My Haunted Apartment, A True Story

Ever since my girlfriend and I moved into our apartment a few years ago, we’ve noticed a couple of phenomenon which has led my girlfriend to believe that the apartment is haunted.

Mystery of the swaying blinds

My girlfriend freaked out when she first noticed the window blinds swaying on their own even when all the windows were shut. Our apartment doesn’t have any ventilation system, so the swaying can’t be due to a vent blowing air on the blinds. The swaying of the blinds is especially pronounced during hot summer days, though sometimes they sway during cold winter nights and the electric heater underneath is on full blast.

Mystery of the self-flushing toilets

One night, the master bedroom toilet flushed on its own, followed by a loud knock. This woke my girlfriend up who then shook me awake because she was convinced there was a ghost in the bathroom. Ever since that night, the toilets in the apartment have been self-flushing at random times. Every time it happens, my girlfriend says a prayer. She’s now deathly afraid of being alone in the apartment, especially when the sun’s down.

Mystery of the rattling closet

One extremely cold winter night, at 3AM, the sliding closet door next to our bed rattled as if suddenly struck from the inside. My girlfriend and I both woke up, and she started screaming. I turned on the lights and checked the closet. There was nothing inside other than our clothes. The closet door was made of cheap plastic set inside a metal frame. It was so cold that night that I was shivering. I noticed that we’d forgotten to turn on the electric heater in our bedroom.

At my girlfriend’s behest, we have since moved into a different bedroom in the apartment, one which has a proper walk-in closet with a normal door. On cold winter nights, the sliding closet door in the other bedroom would occasionally rattle, waking my girlfriend up who would then insist on shaking me awake. Very annoying.

Mysterious liquid leaking from the closet, a strange smell, and a lone footprint on the carpet

My girlfriend and I returned home late at night when we noticed a strange musk in the air. It smelt like mildew, the kind of smell you’d notice in an old basement. We searched for the source of the smell. My girlfriend traced it to the closet with the sliding door, the same closet that kept rattling on cold winter nights. The carpet in and around the closet was damp. The ceiling was slightly damp. My girlfriend gasped and pointed at a small footprint on the damp carpet. It looked like a child’s footprint. Strangely, there was only one footprint.

I assumed that the apartment upstairs had some kind of leak and so building management came into our apartment to check the damage. Finding little to no damage, they left without informing us (which they’re not allowed to do as they have to give us at least 24-hour notice).

My girlfriend was convinced that the ghost of a little girl had caused this. How did she know it was a little girl? I suppose she was thinking of The Ring. She went and did some online research while I emptied out the closet. I then went to take a shower. After I came back out, my girlfriend told me to come over and check out the research she’d uncovered. Apparently, a little girl was found dead in our apartment fifteen years ago, the cause of death being hypothermia. The authorities had discovered her body inside a closet during a particularly cold winter, though the article didn’t specify which closet. Her parents had been charged with criminal negligence causing death.

I still wasn’t convinced that the apartment was haunted. We went to sleep, though it was a sleepless night because my girlfriend wouldn’t let me turn off the lights.

The next morning, I was groggy and in a foul mood. I went down to the building manager’s office and demanded to know why they had entered our apartment without our permission or even leaving a notice that they had entered. The building manager and his assistant, the only two people in the entire building who had the master key, denied that they had entered our apartment. I looked at their feet and noticed that they had big feet – far bigger than the small footprint my girlfriend and I had seen. I asked the building manager and his assistant to come up to my apartment to check the damage.

When we entered the apartment, I immediately noticed the foul mildew smell again. I asked them if they smelt anything. They shook their heads and denied they could smell anything. They then checked the closet that had been leaking. It was completely dry, and the footprint was gone. There was hardly any water damage to be seen. I demanded that building management investigate what had happened and that they hire a specialist to check for mold. As there were no signs of mold, building management refused to hire a specialist. I insisted that the mold must be hidden within the walls and the ceiling. They flat-out refused and continued to insist that they couldn’t smell anything. After some argument, the building manager and his assistant left.

I was livid. The smell was bothering me, so I decided to take matters into my own hand. I went to a hardware store and bought some tape and a roll of plastic, the kind painters would use to cover up walls and floors. I traced the source of the mildew smell to the closet ceiling, so I plastered it with plastic. I plastered the entire closet with plastic. I then covered the entire closet door with plastic, effectively sealing in the mildew smell. Still, some of the smell leaked out.

What do to going forward?

My girlfriend and I have had enough of this apartment. My girlfriend is absolutely convinced the apartment is haunted by the ghost of a little girl. I don’t believe that. I am scientific-minded. I don’t believe in silly superstitions or ghosts or anything supernatural. There is a rational explanation for everything, but my girlfriend remains unconvinced by my rational arguments. I’m just pissed at building management for lying to me and for putting my health and my girlfriend’s health at risk by refusing to deal with whatever’s going on in that closet. My girlfriend and I have now developed respiratory symptom including cough, phlegm, and wheezing. Fortunately, our lease is almost at an end.

Anyway, if you’re really interested in the rational explanation for the phenomenon described above, here they are:

The swaying blinds. This is caused by the sun heating up the air between the window and the blinds. Hot air rises and cooler air rushes in to fill the gap. This causes a draft which causes the blinds to sway. Same thing happens during winter when hot air from the electric heater rises.

The self-flushing toilets. This is caused by a small leak inside the cistern tank of the toilets. When enough water leaks out of the tank (and into the bowl), this triggers the tank to pump in more water to refill itself. The knocking sound is due to the incompressibility of water. Because water can’t be compressed, when flow is suddenly cut off, all the momentum of the flowing water slams into the pipes, causing a knocking sound. Over time, this can damage the pipes. I’ve asked building management multiple times to replace the valve on the toilets, but they’re either too cheap or incompetent to fix the toilet. I’m not going to waste my time and money to fix it myself, especially when I don’t have to pay for the cost of all that water that’s being wasted.

The rattling closet. My girlfriend and I save money by turning off the electric heater in rooms we don’t occupy during the winter. This means the bedroom with the sliding closet door gets really cold at night during winter. When the temperature drops, the metal frame around the closet door shrinks faster than the cheap plastic it’s framed around. This compresses the plastic door, causing it to buckle. The force of the buckle is strong enough to make a loud knock followed by a rattle.

The leaking closet, smell, and footprint. Plain and simple, the asshole upstairs spilt something in his closet, and this leaked down to our closet. It couldn’t just be water. It must be some kind of chemical because water doesn’t smell that bad. I no longer believe it’s mold as mold doesn’t form that quickly. As for the small footprint, I still can’t explain it. I think it’s just a coincidence. A part of the carpet just happened to be depressed in the rough shape of a child’s foot. As to that old news article about the dead girl, I also believe that’s a coincidence. People die all the time everywhere. Is every corner of the Earth haunted by ghosts? Yeah, I don’t think so.

My girlfriend and I are moving out soon. I want to pursue legal action against building management for negligence, but that would be too much trouble and I just want this drama to end.

What do you guys think? Do my rational explanations make sense? Or do you think there really is a ghost haunting our apartment?