In the early 1970's, I lived in a haunted apartment in Berkeley, California. I shared the apartment with my two daughters -- about 9 and 6 at the time, and two cats -- Koshka (an orange tabby), and Sabbat (a sleek black feline).

I don't know what the poltergeist was but am quite sure it wasn't human. My impression was that it was some sort of dog or other animal because when Koshka and Sabbat would watch it, their eyes followed something that was fairly close to the floor. The apartment building was new (I was only the second or third tenant in the apartment) and it had no history of violence according to the landlord.

The haunt manifested itself in different ways, even performing nicely for skeptical friends I invited over to "meet the ghost". That particular evening, the entity did the following "tricks":

It scratched noisily in the catbox when both cats were visible in the living room and the catbox was also visible (all by itself) on the kitchen floor; turned the handle of the front door; and walked back and forth in front of my cats, whose heads turned in unison to follow it. When they left, my friends were no longer skeptics.

Other things it did at various times were:

Suspended a 3-1/2 foot long coffee table over my oldest daughter, who was sleeping on the floor in front of the heater in the living room. She woke up suddenly and saw the table floating above her lengthwise, its legs several inches off the floor. She didn't tell me this story until several years later and when I asked her why not, she said she thought I would think she was nuts. (I never discussed the poltergeist with the kids, and they seemed not to notice it. My youngest daughter has no memories of the apartment at all.)

The thing touched my hand when I was in bed late one night, and it growled at me on several occasions, usually seeming to come from the bedroom ceiling. The bedroom had sliding glass doors that led to a small, enclosed patio. There were no plants or trees there, but I could often see shadows of trees and plants on the drapes across the door.

A painting I had done in high school disappeared off the wall where it was hanging, never to be found. I am sure that was also the entity's doing.

On the day I moved out, it blew the faucet off the kitchen sink with such force that it stripped about 3 square feet of plaster off the ceiling before I could turn the water off under the sink -- and the water was pure hot with no cold mixed in.

It did other things and made noises that were not quite so dramatic. I lived in the apartment for about six months and became aware of the entity about the second month I lived there. It didn't worry me at first because it didn't show signs of violence, but I moved out when it became overactive and started to "feel" violent, and my cats refused to come into the apartment anymore. They eventually ran away, although we would occasionally see them still in the neighborhood. They would come to us, but not into the apartment.

A few months later, I checked with the occupants of the apartment, and they said they had heard strange sounds but attributed it to the tenants upstairs. They thought I was kind of weird for believing in ghosts, and didn't invite me in.