I had moved into what had at one time been a nice large frame house which had been converted into a rooming house. The house had two or three stories, and my room was on the second story. I had one large room and a bathroom.

Several other people had also moved into the house. Since the house was somewhat in disrepair, one fellow had taken it upon himself to start repairing the house. The fellow was doing quite a bit of work around the house.

I was standing in the large hallway on the second floor, looking at the work the fellow had been doing. Several other people were also in the hall. In one corner of the hall some of the boards were missing in the floor, and it was possible to look under the wall into my room. I recalled having heard the man working on the house say that he had put out some rat poison. There had been some rats in the house, and we expected the poison to kill them.

I began closely looking at the boards to see if I could determine how they could be replaced. I saw one joist running under the floor. I thought a second joist would need to be nailed along the wall under the floor. Then new boards could be nailed on top of the new joist and the old joist. But the more I looked at it, I saw that there were actually two sets of boards which had been laid down for the floor, one on top of the other. It looked as if the boards were unleveled and that perhaps the whole house needed to be leveled. But I didn't even know if it was possible to level a two-story house.

I noticed what appeared to be a cage sitting near me. Inside the cage was a black rope. I reached into the cage, grabbed the rope and began pulling it. I noticed that the rope was attached to a pulley, and I kept pulling the rope until the end, with a hook attached to it, came up. The other people standing there and I concluded that the rope went down to the basement. If someone were down in the basement, they could send things up to us.

When I took my hands off the rope, I saw that my hands were black. Obviously the man who had been working on the house had painted the rope, and I now had black paint all over my hands.