Sensing a Presence
Why I no longer joke about wanting to live in a mildly haunted house
We all live with ghosts.
I’ve been finding it challenging to get back into writing after experiencing a recent, and very difficult, loss in our family. I hope the following suffices as an acceptably spooky detour. The ghost story below happened to me about three months before I encountered Muriel.
My middle name is Rose. In the second grade, while completing a “Find Your Roots” assignment, I discovered I was named after my grandpa’s beloved mother.
Another Rose! I thought, my imagination running wild. I wondered what she was like and also thought that seeing her would help me understand something about myself. So, I repeatedly asked my grandparents for her photograph in lieu of other gifts on birthdays and holidays. They were amused by my insistence and eventually rustled up a portrait of her to give to me.
We share a name, maybe more.
The Morrowfield began as an upscale “apartment-hotel” in 1924, with an ornate ballroom, 12-foot ceilings, and a novel central refrigeration system. It was a neighborhood jewel and sprawled across an entire Pittsburgh block. In its heyday, the building hosted celebrities like Fanny Brice and members of the Pittsburgh Pirates, as well as untold parties, wedding receptions, and clandestine rendezvous.
By 2012, it had been sold to a real estate conglomerate and was known for being a refuge for senior citizens and broke graduate students. I was ending a tumultuous three-year stint in Boston and moving back to Pittsburgh. The Morrowfield was the last stop in that weekend’s increasingly discouraging apartment hunt.
The building loomed above us, shabby but still formidable, as my mom and I met the leasing agent on the front stoop. We entered the building, then paused in the faded lobby as she gave us the rundown on amenities and scrounged in her purse for the apartment key. I felt like I was being watched, so I looked up at the ceiling and spied an ill-disguised security camera.
I feel like I’m being watched because I am being watched. Nothing to worry about.
We made our way to an upper floor and the elevator doors opened to reveal a long, gray carpeted hallway. The itchy feeling of being watched intensified. I asked the leasing agent about security and she confirmed that there were no cameras in the residential areas. Our voices echoed oddly off the pock-marked walls.
I’m overreacting, there’s no one watching us now.
We reached an off-white door halfway down the hall and the leasing agent creaked it open to reveal a sparsely furnished one-bedroom apartment. The most personal item in the unit was a rice cooker covered with Hello Kitty stickers. My mom and the agent were in the kitchen talking about the original built-ins. I was alone in the bedroom but my feelings of being surveilled were growing.
There must be a hidden camera somewhere in here, maybe a webcam?
I looked around and discovered that there was no computer in the apartment at all. As the leasing agent closed the apartment door and turned to lead us toward the laundry room, my mom looked at me expectantly. This was, by far, the best apartment we had seen that day.
“It feels weird in here, right?” I asked my mom under my breath.
I’d prefer to leave right now.
“I mean, it’s a little worn down but it could be cozy,” she trailed off.
“I feel like I’m being watched.” The words came out before I realized what I was saying
My mom looked up at the ceiling, expecting a security camera, then looked back at me with a slightly bewildered face. No camera.
We made a courtesy stop in the laundry room but we passed on viewing the storage rooms and garage. I hurried my mom out of the building after she took a brochure from the leasing agent. When we hit the sidewalk, the feeling of being watched completely dissipated, even as I noticed an external security camera aimed towards us.
“It sounds like we should keep looking?” My mom asked, giving me a half-smile as we walked down the cracked sidewalk to the car.
We decided to get dinner and devise a new game plan for the search. On the drive to the restaurant, I called my dad to give him an update. He asked what buildings we saw, and I told him we were just leaving The Morrowfield.
“What did you think?” he asked.
I decided to be honest.
“I don’t know how to explain it but I felt kind of uncomfortable the whole time…like I was being watched. I didn’t feel like that in any of the other buildings we toured.”
I figured he’d ask me about security cameras, but instead he said:
“You know your great-grandma Rose died in that building, right?”
It came out so matter-of-fact that I assumed he was joking.
“Are you SERIOUS?” I raised my voice, looking over at my mom who was shaking her head as she navigated a horde of undergraduates trying to cross a busy intersection against a light.
My dad was not joking. I didn’t know that my great-grandmother died in that building, and my mom swears she didn’t know either. My parents met after she passed away, peacefully, in one of The Morrowfield’s apartments.
The portrait I have of Rose is from 1923 when she was still two years away from having her first child, my grandpa. She is part of me in ways both biological and ineffable.
One hundred years ago, she sat for a portrait and now, her face is familiar to me after years of study.
Maybe she has had a chance to see me too, in the halls of The Morrowfield and beyond.
There are limitless ways to die, but there are also limitless ways to live.
