The Strange Roommates of Los Angeles

There's a lot of speculation and stuff about what really runs Los Angeles. A lot of it. Does come down to some pretty dark stuff, and when you look at how things happen and how many people end up abused and including kids and things, it's hard to argue with that. She thought that moving to Los Angeles would restart her career, but instead she found herself losing time control and nearly losing her life. My name is Edwin and here's chris true scary story. This starts in Los Angeles. I was kind of having a hard time finding a place. I flopping back and forth because you know, it's hard to find a living situation there is you're not wealthy. So it took a couple of attempts. I found this place in Lamart Park, which is South LA. There were some previous tenants. There was like some household drama going on where they ended up moving out, and I was the one person left in the unit. I was responsible for filling up some of the remaining rooms. I remember. Meeting the first girl, I'll call her Maria. I met her on Facebook like a roommate search group. We hit it off pretty immediately. We were just a few years apart, and after I showed her the place, she basically wanted to know what I was doing for the rest of the day, and I was going to go catch a movie and she ended up going with me and we ended up bonding, So she moves in there. The next vacancy is filled by a different girl who I knew through a friend of mine that I had met just collaborating. I'll call her Leah. We're trying to figure out who we're going to fill the last spot with, and Maria tells me. That she has. A friend who she's had some sort of on again, off again friend of me tension with. They've known each other since they were I think, like in middle school. She also mentions that this girl, Danica, and Maria were living in their last living situation together before it fell apart, and they kind of had to just figure it out for a little while. And now they're both sort of in a situation looking for a fresh start, like they had this sort of reboot where they were staying because of just the background of. What was going on. So when Maria goes into what happened, she seems really distraught and like this has been weighing on her and she explains to me that her great grandmother passed away. This was something that was in the news and like it was a local story. Her great grandmother passed away really suddenly and tragically. Her car flew off the freeway in the middle of the morning, like before sunrise, headed toward downtown, and nobody really knew what happened. Like she was supposed to be on her way to a dialysis appointment and nobody really knew what happened. Somebody else was supposed to take her and that didn't happen. Maria tells me that her and and Danica were living with her at the time, but when things sort of fell apart after this woman passed away, Danica and her had to find just temporary living situations until they could get something more stable. And she also told me that the reason that Danica had to stay with them is because she got thrown out of her mother's because they just weren't getting along. She also confides in me that this girl has had some issues with people, like she has trouble getting along with people. Maria's two other friends are adamant that, like there's something wrong with this girl, and I haven't really gotten to know her yet at this point, So I'm like, I don't know, maybe she's just insecure, maybe she just doesn't she doesn't, you know, just being an impath, just trying to be open hearted. With that said, Maria's like, I don't know, do you think I should still invite her to move in? And what I said is you you know her better than I do for sure, So it's up to you if you think she deserves a second chance, because maybe she's going through something because of everything that's been happening. If you think she deserves a second chance, then you know, I'm putting. It in your hands. She ends up moving in and all the vacancies are filled. Danica in particular had an interest in like the Juju curse, which is like this legend that comes out of Nigeria and basically it's. Like a sex trafficking curse. This is something that has been written about in pretty credible newspapers like The Guardian. It's also been written about in like scholarly journals and stuff like that too. I was shocked to even see something like that written about in the press that way. At the time. Her boyfriend, who she was just really starting to see he's from there. He was kind of telling her, like some of the legends and stuff, and telling her things about magic and things. And this is not to bring up anybody's belief system, because there are there are people who who have spiritual practices that are misunderstood. But I'm talking about this information being in the hands of this particular person. She just seemed so intrigued by it, and she. Was the one who told us about it. Things are going fine. We're getting along enough. We're very different types. There's some tension between. Danica and Leah a little bit, but it's nothing to. Boil over yet. I'm just kind of going through life working a day job. Weird things have started happening to me already, Like I'm dealing with some back pain and stuff like that. I'm commuting on public transit to get to work, so it's not an ideal situation, but we're all kind of making it work as twenty