THE LAUGHING LADY

My roommates and I spent the rest of our sophomore year in Wrigleyville without incident after my encounter with the black mass in the living room. Time sped on and I managed to put the experience out of my mind as finals and summer finally rolled around again. 

But with a break from school came a breakup of my roommates as well. Our roommate Anya had decided to leave school and pursue a different path, outside of the city. We supported her decision but were sad to see her go. 

This brought upon another, unexpected, change. As Judy, Mikey and I sat down to crunch the numbers we realized there was no feasible way for us to stay in our Wrigleyville apartment. We began looking for another place, making sure to search in less expensive neighborhoods. 

We eventually found and signed a lease for a three bedroom apartment bordering between Logan Square and Bucktown. Our second floor abode was directly above a bar. Our floors would vibrate from the bass throughout the night. 

The front door opened to a large, square living room. Judy’s bedroom door was at the left most corner of the room. On the opposite end stood a short hallway, with the bathroom on the left and my bedroom on the right. The hall opened up to the kitchen and Mikey’s room along the right corner. 

Everywhere you looked, there were tell-tale signs of history and age. The wood floors were worn, narrow planks that creaked with each footstep. A built-in hutch took up one wall of our living room with aged glass panels and old-fashioned brass fixtures. It was charming and seemingly perfect for the three of us. 

We borrowed cars from friends and steadily carried in our boxes and belongings. I chose the bedroom across from the bathroom because it was the largest and Mikey and Judy did not object because I had shared a room with Anya for half a year in Wrigleyville. A few months passed. We collected more furniture and painted our respective rooms in bright colors. Nothing seemed amiss. 

Then, one random Saturday morning, Mikey and I happened to wake up around the same time and groggily congregated in the living room. He sank into our couch and casually asked me if I had called out to him in the middle of the night when he had gotten up to use the bathroom. 

No, I told him, frowning slightly. I could not recall waking up at all the previous night. Mikey puzzled over it for a moment or two and chalked it up to his imagination. He had been half-asleep, after all. The incident was quickly forgotten and we went about our weekend plans. 

I got out of class the following Thursday and took the train home. I arrived to an empty apartment and silently walked to my room. I tossed my backpack onto my bed and turned towards the bathroom. The moment I stepped over the threshold, I heard it. 

“Hello.” 

It was close and distinctly female. I quickly looked around, checking the kitchen and the bedrooms, even–embarrassingly–behind the shower curtain of our clawfoot bathtub. But there was nobody there. 

Bewildered, but for some reason not frightened, I resumed what I was doing. Mikey came home from work not long after and I decided to tell him about what I’d heard. 

“I just heard someone speak to me as I was entering the bathroom,” I said without preamble. 

Mikey blinked at me. “What?” 

I nodded my head vigorously. “I swear I did! Somebody said ‘hello’ right as I walked through the door.” 

At this, Mikey paused from taking off his shoes. He stared at me for a moment then lowered himself into a chair adjacent to the couch. “Was it a woman’s voice?” he asked. 

My brows furrowed. “Yeah, how did you know?”

“Like, not a girl, but a young woman, with a pretty voice?” Mikey asked, sitting straighter in the chair with each passing moment. 

“Yes!” I cried, “but how did you know?” 

Mikey slowly began to shake his head. “Chels, that’s the same damn voice I heard the other night, when I asked if you called out to me. I heard a young woman say hello right as I walked into the bathroom,” he explained. His brown eyes grew wide as he grinned at me. “I think we’ve got a ghost.” 

We told Judy what had transpired later that night, piecing our experiences together into one cohesive story. Not only did Judy believe us, she heard the voice herself a few weeks later, passing by the bathroom door on her way to the kitchen. 

We lived in that apartment for two years and continued to hear the woman on occasion. It was always the same lilting, friendly female voice, calling out to us in greeting. A couple of times I thought I heard her laugh–a light chuckle that gave me goosebumps but never managed to fully frighten me. Somehow we intuitively knew the spirit to be a friendly one. 

I always replied back any time I heard her, but she never said anything beyond her initial hellos. Looking back, I wish I had spent more time in pursuit of evidence and communication. Perhaps she could have told us how she died or why she continued to linger. But something tells me she liked to keep things casual. Maybe, just maybe, she was simply enjoying the afterlife. 

My first encounter with the paranormal had been an utterly terrifying one. But my second experience taught me that ghosts and spirits are as complex and nuanced dead as they were when they were alive. No two experiences will ever be the same.