What Would McGruff Do?

Last night was a spooky evening. First, at around seven, whilst paying some bills, I heard some odd pounding coming from somewhere in the building. This was shortly followed by some high-pitched moaning, and it didn't take me long to figure out what that was all about. That's not the spooky part--although it is odd that that's the first I've heard of such activity since I moved into the building some 13 years ago.

The spooky part was later, at about 10 p.m. I was watching an episode of "Veronica Mars" on DVD (the second season came out this week, which means I'll actually be all caught up by the time season three starts, woo!) Suddenly I heard some really, really loud screaming. Like, terrified screaming. And it wasn't followed by the usual gales of laughter you get when you hear screaming on the street which tells you you're just dealing with a bunch of drunks. No, this was three long, agonized "AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRR!!!"s, followed by silence. Sometimes you just get a feeling and know when something's not right.

Now, what is one supposed to do in a situation like that? Go outside and investigate? Perhaps, if you're a huge man with a baseball bat, which I'm not (I swear). Or do you call the police? And tell them what? That you heard screaming, but aren't sure where it came from, and didn't actually see anything happen?

Instead I opened my window and looked around. I didn't see anyone on the street, and didn't hear any more cries. I saw someone across the street doing the same curious head poke out his window, but he soon closed the window and went back to his life. I kept the window open for a while, and the DVD player off, but didn't hear anything else suspicious.

It creeped me out, though! When I finally went to bed I had a hard time falling asleep. Usually I sleep with ear plugs, but if there really was some crazed killer going door to door, I wanted to be able to hear him coming, so the ear plugs stayed out. And of course every sound I could then hear spooked me out.

Eventually I fell asleep, and today I checked the SFPD crime map to see if anything had been reported in my hood. Nothing was (so far).

But leaving my apartment this morning, I did hear screams of another, previously-mentioned kind. Looks like the ear plugs will be returning tonight.