somethings. A little bit of time passes the closeness between me and Maria, with that being Danica's best friend, I think some tension maybe started to build there, But things also started going really well in my life. I was co hosting a podcast of my own. I'd lost a day job, but I had been hired doing something else that was remote and I could be comfortable. Me and my roommates had just done a game show together, Common Knowledge on GSN, so things were kind of starting to pick up. I was having some interesting experiences that were aligning with what people talk about when you start having spiritual awakening. I'd had some supernatural experiences previously, like I'd gone to the Aiggans Museum and had some interesting contact also, like premonitions and stuff kind of running my family, but I was having these interesting awakenings and stuff like that at the same time. People had their crystals, people were going to psychic readings, and I was more of a fledgling and that sort of a thing than anybody. There had been other little cues too that maybe maybe there was some disdain there as well, like I had a birthday party and she didn't seem to like watching me enjoy myself and have fun. There was also a friend that I had from work who I was kind of trying to figure out how he felt about me, how I felt about him. At the time, I wasn't even sure that I still wanted to date man, but she just had a really interesting dynamic with him, despite. Being a relationship of her own. I distinctly remember I was kind of at a low point because I just lost a friend of mine suddenly and I couldn't make it home to his memorial. Or anything like that. When I found out about that, Danica gave me this look like, I know I'm supposed to comfort you, but I feel really uncomfortable. It was just a very uncomfortable moment like that just stuck in my mind. One day, there was a. Stain in the toilet or something like that. She was just like, oh, do you mind like wiping off the toilet. Not to be gross, but there's menstrual blood on it. At the time, I was not menstruating because I had a birth controling plant, which stops menstruation in people. But it's like we all share the chores, and I was like, you know what, fine, Like I don't want to I don't want to embarrass anybody. I don't want to hunt anyone down and figure out who it is, and I'm not doing anything. In hindsight, it's interesting that she asked me to do it because of the way menstruation gets used in certain dark practices, I picked up other interesting habits that just didn't make sense to me. This was when I when my hair was in dreadlocks, and I just remember kind of picking the ends of my locks and leaving like the little beady ends around which I come from a creole background, and that's like creole one on one, do not leave your hair anywhere that strange person can find it. But I was just absent mindedly doing all these strange things. There was also incidents where I walked into my room and there was like strange powder on my floor. Like I would look at the bottom of my feet and say, why is it like dusty? Like if you leave the window open even on like the windy is, there's not going to be a layer of dust like this. Just crazy things were happening. There was like a there was a dead bird on our step at one point. Just all this weird stuff was going on. Just a little bit after I started working my new remote job, I started having these losses of control and blackouts, brownouts. Basically I ended up wandering the street and I ended up getting fifty one fifty over and over again. When I say over and over again, I still don't know how many times because I can't access my medical records. Believe it or not, Awful things also started happening to me, like I got attacked multiple times on the street by strangers. I was sexually assaulted multiple times, once in a hospital, once on the street. It's almost like I was marked for something. I also ended up injuring myself multiple times too. I had an. Ankle end up in like a splint, like half of the cast. Sometime later, I'm walking down Crenshaw trying to get something to eat. It's evening time, and this dude randomly comes up to me, punches me in the face once and then walks off, and I have to like lip home. I don't want to call the cops. I don't want to do anything like that. The more I'm going through these things and the more I'm confused, I'm not sure what it is. I know that this started out feeling like spiritual awakening symptoms, but then it just got really dark. Danica's fiance he had been there when I kind of had a loss of control. It almost like felt out on Danica's bed. I knocked on her door and fell out on her bed, and he had something in his bag ready, like some sort of liquid that smelled like pure alcohol, and he just immediately went for it and like threw it on me and started. It sounded like he was praying, so I think that he was trying to bless me for whatever. But at the same time, this makes me wonder if she took some of the knowledge that he had for good and decided. To turn it into something nasty. At one point, it was decided that I just needed to leave the apartment. Other people got involved because there were friends of mine from the industry. They also tried to get in touch with members of my family when I would end up in the hospital, and friends that were back home on the East Coast. Basically, it had been decid, you need to just