Haunted House: My Female Ghost Can't Be This Cute (Part 1)
01
Maybe guys are always slow on the uptake. After living there for a month, I'd managed to completely ignore every haunting.
In 2013, a friend and I were interning in the provincial capital, and we'd rented a two-bedroom apartment. Both of us were broke students. To save money, we specifically picked a rundown old public housing unit.
Not long after moving in, strange things started happening.
I'd often hear footsteps outside my door in the middle of the night. I'd assume my roommate was getting up to pee and push open the door to say hi.
The hallway was pitch black. No one there.
Also, there'd be intermittent banging sounds that seemed to come from nowhere.
It felt like something inside the apartment was knocking on our door, over and over.
But no matter how hard we searched, we couldn't find the source.
We naturally arrived at a conclusion—damn it, we might have mice. We cursed each other for being slobs, chipped in, and bought some rat poison.
It didn't work.
In the dead of night, there were still hidden footsteps. The intermittent banging... My friend and I were furious: "Damn it, may the fake poison sellers die a horrible death!"
Until the day we actually saw a ghost in our apartment.
02
That day, we came home from work and saw a crowd gathered outside our door.
Puzzled, we walked over. The door was already ajar. An elderly woman in the crowd was recounting her terrifying experience with fear etched on her face.
It turned out she'd been walking past our apartment earlier and noticed the door was cracked open.
Out of curiosity, she gave it a light push—and nearly jumped out of her skin.
In that instant, she saw a pair of dangling feet behind the door, swinging into her field of view.
A woman's body, hanging behind the door!
She started screaming and got all the neighbors to come out. But when they went inside to look, there was no body at all.
The neighbors figured the old woman was just going senile.
But my friend and I stood at the doorway, every hair on our bodies standing on end.
Thinking about it carefully, the banging sounds we'd been hearing... they really did sound like a hanging body, swaying in the wind, bumping against the door over and over.
03
My friend and I searched every corner of the apartment together.
No body in sight.
I asked my friend: "Did you secretly buy a blow-up doll and not tell me?"
"Get lost."
My friend was clearly spooked. He swallowed hard and asked timidly: "Are you free tonight?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"I want to sleep in your room."
What the hell... My friend was definitely freaked out. Both Wes and I wanted to punch him.
04
I'm a light sleeper. The slightest noise wakes me up.
My friend, on the other hand... Cao Cao was known for killing people in his sleep; this guy seemed to practice gymnastics in his.
Every single time! Every single time he'd wake me up with some impossible sleeping position. The starfish, the golf-swing, the masterpiece that was "Napoleon on Horseback" (I was the horse)...
I was forced to share a bed with him for several days (what a choice of words).
Just as I was about to crack from sleep deprivation, he finally moved back to his own room.
His mom had gone up a mountain and sent him back a talisman. She said a master had blessed it.
He stuck it on his door and said, with transparent innocence: "Want to sleep in my room? It's the safest now."
"Get lost."
Whether it worked or not, I couldn't say. But that talisman on the door made our place look like a mortuary from a zombie movie.
Even creepier.
And within days, another strange thing happened.
One weekend, my friend and I went to an internet café for an all-nighter.
When we stumbled back in the early morning, I flopped onto my bed and drifted into a half-sleep.
In that haze between waking and dreaming, I suddenly felt something touch my back. Several times.
I tried to roll over, but my eyes snapped open instead.
Who was touching me?
I gathered my courage and looked behind me. No one in the bedroom. And my door was double-locked from the inside.
So what had just touched me... what kind of "thing" was it?
Whose hand was that?
05
Over dinner, I told my friend about it.
I noticed his expression suddenly turn terrified, as if he'd thought of something dreadful.
He said: "Did you look up at the ceiling?"
I said: "No. Why?"
He said: "What if it wasn't someone standing next to your bed touching you... but a person hanging in mid-air, kicking you with her tiptoes?"
That night, I grabbed my pillow and knocked on his door.
"Bro... I want to sleep in your room."
06
We finally had to face an undeniable truth:
This apartment was not clean.
We contacted the rental agent, who laughed when he heard our complaint and tossed out: "You can always break the lease. No deposit refund, of course."
