On the hunt for the Livingston Apartments ghost
‘We were all really scared and prayed in the apartment’
The Livingston Apartments are seen as one of the best places to live at Rutgers. Built in 2012, they are the newest forms of housing and provide some of the best living accommodations, with a full kitchen, private bathrooms and single bedrooms.
But as the saying goes, all that glitters is not gold. With reports of supernatural occurrences, there’s more to Livi apartments than meets the eye.
Freshman Manisha Patel recalls her experience living in the apartments and the happenings she can only describe as “unexplainable.”
She said: “We had several weird occurrences. The first one was when we noticed hair everywhere.”
All over her apartment, Manisha and her roommates would find hair shavings. Despite their efforts to clean it up, they always found more and more. Although they did not see this as something paranormal, it did heighten their senses to every other out-of-the-ordinary matter.
“I remember just being alone and you’d hear these weird sounds coming from the window. It would sound like somebody knocking on the window or like somebody scraping across the window.”
Considering Manisha lived on the fifth floor, hearing noises like this kept her and her roommates on edge.
In the middle of an all-nighter to finish writing an essay, Manisha’s roommate Esther Phanord heard footsteps in the apartment around 3am when no one else in the apartment was awake. That was the final straw that led the girls to do research on the Internet.
“From what I read, ghosts can travel,” Manisha said.
Considering Livingston campus used to be a military base that still houses barracks, the possibility of some sort of supernatural presence does not seem unlikely.
Another student, Falak Hussain, went through a similar experience.
Falak said: “Living in the Livi Apartments was one of the most amazing experiences. Everything was great except for some creepy things that my roommates and I went through.”
She recalls the time her roommate lost her contact solution. After searching every inch of the apartment, they still couldn’t find it.
“When we came back [to the apartment] we found the contact solution in the middle of her room.”
Falak also claimed to have found rice and crackers by the window sill, although they had not opened any of their bags of rice.
She said: “We were all really scared and prayed in the [apartment]. We spent the night somewhere else and then eventually came back when we all felt stronger.”
Although she experienced strange things, Falak said she would still hope to live in the apartments again.
“The supernatural stuff is something you can’t really control. If I know anything, it’s that you can’t let your fear control you because that takes you nowhere. You just have to be stronger and know better.”