go home, like just go home, and by home, they didn't mean back to Philly necessarily, they meant where I am now, which is where my dad lives, which is fade though, North Carolina. I know that even if it was something that was traditionally diagnosible, I would have had a much easier time managing it in LA where I could at least get help with insurance more easily and just have more of. A social safety net. I know there's a lot of bad stuff out there, but in the South it's really hard for poor people. To get help too. I hadn't experienced anything like that, because it's just like, why are we not trying to get other tests done? Like why are we not trying to see if it's medical? It could be a tumor, it could be anything, but it's just like, Nope, you got a diagnosis and you need to just go. It's like that in La right, It's like tag, you're out, Just give up your place in line. Just fail, like just fail already. I was just like, I'm trying to pull myself together. I'm trying to keep my career moving forward. But the more that I tried to stay, it's like the more the tension was. I was also getting affirmed in some really interesting ways that what I was going through was spiritual. My career was starting to take off. I had movies that were getting optioned, that were about to get funded and about to get produced, and this just intersected with all this. I did have some psychic abilities opening up. People started coming to me for readings. I ended up doing readings for some prominent people. I also got invited to be a psychic card reader vendor at some vendor fairs. I got to talk about this a little bit on some podcasts and things too, just psychic stuff, not particularly this story. So there was a balance, but it didn't seem like they cared that I was actually being proven in what I was saying. It seemed like that just caused more resentment and things just got worse. Danica and I really started to butt heads. There were times where she basically menaced me, threatened me Maria too. It was just like they just needed me, like they just needed me to go. After a while, it came down to them inviting other people over to kind of bully me, people that I didn't know, to kind of make me feel uncomfortable in the apartment and like bully me to make me feel like if I said anything, if I stood out for myself, like I could end up jumped. I had friends too, but I didn't want there to be any sort of altercations. But the friends that I knew who were out there, they witnessed just like some weird aggressive behavior, like there was no concern for my well being. So after a while, I was just like, this doesn't feel like, oh, you're struggling. We hate to see you struggle. We just want you safe. It was just like tag you're out, you're crazy, go home after one, particularly just like rough Stretch where they got the new landlord's son involved because the house was sold in the midst of all. That, I just was like, it's not worth it. I'm going to reset. I've reset before, I'm going to reset. That was like four years ago, basically a little over four years ago now since I left, I've not experienced anything like that. I've not had any losses of control. I've not had any wandering spells. I haven't needed to have any hospital stays, any emergencies that I had it was due to like anxiety, like it felt like my heart rate was elevated, But I didn't have anything that could be classified under a fifty one fifty, nothing like that. I know, people just want to believe that I had a breakdown, and they want to believe that maybe I'm trying to like salvage the situation and use it to get back in the industry. I promise you that's not it. You can't make up what happened to Maria's great grandmother. What's so wild? Is. It took me a while to even bring that context together. So when Maria first moved in, she had a bunch of her stuff and I still have some of those those items too. But she gave me a ring. I never took it off. It was so beautiful to me that she would give me that ring, and it was very much my style. She even said like, this isn't really me, but I feel like. It matches you, and it was. It was gorgeous. It was like a black stone on a silver ring, and that's usually like protection. She also gave me like an item of her of her clothing, like a blouse or something that I haven't really worn since during one of my first losses of control. Though that ring ended up coming off. Maybe there was some resentment like if anybody should have that ring, it should be it should be someone who knew her or whatever. I'm just thinking, like three incidents, that's a pattern, right, Like in writing and anything, three equals a pattern. It's like, what has to happen for a third time, Like do they they take over somebody else's apartment, because I really don't think it's a coincidence that that's why they had to leave their last living situation, somebody who lost control and flew off a freeway, and then all of a sudden, I'm having losses of control, and then I have to leave my apartment that I lived in first, and the people that I invited just to fill the the the vacancies they got to stay. I really do feel a connection to this lady, the great grandmother. I feel a connection to her, and I feel like she wanted me to know that this was what I signed up for by going out there. There's a lot of speculation and stuff about what really runs Los Angeles. A lot of it does come down to