My creepy building

So I was super pumped up when I moved in. I'm not anymore. I live in the San Lorenzo and I've come to the understanding that this area of Florence is this city's ghetto. It is the ONLY sketchy part of town, meaning this is the only part of town I feel uncomfortable walking through during the nighttime. Its always loud outside of my window because rambuctious drunks hang around outside of a bar down the street. I've been coo'ed at and harassed by these drunks on many different nights, coming home from school or from a night out. Luckily, I'm never alone. There is garbage all over all of the time which blows in the wind and turns into small garbage tumbleweeds. I've also come to realize that the cobblestones in my neighborhood are the American equivalent to unpaved roads, making the place feel run down. Eff. All of these things would be inconsequential if only I didn't live in the strangest and creepiest of all the school-provided apartment buildings.

When I walked into my apartment building on my very first day I was overjoyed. There was an elevator. I wouldn't have to walk up a million flights of stairs to get to my apartment! Too bad my elevator is hell-bent on killing all of the students in the building. I've had to pry the elevator doors open because it refuses, sometimes, to let us out. I've had to bang on the lights inside the elevator to get them to go back on after they've flickered and died. I've had to push the elevator buttons repeatedly to remind the elevator that stopping in the middle of its ascent wasn't what I'd asked it to do. I've had to jump up and down inside the elevator to get it to move back towards my floor after it stopped a good 10 feet too far up. Thank god it went to a good spot or else I'd have been climbing through the elevator shaft pretending I was James Bond. Once, Fresco rode the elevator and had to pry himself out. The elevator started to move while he was getting out and very literally almost chopped him in half.

I walk up all those flights of stairs anyway. They are exactly as weird as the elevator. I promise you that sometimes I really feel like the stairs add an extra flight. Admittedly, I have anxiety and tend to get scared about things that aren't actually happening. I really feel like this is happening, though, and am legitimately freaked out about it. I would pass it off on my anxiety if it weren't for the white thing. After climbing the stairs a few times I began to notice, at a certain bend in the stairwell, the presence of a white thing. It was kind of like an aura that would only show up if the lights were out. I've mentioned before that in this building the hall lights go off of their own volition and so I'm often in the stairwell in the dark. I would pass this presence off on my anxiety, too, if Selvaggia hadn't exclaimed loudly one night as we descended the stairs in the darkness about a white thing hovering in the stairway. I never mentioned to her that I'd noticed it before. This bend happens to be the same bend where the mysterious extra flight appears. Hopefully this is the ghost of someone cool like a Medici or Michelangelo, but I doubt it.

The creepiest thing that has happened so far, though, was the high heeled girl. Selvaggia and I had just gotten home from a very fun night out and were sitting at our kitchen table at around 5 a.m. one morning. We heard clacking coming down our hallway and assumed that our neighbor was on her way home. The clacking stopped, but a door didn't open. We heard someone making noises that sounded like crying and called out to the person. No one answered. We kept on trying to get them to answer but no one ever did. We finally opened the door to ask them what they were doing and no one was there.

I think my building needs to be exorcized.
Arrivederci, fow now.
Love, Gabby.