I was contacted by a tenant named David who later reported that he’d been seeing a tall man in a black top hat from the time he moved into his apartment. He felt certain there were spirits in his home, particularly in and around a certain closet, and that the bathroom felt oppressive. When I arrived I was rather delighted to be entering such a beautiful old apartment building, one that I’d later learn was on the Register of National Historic Places. I made my way up a rather grand staircase and took a classic elevator up to his floor.

From the moment I entered his unit I could tell that something was amiss. There was an energy in the air, a feeling I’m quite familiar with. Everything seemed to point towards a particular door and I opened it to discover a large and almost entirely empty closet. I later learned he’d made the decision not to put anything in that closet because it didn’t feel good in there. Standing in the closet I began a conversation with a male spirit. The name I was getting was John or Charles or John Charles and the surname Fountain or Fontaine came up as well. I also heard the name Debbie loud and clear. And then I saw him clear his day wearing a black top hat, very well dressed. It seemed to be that the male spirit was entering the apartment through a portal in the closet and that he was looking for a woman named Debbie. He was associated with the building in the 1910’s. It was also clear that he didn’t mean anyone any harm and that he wasn’t even attached to the property, coming and going as he pleased. If he wasn’t causing the place to feel bad, I wondered what was.

Walking through the rest of the apartment I began to zero in on a female energy in the bathroom. Could this be Debbie? Entering the bathroom I sat down on the floor and I began to not feel nauseous and I saw a woman getting up from the bathtub and running to close and lock the bathroom door, only to find herself back in the bathtub again and getting out to run for the door again and again. While most ghost hunting shows would call this a residual energy haunting, there was nothing residual about it. She had apparently been doing this cycle since 1967 and her spirit was not on the same timeline as the man in the top hat, so I had doubts that this would be the Debbie he was looking for.

Tuning in on a deeper level I remained sitting on the bathroom floor and the room grew incredibly loud. A male voice was screaming the name Lucy over and over and over and I started feeling the distress of the female spirit. Was it domestic violence? Did she commit suicide in the bathtub. Did someone kill her in this bathroom? I couldn’t say for certain yet, but it was clear she needed assistance. I decided not to wait and opened a portal and you could feel the energy in the bathroom begin to shift from the moment it opened. She didn’t waste any time leaving the premises. Once she was gone I didn’t hear anything in the bathroom. I waited awhile longer just to be sure, but it was very quiet now. The feeling of nausea was gone. I had David return and we made some tea and I told him about what had transpired. His experience of being in his home had changed, He told me “I can’t get over how different the bathroom here feels, the whole apartment really. It’s like an entirely different home except for John. Now that I know that he’s just passing through too I’m finding the whole experience amusing. Thanks so much for coming.”