some pretty dark stuff, and when you look at how things happen and how many people end up abused and including kids and things, it's hard to argue with that. I think there are multiple curses that happen around the entertainment industry. I think there are multiple curses that happen just around what success means in this country, if not like the entire Western world. The psychology behind metaphysics is just a really definitive answer on what's really at the bottom of the physical issues that we're dealing with. If you look at just how the like the actual laws and stuff work out there. There's a lot of loopholes too for people to get. Away with things. Landlords are always finding sneaky ways to get people out of units so that instead of just collecting regular rent, they can keep getting like first, last and deposit over and over again. There's just all this gray area that's out there that really leads to some very harmful stuff. Makes me wonder how many people got labeled a certain way for having an experience like what I had, People who couldn't make it out, or people who if they did make it out, they wouldn't have the ability to contextualize it. There's also just the culture of like what does it take to make it? Because they keep saying it's not enough to be good, to be smart, it's not enough to be talented, it's not enough to work hard. I'm like, okay, well what does it take? What does it actually take? Right? And people don't ever really want to say. It's like this this unspoken thing. There's also kind of like this climate of no matter how close you were to people, if you're not in town, you kind of don't exist. They don't maintain contact. So it's like almost like were you ever really there. It's almost like a just like a like what they call a liminal space all of its own. In a way, this kind of started with a roommate horror story because what was going. On between the people who were there when I moved in was very intense. Maybe there's something about this. House too, I don't know, but this generation has it has to reckon with what it's like being forced to cram like four grown adults between their twenties and thirties, sometimes their forties. Into one apartment. In one of the wealthiest countries in the world, like California has the fourth biggest economy in the world, the governor said. And that's as a state. But that's how so many people live there, just a bunch of strangers crammed into a single apartment. Sometimes you got people sleeping in bunk feds. I had to stay at some hostels and stuff for a little while while. I was looking to get into a permanent place. So I think this is one of those sort of just one of those horror stories that also can come down to just like the horrors of capitalism and just us just having to. Live a certain way. Just because we haven't been allowed to grow out of it into a more humane sort of system. And I hope that's not like too preachy or anything, but I definitely feel like we have more than enough resources for people to be able to have their own space, not just to have their basic needs met, but to have like dignified and comfortable lives. You know, I. Haven't really been the same since physical health wise is taking a huge toll on me, but I have not had any losses of clarity whatsoever. This is the kind of thing that you see people talk about online, but people kind of lose sympathy because, well, you wanted to be out there, well, you wanted to. Be a star. But at the same time, it's like, you know what California with Southern California, what Los Angeles is supposed to represent in terms of the dream and in terms of progress and in terms of inclusion, And it's almost like it's almost like a lore, like a fly trap, where you're made to think you're getting one thing, but you're totally getting something else when you get there. Chris, thank you so much for the conversation that we had during this call, and also for sharing your experiences here with the rest of us. At the true scary story community. During our call, I kept saying this over and over. It was it's a very haunting story, and I couldn't place my finger on why, like what made it so eerie to me? And I was thinking also maybe I'm because I'm from southern California, right from Los Angeles, and I always stayed away from what they call like the entertainment area I guess of Los Angeles, but I did know a lot of people who dove right in and have always been curious as to how that works out. But I'm glad we we also talked about some conspiration sees, some things about you know, that undercurrent of Los Angeles and everything that's in there, and I'm sure it's the same in other places of the big cities, maybe small towns. How there's something there, like something that's just always going to be there, something that's very difficult to get rid of. I'm interested in knowing what you thought of this story, like as in what did you get out of it? Because for me, I lean more into the Los Angeles part, but I'm interested in finding out anyway. This episode was edited and sound designed by Sarah Vorheis Wendel A VW Sound with additional production by me Edwin Coo Arrubiaz and The Scary FMT. Do you want to share your story with us, head on over to true scarystory dot com. You fill out the form and we get in touch with you anyway. That's all I got for you this week. Thank you very much for listening. I could scary everyone. Yeah. So