Unforgettable Building

After re-reading «A Small Town Haunting» I'm inspired to finally tell you about the building I grew up in. It was easy to write about things that just flew through my life, but this one is personal.
First apparition I saw in my life was my great-grandmother and I was very small child when it happened. Didn't scare me at all, quite opposite, it was very pleasant experience. Also, I was too young to know this is something «weird». And if she hasn't came to see me I wouldn't have a memory of her «in live» because she died when i was too young to remember her. Her warm smile is so much better than few old photographs.
Then, when I was about five my family moved in a small apartment on the first floor of that damned building. Not just haunted, it was really damned, built on the ground on which once stood few small houses... and a cemetary with a sinagogue. It was two buildings next to each other, one wider, lower for bussiness purposes and tall one with apartments. Naturally, the one built for living inside was right on the spot of the former graveyard.
People who worked there had no special complaints, but tenants had a lot to say. From the day one I was scared in my own home. Dark shadows, strange noises, disappearing little things that reappeare on unexpected places, knocking on the door and nobody's in front of them... we had it all. People tried to ignore it, after all not everyone had equal share of strangeness. I don't know if it was our apartment or us that attracted «the goings-on» but we were constantly reminded something's wrong. Or maybe neighbours just didn't mention everything that happened to them.
For example, almost every night we could hear sounds of something heavy banging and rolling on the floor above us. My mother would be angry: «What are they doing in the middle of the night? Don't they have to sleep like the rest of us? And what is that sound? Are they bowling upstairs?» She didn't want to ruin good relations but was ready to go and complain just about when the upstairs bowling team announced they'll be moving out. So we waited, people moved out, apartment above us was empty for a while. The sound remained. I asked my mother who's making that noises now and she honestly said she has no idea.
We could live with that sort of things, but a lot more serious was statisticaly completely insane death rate in that building. One day, after maybe 10 years living there, my mother sat down and made a list of neighbours that died and it turned out that every single apartment had at least one untimely death. Not every family, some people came and went away, but every apartment. It was not a retirement home, we're talking about mostly young and middle-aged people with children. Speaking of children, one child fell of the balcony and died. Speaking of falling, our building was favourite suicide spot in town.
I hate that part of my life.
It probably wasn't just the building but some people had outbursts of anger there. It seemed like something there enhanced natural agression in people. I don't feel like going into the details, but in some periods police came once a week and nobody was either criminal or insane.
Even bats had problem with it, we found them few times, around the building, down on the ground, squeaking. It could have been rabies, I know, but why would they land only here? Every bigger building in town had it's own half-feral cats living in basements except ours. Only swallows liked it and came back every spring, rebuilding its nests on our balconies. One spring, our pair of swallows found a sparrow in their nest and walled him inside, then started a new nest. Maybe that's normal behaviour but I seriously doubt that.
Our small apartment was impossible to heat up and often had draughts when there was no wind outside. Draught was very often mentioned among tenants, it not just closed but opened doors as well, crushed windows and so on. Elevator sometimes had mind of its own, but I cannot say was it technical problem or not. I can say however that I haven't used it if I didn't have to.
Finally, when big window fell on my mother it was time to move. I didn't want to move, since I was 16 and considered living in the house with horrible reputation suites my image. LOL. I'm much older now, with very different priorities and living in the village with my own house and garden makes me almost sane again. This house also has something/somebody inside, but I don't have any problem with it.