twin beds

It's no secret that I love Hometown Tales, having mentioned the podcast several times in a blog that's ostensibly about illustrating for children. They're just that good. Today, I wrote in with another story, but in case it doesn't get on the air, I'm including it here. Credit should go to Mr. A.J. Belmont, who either experienced something exceptionally freaky, or told me the most convincing campfire story I've ever heard.

About 10 years ago, when a friend of mine was living in an apartment building in Boston, one of his next-door neighbor’s was an elderly man. They ignored each other, for the most part, except to occasionally say hello.

At one point during his occupancy, my friend noticed a faint but terrible odor in the hallway. Over the next few days, the smell worsened. Some of the residents complained to the landlord. One evening, my friend came home from work to find the paramedics and police outside his apartment building. When he asked what had happened he was told that the elderly man had been found dead in bed. What’s more, he had been dead for at least two weeks.

After my friend was allowed to enter the premises again (presumably after the body had been taken away and the building fumigated), he had the opportunity to look inside the dead man’s apartment. Most of his furniture and possessions had yet to be removed, including the man’s bed, the headboard of which was pushed up against the wall. When my friend returned to his apartment he realized that the headboard of his bed was pushed up against the opposite side of the same wall. He had been sleeping head to head with a dead man for two weeks.