Anyway, this story begins with my ex attending an Indian "Sweat Lodge". I'm not too well versed but as far as I know, it's a cleansing ritual of sorts and it goes like this... You are given a bundle of herbs and sent into this hut with a blazing fire in the middle. It's really effing hot in there and you sweat a lot, hence the name. A ritual of some kind occurs, and at the end of this ritual you throw this bundle of herbs in the fire and you are cleansed and the whole thing is over. You are very specifically told to throw these herbs in the fire.
I didn't go to the ritual because I thought such things were nonsense. This was during my time at Woodshaven so you think I'd have been more open minded - but whatever. Anyway, my ex went, and she decided not to throw the herbs in the fire but instead came home and hung them on the living room wall of her apartment. Why? Because that's the type of thing she did. She told me about them, I agreed that they didn't look too bad, and life went on.
Two days later I'm alone in her apartment, and in the bathroom taking a piss. Out of the blue, I suddenly hear a childs laughter in the same room as me. I'd put the age at around 5 or so. Now this was not a big bathroom and I could see that there was no-one there, so these are the steps my mind took to rationalize this unexplainable and disturbing event.
1. I decided that someone must have put some kind of a joke laughter box in the room.
2. I left the room a few seconds later, without making any effort to look for the source of the noise.
3. I completly forgot about it.
I believe that a lot of people who think they have never had a ghostly encounter actually have and have just rationalized it the way I rationalized that. The way the mind works in those situations is really interesting. Anyway, I would never have remembered this except one of my ex's friends, who came over later on to assemble some furniture, claimed she had heard it too and jogged my memory. So we knew now that there was something in the apartment with us and were getting creeped out.
That night, just after supper, my ex went to use the bathroom. About 30 seconds later I hear a scream of terror and my ex comes bursting out with her pants around her ankles. It turns out she was sitting on the toilet and the shower was directly next to the toilet, on her left. The curtain was closed. She heard the same laughter that I did, except for her the laughter came from DIRECTLY to her left, from behind the curtain... I can't imagine how frightening that must have been. After she settled down, we had a conversation that went a lot like this.
Her: "Go into the bathroom and make sure there's no-one there"
Me: "Fuck that"
So the bathroom remained unchecked for a while. I think we both went in there about 3 hours later and found nothing. We naturally had a tough time sleeping that night. That night you were never sure if you were really alone in a room, or if the spirit was sitting right next to you, or what the hell was going to happen at any time. I don't know how she felt about it, but I was so wound up that if I'd heard the laughter again I'd have jumped out of the window. Well, having said that I guess I do know how she felt about it :-). I'm suprised now that we spent the night there.
The next day she went to her job and told the Indian spritual lady (she was a co-worker) what happened.. She knew right away what was causing this and after calling my ex an idiot and being disgusted, she came by, did some kind of exorcism ritual in each room, speaking to the ghost, and we never heard it again.
