he's following me

I have to admit that I am not a big fan of unfinished basements. There is something spooky or eerie or creepy about them. It used to be that I was afraid of them and hated to go down in them by myself. Now it's more of an unsettled feeling, but I can't avoid going in my basement because I'm the only one that lives here.

When I was on internship, there was this semi-basement/furnace room in the parsonage I lived in. It wasn't very big, probably just about big enough to put the furnace, water heater and then like a table or bed or something. But it was close enough to a basement to cause me to be unsettled.

And it didn't help that the water heater made some weird noises. They were noises that I compared to a man hitting things with a pipe. So that led me to create this story about some vagrant living in my furnace room and hitting and kicking things. I avoided going into that room as much as possible, and would "talk" to the person when I needed to go in the room. I'd offer him (or her) free access to the food in my pantry as long as they didn't harm me. I was weirded out a bit more when I saw that there happened to be a latch on top of the door, as if it were used to lock someone inside the room. I mentioned this to my supervising pastor and he laughed at me and said that the intern a couple years ago had small children, so it was used to keep people OUT of the room, not in.

Well, I think the furnace room person has followed me. I hear him downstairs kicking and hitting the furnace and water heater. Although I think he's a lot happier here, since he has an entire basement in which to spread out, and not just a small furnace room. I'm afraid that, at the moment, he might be a little disappointed in the lack of food in my pantry, and so I'm hoping that this doesn't cause him to go back on our deal and lash out at me in a hungry rage.