You’ve heard the saying, “Wow, if these walls could talk?” Well, they can. So do the floors, ceilings and appliances. You just have to be “lucky” enough to be somebody that can hear them.

Lucy just moved to a new place. As anybody who has moved knows, moving sucks. But for Lucy, moving is even worse. She’d been living in a brand new apartment development for a couple of years and it was great. There hadn’t been that much time for the walls to absorb the stories and energy of any previous inhabitants. Although she did avoid one corner of the highrise due to the fact that one of the workers had fallen and died there during construction.

This little tidbit manifested itself as a feeling of panic anytime she walked past. For an instant she could even see the man plummeting. Fortunately for Lucy, she figured this out the first week in the new apartment and was careful to avoid it.

The new place however, was not so free of “displaced energy,” as Lucy liked to call it, but she didn’t have too many options. Her job had moved. She didn’t like to drive due to the frequent and sudden panic attacks she’d get while driving on any given road. Most roads have had an accident on them, even minor, and when your collecting impressions and emotions from those accidents and from any surrounding buildings, driving becomes difficult. Lucy was in an accident herself once due to this, so she decided it was safer to walk.

Her office’s new location was in the beautiful Olde Town section of the city. Hundred year old buildings, a quaint cobblestone street, multitudes of historic landmarks, people dressed as colonials giving tours on the weekends. To anybody else, it would be wonderful. To her, it felt more like being committed to an insane asylum.

Just walking through the streets made her feel schizophrenic. Every surface of that city had layers and layers of displaced energy. Not all of it bad of course. There was a particularly scenic part, where many people had chosen to propose to their beloved, the park spoke of happy children playing, families spending time together during the warmer months. But then there are the alleys that send images of unspeakable horrors, the sanitarium that was converted into an upscale hotel. Now, that was a strange combination of images.

Usually, she could block some of it. The first few times she walked to work, before she knew what to expect, were almost crippling. By the time she arrived at the office, disheveled and sweaty from running for several blocks, she almost felt like packing it in for the day. But after a few weeks, things got better. She could avoid the rough areas and just listen to her iPod or something to distract her. This strategy of avoidance caused her to take a most indirect route to work, but she tried to see it more as an opportunity to get more exercise, rather than walking all over the city like a crazy person. Sometimes, it was all about what kind of spin you put on it.

Her new apartment however, was a different story. There was no avoiding that and there was only so much TV she could watch and music she could listen to while at home. Reading wasn’t much of an option, because trying to read while absorbing all the messages and energy around her was too distracting. The scary part was that this apartment was the least “talkative” out of the twenty or so she’d looked at. Her realtor had even refused to show her any more. Lucy understood. She knew it wasn’t fun for her realtor to be showing apartment after apartment to this seemingly neurotic woman. In every place then went in, Lucy would not ask about appliances or about pet policies, but rather, “Do you know if anybody was killed here?” Not an unheard question in the world of realty, but not as prominent an issue as Lucy made it out to be.

The place she picked was small, and the newest out of all of them and luckily, the same family had been there for almost fifteen years. Strange for an apartment, but good for Lucy. At least it was the same type energy, instead of layers of different mismatched energy, like the layers of paint that coated the place. She could get used to the bedroom flashing images of the somewhat silly sex acts that went on in it back in the day, and sitting in the room that eventually became the baby’s room was mostly pleasant. The thing about her new apartment wasn’t her apartment. It was one of the surrounding ones, but she couldn’t be sure which one. Something bad had happened, several bad things, she was sure, but she couldn’t get a good picture of it, since she wasn’t in the space.

One evening, there was a knock at the door. She almost didn’t answer it, but knew if she was to avoid becoming a complete agoraphobic that she had to push herself beyond her comfort zone. With a deep breath, she opened the door. A man stood there. Not a particularly menacing man in any way, but the tight feeling in Lucy’s throat told her she needed to avoid him. Something was radiating from him, something violent and evil.

“Hi, I’m Tom. I’m the maintenance man. I know you just moved in so I just wanted to introduce myself and see if you needed anything?”

She couldn’t speak so she just shook her head. Images of women being strangled and dumped into the crawlspace under his apartment assaulted her.

“Well, alright then, if you change your mind, I live in the basement apartment, right below you.”

The next morning, she called her realtor. “I know you’re going to hate me, but could we look at some different apartments?”