My new apartment gives me the heebie-jeebies. I think this is because it is, by all appearances, the perfect apartment, meaning that something must be horribly wrong with it. At some point it is going to either collapse, flood, burp raw sewage from the basement, or else present me with an ancient and malignant force to haunt my worst nightmares. Or perhaps it will do all of these at once, with a grand flourish. Such is the true price for a spacious and inexpensive apartment with central air and newly refinished hardwood floors.

I’ve just flipped through the lease and found headings for “rent payments,” “inspection and care,” “pets,” and “excessive noise,” but there is nothing for “ghostly malevolence,” “manifestations of pure evil,” or “rapid descent into madness.” I don’t think that Ohio has much in the way of legal recourse for renters in this situation, so now I’m stuck living here for the next year at least, warding off evil spirits like flies. Already my cats are barfing like Linda Blair in “The Exorcist,” but to be fair I think whatever monstrous spirits inhabit the cats were brought in from our last apartment, or possibly from the moment they were born.

About that last apartment: I spent over two years there and never did it occur to me to worry about it being haunted. I worried about such matters as the gas oven exploding or the bathtub falling through the kitchen ceiling (both fears highly founded, I might add), but not once did I worry about hearing the low chuckle of Satan echo throughout my bedroom. I think this may partially be due to the fact that whatever vocalizations Satan might have made were immediately drowned out by the din of the hillbillies fighting next door, but it’s also due to the fact that the apartment was, generally speaking, a shithole. Satan simply does not manifest in apartments where chewing gum has been irreversibly ground into the kitchen floor linoleum. It would be undignified. So, as long as I was living without dignity, I was safe.

My new apartment, however, is somewhat dignified. At least, the structure of the apartment is sound, the floors are gum-free, and none of the windows have been repaired with duct tape by the landlord. I’m doing my best to strip it of its dignity, however, by furnishing it with a flotilla of unpacked cardboard boxes like an outsized, chaotic game of “Battleship.” These I often trip over in my rush to reach the light switch so as to catch Satan or one of his ghostly minions in the cold glare of the compact fluorescent light bulb. Because I know they’re there, the spirits. They’re there, and unfortunately they will not be driven out by messiness, not even messiness on the scale that I can render. All they care about is that, for the first time in my life, I have a really nice apartment that doesn’t siphon off half my paycheck. That’s all the evil forces of the world need to spur a really flamboyant, Cronenberg-style haunting. 

What evidence do I have that my new apartment is haunted, other than cat barf and a generalized sense of unease? For starters, there are all the creepy dreams I’ve been having lately. I view my dreams as messages from the subconscious, and often consult them to help me with decision-making during my waking life. Thus, whenever I find myself puzzling over what brand of soy milk to buy, for instance, or how to bring up a particularly sensitive topic of conversation with my mother, I know to simply ask the ermine who lives in the muffler of a car I used to drive. (I always wondered what happened to that car after I wrecked it. Dreams have the answer for everything.)

And so, when I dream about Ronald McDonald chasing me around Sea World with a chain saw, I can take it as a clear indicator that the apartment I live in is haunted.  

Sometimes things happen in waking life that seem like they should be dreams. The matter of the roof cats, for instance. Every so often, I will open the curtains in the morning to find a random cat on the roof outside, struggling to squeeze into my bedroom through the slightly cracked-open window. The screens in the new apartment are the only fixtures that are in less-than ideal condition, in that they are filled with holes and tend to topple out of the window frames and crash-land onto the patio below. Thus, I have removed the screens and leave the windows open to all and sundry, including random neighborhood cats. Better than random neighborhood serial killers, I suppose, though cats are unsettling nonetheless. Clearly, they are trying to get into my apartment because they know it’s haunted.

Aside from the dreams and the cats, there’s the frightening incident from the other night. I was in the living room, doing an exercise video, when I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of the basketball that is for some reason perched on the end table, looking for all the world like the head of someone sitting silently on the couch behind me. Someone with a freakishly large, orange, perfectly round head. I hope the neighbors didn’t hear my screams, or at least mistook them for screams of ecstasy. 

So, obviously: my apartment is haunted. I’d best get a special clause in my renter’s insurance to address possible property damage from ectoplasm. And also something to cover me should the back of my closet turn into a swirling portal to Hell. Sadly, not even the best insurance policy in the world will protect me against cat barf, meaning I’ll have to hire a priest for ritual exorcism.

Every apartment has its price.