Oh gosh. You know, I didn't think about it for a while and then it came up at work and then once I told one person, everyone wants to hear this story so they'll be like, oh, tell the crawl space story.

So I've been telling it. It worked quite a bit. And it kind of just got stuck in my head and it was haunting me, like it was, I was afraid. You know, I was afraid after this happened for a long time and then then I wasn't and then just recently in the last few months, like it's just been swimming around in my head and it was like, I have to get this out. I just, I don't want it in there anymore. You see, I listen to you tell the story and it sounds like it happened, you know, last week or something. It's got the same kind of chill to it, you know what I mean? How are we going to exercise this, Amber? I don't know. This is good therapy, I think. And what are your rules for where you live now? Oh, um, I won't live someplace with a crawl space storm. That much I knew. Yeah. And I have two dogs. Big mean dogs. You see that on the radio, large teeth. They're big mean dogs. Anyone even looks at me and no, they're super friendly, but they're intimidating nonetheless.

And they're your friends. No one else is right? Yes, hopefully. Yeah, that was the creepy part of the story. Was that my puppy didn't bark when this man came into the house because she knew him. Ever since, you know, she came there. There was a sky who came down from the ceiling and hung out with her during the day. Oh, no, that's creepy all over. Amber Dawn joined me from a studio in Chicago. Moving up next time on the story, we've been hearing about the damage that's been going on above ground in New York City. But what's taking place far underneath the concrete is something we'll be learning about only in the days and weeks ahead.

Ryan McGinty has spent the last 15 years working deep underneath the city, sometimes hundreds of feet down, digging water tunnels and new subway lines. He's what they call a sandhog. Sometimes it's difficult with the, you know, when you're underneath the ground, you're blasting rock and you shake and buildings around you. You don't, once I go down, you don't really even think about what's around you, you know, you go down, I go down at seven o'clock, I come up at three o'clock, you don't even really think what's around you, just what's downstairs. As far as the people like in the neighborhood, we've done some tours on our job that I'm at now and these people come downstairs and they want to know why it takes so long or what's going on or why. But when they get downstairs and they realize you're removing four blocks, you know, of solid rock and then they get down and see how tremendous it is. The work is also dangerous, but Ryan says it's a job he's proud of and that the risks are worth it. The work of the sandhog, that's on the next edition of the program. I'm Dick Gordon, this is The Story. I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm

Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm Dick Gordon, I'm IN TUR真的 Support for The Story comes from Berts Bees, Natural Health and Beauty Care on a mission to make people's lives better, naturally for over 25 years. naturally for over 25 years. BirdsBees.com. And Emerald Data Solutions, whose board docs web applications are designed to help governing bodies operate more effectively. Board docs services eliminate paper and streamline the processes used to manage board packets, access information, and conduct meetings. Board docs.com. The story is a production of North Carolina Public Radio, W-U-N-C, a broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

And this is APM, American Public Media.