Around two years after high school my now husband and I moved to Quincy, Illinois. Being 2006, we had to search the newspapers, Craigslist, drive neighborhoods, and ask around to find rentals available for us to look at. Among the first units we looked at was an “efficiency” apartment. Being from a small town where most rentals were entire houses we were unfamiliar with the term and went to go look. We get to a house that looked like it might have been turned into two apartments and wait for the gentleman that we had talked to on the phone to arrive to show us around. He arrives and opens the door. We walk in and there is what is essentially a large room with a small kitchen and living space, with a separate bathroom. We asked where the bedroom was and he laughed while explaining that it was an efficiency and that what we saw was all there was. We quickly looked around, thanked the man for showing us the unit, and hopped into our car. 

As we continued our search, we ran into multiple listings that were not a good fit, including another unit that stated it was a “large efficiency” that we entertained purely because it was all utilities included, and another unit that was a house that had been converted into a duplex. We were let inside, and ascended up the staircase to the second floor where an apartment that appeared as though it could potentially be a set for a slasher film unfolded room by room in front of us.

Poorly painted walls, paint over light fixtures and outlets, and a swarm of flies in between the inside and outside window panes that would remind you of something right out of The Amityville Horror movies. We made up our minds quickly on this one and thanked the lady that showed us the property while wondering if there was going to be any suitable place for us to settle on in what would be the largest city either of us had ever lived in once on our own.

As we drove around the northwest part of Quincy, only a few blocks from the riverfront just as you climb the hill from the river elevation, we came across a few “for rent” signs with the same phone number on them. They were all clustered around the same street and in front of units that looked like they were in better shape than any we had looked at so far. We dialed the number and a pleasant sounding older lady answered our call. 

She had us meet her at a unit within 30 minutes and we were greeted by the large facade of this house on Elm Street, a large house that had been converted into a quad plex, but that everything was essentially brand new in. The price was about right, and as we asked questions she answered them. 

We were told that the house had been the home of a beer baron during Quincy’s height of its brewery heyday and that the neighborhood had been favored by a few of them and their immediate family members during that time. We found this intriguing and set a time to sign lease paperwork. We arrived at the lady’s large Italianate home that had been well maintained and restored before being filled with period furniture just on the opposite end of the block.

We moved into the apartment at the top of those steep, carpeted stairs, in the early part of the year and brought what little we had to make a home with us and filled the empty spaces with cheap options bought from Wal-Mart or second-hand stores. We converted that apartment from an empty white shell into our home.

While living on Elm Street things started out as normal. I looked for employment while my partner worked at a gas station just over the river in West Quincy, Missouri. At first this was not an issue, but after a few weeks things had progressed from an uneasy feeling that we initially brushed off, attributing it to the old houses on a dimly lit street and our first time living in a city that at least one of us didn’t live in during our childhood. One evening while we sat in the living room and watched a movie that we had rented from the local Blockbuster in preparation for the impending snow, we heard what sounded like a thin pot or pan fly across the kitchen behind us and hit something. It was that thin metal warble sound that would have been perfectly in-line with the types of kitchen pieces we had.We stopped the DVD we were playing and carefully walked into the kitchen which also had a door onto a balcony platform that went to a staircase shared with the other upper unit of the quad-plex. We turned on the light cautiously, looked around the kitchen, checked the bathroom that was off of the kitchen, and checked the back door which we found to be locked. There was no intruder to be found, no evidence that one had been there, and since it was now snowy outside, no evidence in the snow on the balcony that anyone had been out there since it had started snowing earlier that day. We both looked at each other and had no explanation, so kept the kitchen light on for the rest of the evening.

After the movie finished, we made our way to the bedroom and settled in for the night. Nothing else remarkable happened, so we slept normally that night. We had no major issues for multiple nights after this but soon would not be able to say this.

And thus began our night terrors on Elm Street.