Five rational explanations for the noises my upstairs neighbor makes during the night

I’ve only seen her once since we’ve been living in our apartment, and she seemed harmless enough at the time. She’s most likely—again, from what I saw during that brief morning encounter near our cars—in her mid-20s. I don’t think she has a boyfriend, but some nights she sounds as if she has several, at the same time. Other than that, I don’t know much more about her, other than that she is either a night person or a raging, pacing insomniac. Of course, I can speculate ...

Doomsday prepper
All night, every night, she is just rationing food and stockpiling an arsenal of weaponry. She wears her official fatigues and military boots while working deep into the night on her custom fort to guard herself from an inevitable North Korean EMP attack. My girlfriend hates this image, but I imagine her in nothing but a gas mask and wallowing around in a stockpile of gold and silver. Because this is exactly what it sounds like she is doing, sometimes until dawn. Sometimes, I think I hear a faint laughing sound, the sound of someone who knows they are right and THAT everyone else in the world is wrong and doomed.

She owns and uses a pogo stick at night
It doesn’t sound like she’s only bouncing on her bed like a kid in a hotel room. No, it sounds much more deliberate than that. It’s almost as if she’s out to become an expert at a difficult, nonessential sport. Pogo-ing? Pogo-sticking? I don’t what you would call it or even if the sport exists, but I swear it sounds as if she’s practicing all night long. Imagine a heavy Tigger just going bouncy, bouncy, bouncy at all hours of the night, and you can understand why I’m into meditation and yelling at my friends for no reason. 

Big dog (huge indoor cat?)
Maybe we’re dealing with some sort of indoor beast or something here. I think this animal—if it exists—would have to be a cat. But this is only because I never hear a dog. Can residents in apartments own large cat breeds? Bobcats, for example? Or, God forbid, a lynx? If this is an animal, we are only aware of its constant, repetitive thudding sound in and around the kitchen area. Is it possible she forces a cat into one of those over-the-door baby jumper swings all night long? Why would she do this? This seems preposterous, but people can sometimes have strange quirks and even pretend their pets are human. I’ve seen it on "Dateline." If it IS a cat, I’ll bet its name is something like “Sally.”

Pacing
The insulation in our apartment complex is solid. We cannot hear her vocalizing anything, but we can trace her every move through her domain with pinpoint accuracy. Several nights per week, we can hear her do something very strange. At precisely 2 a.m., we will here a single thud in the bedroom. This thud is followed by exactly 30 minutes of rhythmic pacing back and forth between the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. Then, she sits on the couch for a few minutes and repeats the process. My thought is that she might be on the phone. I’ll sometimes catch myself pacing back and forth when I take an important phone call. But in the middle of the night? I’m not buying it. I just think she’s crazy.

Lycanthropy
Lycanthropy (turning into a werewolf) is probably the least plausible scenario in reality but the closest plausibility in terms of sound. If I were asked to describe in detail what it sounds like to live underneath this woman, I would say the following: She sounds as if—three nights per week—she is going through the apparently painful process of turning from a human into a werewolf. It starts with her getting out of bed with a loud thump. She probably turns to look in a mirror and whispers, “NO! Not again!” before her back wrenches skyward and fangs burst through her lips. At this point, she is thrown to the floor and spends several minutes growing thick, wolf hair as we lay below her, wishing she would die. Knowing of the pending transformation, she must have barricaded herself into the apartment. For the rest of night, we hear her moving back and forth through the apartment with the weight of a werewolf. The only piece of evidence I’m lacking for my case is the howling. Once I hear that, I’m going to the authorities.

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