The Mesa Apartment Horror
From James Donahue’s journal
When we found it, the little studio apartment we found for Jennifer seemed too good to be true. Freshly painted, the kitchen appliances gleamed as if they were just placed there. A full-size bed dropped down from the wall in the adjoining room, which also served as the living room and study area. A full bath and shower was located right behind the kitchenette. Lots of closet and cupboard space. It was a ground floor apartment in what was described by the school as a safe neighborhood. It was a perfect place for her to stay while going to school. I laid down a cash deposit and the first month of rent and Jennifer had what seemed to be a nice place to live. The apartment complex also offered a community laundry a few doors down. Jennifer took the old Buick that we brought with us to Arizona from Michigan to Mesa and used it to get to and from school.
A week or two later, Raymond and Elfrieda followed us into Mesa with their pickup carrying a folding couch/bed that we bought from them. This would allow us to visit and stay overnight when we came. We then set about furnishing the place with a table, some chairs, dishes and even a vacuum sweeper. When Raymond entered the apartment, however, he told us something was wrong. "Something bad happened here," he said. There was a ghost in the apartment and it was not a happy spirit.
By then, Jennifer had been living there for a week or two and she also sensed that something was wrong. She kept having an eerie feeling when she was in one corner of the living area, and she had occasional glimpses of something dark moving around in the apartment.
Navajos do not like living with dead spirits. In fact they refuse to occupy a house after someone dies in it. They even go so far as to move a dying relative out of the house and into the yard rather than allow them to die in a house. Since we had already rented the apartment, it was impossible for us to back out of the deal. Raymond said he would try to fix the problem. He went back to his truck and returned with a case filled with his magical tools. He brought out some fine eagle feathers, dried cedar, and various other items. Then he proceeded to hold what I might describe as a Navajo version of an exorcism. He spoke words in his native language, burned the cedar, and used the feathers to fan the blessed smoke over each one in the room. Then he walked around the room, filling it with the smell of smoldering cedar.
Jennifer later learned that the apartment had been empty for a long time because nobody wanted to live there. It had been the ghastly scene of a murder a few years before we rented it. It seems a man and his girlfriend lived there. The man murdered his girlfriend in the apartment, then cut her into pieces and stored the body parts in the refrigerator. The body parts were still there when the crime was uncovered, and the police searched the place.
Raymond and Elfrieda made several other trips to Phoenix with us as our friendship with them grew. They showed us a more direct way of getting to Phoenix and back although it was a more winding trip through the mountains via Payson. On one of the trips we stopped at Payson to try our hand at a large gaming casino operating at the edge of town. We discovered that Edfrieda was a serious gambler. She bet heavily on some of the slot machines and walked away that night with quite a bit of cash. I remember that Raymond warned us that when passing through Payson we needed to always beware of the town’s speed traps. He said the place was notorious for ticketing out-of-town drivers. I later got caught in that speed trap and learned just how wicked an operation that town had going for itself.
Jennifer continued to live in that tiny apartment through the rest of that school term. She moved out the next spring, as will be explained later.
From James Donahue’s journal
When we found it, the little studio apartment we found for Jennifer seemed too good to be true. Freshly painted, the kitchen appliances gleamed as if they were just placed there. A full-size bed dropped down from the wall in the adjoining room, which also served as the living room and study area. A full bath and shower was located right behind the kitchenette. Lots of closet and cupboard space. It was a ground floor apartment in what was described by the school as a safe neighborhood. It was a perfect place for her to stay while going to school. I laid down a cash deposit and the first month of rent and Jennifer had what seemed to be a nice place to live. The apartment complex also offered a community laundry a few doors down. Jennifer took the old Buick that we brought with us to Arizona from Michigan to Mesa and used it to get to and from school.
A week or two later, Raymond and Elfrieda followed us into Mesa with their pickup carrying a folding couch/bed that we bought from them. This would allow us to visit and stay overnight when we came. We then set about furnishing the place with a table, some chairs, dishes and even a vacuum sweeper. When Raymond entered the apartment, however, he told us something was wrong. "Something bad happened here," he said. There was a ghost in the apartment and it was not a happy spirit.
By then, Jennifer had been living there for a week or two and she also sensed that something was wrong. She kept having an eerie feeling when she was in one corner of the living area, and she had occasional glimpses of something dark moving around in the apartment.
Navajos do not like living with dead spirits. In fact they refuse to occupy a house after someone dies in it. They even go so far as to move a dying relative out of the house and into the yard rather than allow them to die in a house. Since we had already rented the apartment, it was impossible for us to back out of the deal. Raymond said he would try to fix the problem. He went back to his truck and returned with a case filled with his magical tools. He brought out some fine eagle feathers, dried cedar, and various other items. Then he proceeded to hold what I might describe as a Navajo version of an exorcism. He spoke words in his native language, burned the cedar, and used the feathers to fan the blessed smoke over each one in the room. Then he walked around the room, filling it with the smell of smoldering cedar.
Jennifer later learned that the apartment had been empty for a long time because nobody wanted to live there. It had been the ghastly scene of a murder a few years before we rented it. It seems a man and his girlfriend lived there. The man murdered his girlfriend in the apartment, then cut her into pieces and stored the body parts in the refrigerator. The body parts were still there when the crime was uncovered, and the police searched the place.
Raymond and Elfrieda made several other trips to Phoenix with us as our friendship with them grew. They showed us a more direct way of getting to Phoenix and back although it was a more winding trip through the mountains via Payson. On one of the trips we stopped at Payson to try our hand at a large gaming casino operating at the edge of town. We discovered that Edfrieda was a serious gambler. She bet heavily on some of the slot machines and walked away that night with quite a bit of cash. I remember that Raymond warned us that when passing through Payson we needed to always beware of the town’s speed traps. He said the place was notorious for ticketing out-of-town drivers. I later got caught in that speed trap and learned just how wicked an operation that town had going for itself.
Jennifer continued to live in that tiny apartment through the rest of that school term. She moved out the next spring, as will be explained later.