by Jacqueline Dodd

Created on: September 07, 2008

It was the summer of 2006 when I moved into my first place with my boyfriend and a mutual friend of ours. I was nineteen at the time and though I'd been living away from my parents for a year and a half with my boyfriend's mother, it was the first time we'd ever been alone and the first time we could officially call the place our own. We'd moved into a raised bungalow in Alcona Beach, just down the road from the waterfront. The owner of the house had left in a hurry to go to British Columbia to practice her religion in the mountains. That was not a joke and really should have been our first warning sign that we were not going to have a normal experience living there, but the house was gorgeous, perfectly located and very affordable. In any case, she was off in the mountains and needed someone to rent out the main floor of her house. Her roommate, a fifty-odd year old woman named Luba, normally resided on the main floor in one of the three bedrooms, but was going to be living in the basement so that the floor could be rented out. My boyfriend was a little put off by this at first as the house was completely open concept and we'd have to share the kitchen and bathroom with this woman since the basement didn't have these amentities, but she seemed nice enough and in the end we decided that it wouldn't be a problem. As it turned out, we were very wrong.

The first night that we spent in the house was the first time she said something strange and it certainly wasn't the last - but I'm getting ahead of myself. My girlfriend and I were out in the backyard taking a look around. There was a firepit back there flanked by a couple of benches and we were just heading over to check it out when we noticed her sitting there in the dark. We stood there making casual conversation with her and although I can't remember for the life of me how she brought it up, she ended up asking us if we believed in reincarnation. I was caught off guard by it, as was my friend, and I remember stammering something about liking the idea that we get recycled when we die, then making a hasty break for the house. As weird as that was, it was only the tip of the iceberg and things proceeded to get stranger in the weeks and months to come.

Luba, we found out, had a habit of talking to herself out loud. I know lots of people do this, myself included, and it's not really so odd. But what was different about the way she talked to herself was that she'd have full conversations, almost as if there was another

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>