for the next time you sit around a campfire...

It's officially october, which means that summer is over (sniff). but just in case you have one more chance to sit around a campfire, i thought i would take this opportunity to share a ghost story with you. this story is based on real events that i experienced not too long ago.

like any good ghost story, this tale starts off quite innocently: it was summertime, a few years ago. my parents decided to go on vacation to south carolina and i tagged along. my family has been going on vacation to the same spot in south carolina since before i was even a year old, and we have always rented the same condo. it had been a few years since we'd gone, however, and we were all looking forward to a relaxing vacation on the beach.

the day we arrived, everything seemed to be going smoothly. we pulled into the parking lot for the condo complex where we would be staying and stopped at the security guard station to pick up our parking permit. when we told the guard on duty our condo number, he went white as a sheet.

security guard: you're... you're staying there? 

my dad: yes. why?

security guard: well, sir, i should warn you - the last people staying there reported hearing strange sounds in the condo above them. eerie sounds, like people were moving furniture upstairs. if you hear anything - ANYTHING AT ALL - please let me know immediately. the owners are away so we're a little worried that kids might have broken in or something like that. it could be nothing, but let me know if you hear something strange.

we agreed to let the guard know if we heard anything out of the ordinary, but we all sort of laughed it off at first. ha! maybe it's a poltergeist, we joked.

our first day there was pretty normal. everything seemed to be going fine. but then, sometime around dusk, we heard it. the noise echoed down from the condo above us, and sounded just as the guard had described: like chairs and tables being dragged along a wooden floor. the noises stopped after about a minute, and we decided to wait to report it to the guard. none of us were really sure what it was we had heard. then, about an hour later, we heard it again, this time crystal clear: chairs and tables being dragged along a wooden floor. maybe someone really had broken in! we called the guard to let him know. he dashed out of his security office into the pitch black night to investigate what was happening upstairs. we waited anxiously. about 10 minutes later, the guard knocked on our door. he looked shaken.

security guard: there... there wasn't anyone up there. the condo was empty...

then, as the security guard stood in the doorway, we heard the eerie sound of scraping furniture once again. the guard looked at us for a moment, eyes wide with fear, and then bounded back upstairs. a few minutes later he returned and told us that there still was no one in the condo. suddenly that poltergeist joke didn't seem so funny.

the noise continued off and on over the next few days. we tested out various theories: could it be the elevator squeaking? no... the noise didn't seem correspond to the elevator. could it be a trash compactor or something? no, that didn't seem to be it. the whole thing was really starting to freak us out. 

after several days, it finally became clear: turns out it was no ghost at all, it was THE TOILET. yup, you read that right: every time the toilet in the small bathroom was flushed, the old pipes would emit a terrible sound that somehow resembled the sound of furniture being moved. essentially, we were being haunted by our own bodily functions. yes, like many stories shared on this blog, this one ties back to the bathroom.

are you surprised?

happy fall, everyone.