Remember when I moved twice in 2023? Lord, my life was a real-estate soap opera that year. But that first apartment? That one earned a reputation. Anthony and India swore the place was haunted. Not “maybe a weird noise” haunted. Full-on somebody-died-in-here-and-never-left haunted. India even christened it The Bates Hotel, and once she said it, the name stuck like a curse written in permanent marker.

They both started having sleep paralysis. Frozen in bed. Shadows creeping. Invisible weights pressing on their chests. Morning after morning they compared stories like battlefield reports.

Meanwhile, I was sleeping like a satisfied house cat. Deep, easy, unbothered.

Now here’s the part that made me raise an eyebrow.

Both of them clowned me about my four altars. Said it looked like I was running a boutique funeral home. Candles, photos, offerings, little tokens of love. To them, it looked like I was worshipping the dead.

But I wasn’t.

I was paying homage.

There’s a difference between fear and reverence. My altars were gratitude made visible. A way of saying, I know who carried me here.

So while they were side-eyeing my candles, they were also waking up paralyzed, seeing shadows, feeling unseen presences. And I couldn’t help but notice the irony.

Because guess what?

No more cracks about my altars.

Hmp.

Respect arrived the moment experience became their teacher. Funny how that works.

That apartment may have been The Bates Hotel to them.

But I walked through it protected, unbothered, and backed by a lineage that doesn’t play about me.

And that’s the part that still makes me smile.