I wanted the landlord's contact information, to ask what had happened in this place, but the agent had already hung up.
My friend and I stared at each other.
What now?
I sighed: "Can your mom go up the mountain one more time?"
"Be a human being! My mom is almost fifty!"
I kept sighing.
07
Around that time, I kept having nightmares.
The one that stuck with me most was the dream where I got in the elevator to go downstairs.
The elevator reached the first floor but didn't stop. It kept going down, faster and faster.
A violent sensation of freefall washed over me.
Finally, the elevator jerked to a halt. I nearly fell over, looked up at the floor display—it had stopped at negative fifty.
What the hell kind of building has fifty basement levels?!
The elevator doors opened. Beyond them: impenetrable darkness.
I took a few steps out in confusion, then suddenly realized I couldn't find my way back.
I started running, panic-stricken.
Finally, in the darkness, a faint light appeared.
Running closer, I saw it was a large courtyard. Built entirely of red wood.
Strangely, this house had no windows.
At the entrance to the courtyard, there was a traditional square table.
On the table sat a photo frame with a picture of a girl. Expressionless, her face terribly pale.
Some fruit, wine, and meat were placed before the photo. Stepping closer, I also spotted a few sticks of incense.
I stopped walking.
What kind of house was this? This was clearly the layout of a grave!
Only a grave would have no windows!
I was terrified out of my mind.
I spun around and ran, sprinting desperately until I finally found the elevator doors again.
I rushed inside and slammed the close button. In a glance over my shoulder, I could still clearly see that courtyard.
In the photo, the girl had no color in her face. Her lips were pale, as if drained of blood.
Then—I saw her eyes shift sideways. Her pupils stared directly at me.
08
I jolted awake, completely.
Okay, I'll admit it.
"Buddy... I'm back to sleep in your room again!"
09
It wasn't just me. My friend had his own strange occurrences too.
He said he'd been waking up in the middle of the night for no reason, several nights in a row.
He'd check his phone, and the time would be 4:44 AM.
If someone had told us this before, we might have brushed it off as coincidence.
But after everything we'd been through, we both understood.
The "resident" in our apartment was warning us.
Or more precisely, "she" was warning us.
My friend said: "Maybe... we should just move out."
I sighed. We'd paid three months' rent plus a deposit, which had drained our savings. We had no money left. Where would we go?
My friend said: "We could sleep on the floor at the office. I scoped it out—the AC still works, it's better than sleeping on the streets... we'd just have to wake up early so the boss doesn't catch us."
Looking around the apartment in that moment, it didn't feel spooky or eerie anymore. It just felt kind of pathetic.
It felt like being bullied by a female ghost.
10
While packing our bags, for some reason, I got angrier and angrier.
The more I thought about it, the madder I got.
Our intern salary was only two thousand, and the company was holding it back.
After rent, we could only afford plain noodles for every meal.
Our only condiment was a single bottle of oyster sauce.
Has this ghost ever paid rent?
She hasn't paid a single cent!
Then why the hell should we be the ones to leave?!
I stormed out of my room. In the living room, my friend had already packed his bags.
He blinked: "Where's your luggage?"
I told him I wasn't leaving. If anyone should leave, it's the ghost!
My friend managed a forced smile: "Well... good luck with that."
He started to head out, but I grabbed him.
"Stay with me."
"What happened to all that bravado?!"
"It's just... kind of scary being alone..."
"No way. The office is great. The office is my home. Bye!"
He was about to step out, then turned and saw me staring at him pitifully. He sighed.
My friend hesitated: "Then tonight..."
"Sleep, sleep, just sleep, for crying out loud." I nodded rapidly.
11
And so, firmly and with iron resolve, we hunkered down for a siege.
If anyone was moving out, it should be her!
And before she left, she owed us back rent!
Damn it!
After that, we still had nightmares, still woke up at 4:44 AM.
But we could endure it.
If I got scared awake by a nightmare, I'd just snuggle closer to my friend.
If my friend woke up at 4:44, he'd treat it as his alarm to go pee.
At least so far.
Aside from scaring us, "our resident" hadn't done us any real harm.
My friend even proposed a theory: for every action there's a reaction. If she could hurt us, then we could hurt her too.
Two against one, the odds were pretty good.