Hauntings

Some of you may know that there's a spirit in my rented house. We know because my youngest cousin J has "the eye" and is able to see the dead (Please, no "I see dead people" jokes). Thus far, he's seen her a few times. She's a Chinese woman, dressed in a long white silky dress. The sightings are few and far between, and it makes no difference if it's day or night. Normally she just walks around in the master bedroom.

After we moved in, J became aware of her presence. His eldest brother Z also had some bad dreams about her. I never felt or saw anything, which I think is a good thing. Well, except for one time when I was coming home at night and thought I heard someone whisper in my ear, but I was also on the phone at the time and it could've been my imagination. Anyway, we tried several ways and means to try to invite her to leave. Christian prayer blessings, blessed paintings, luring out with food and offerings, the works.

It seemed to work. J didn't see her for quite a while.

But tonight something else happened.

This afternoon my cousin Z, his eldest brother, had the idea this afternoon to rearrange the furniture in the room. He was following the advice of a fengshui master who'd recommended boarding up one of the two doors to the balcony. So he used some foam boards and blocked the door off. He also moved the beds and desk around, took his "sacred scroll" (long story) downstairs, and removed the crosses that J had hung on the walls.

Just past 1 am, I came out of the shower to find J sitting on the stairs, trembling with fear. He told me what had just happened...

J had gone into the room minutes earlier, and was shocked to see the spirit jumping on his desk. She used it to leap towards the ceiling and pull down a strip of plastic that we'd used to hide some cables. Then she went to the boarded-up door and started yanking at the foam boards. But Z had stuck them on with industrial-strength velcro, and they didn't give. J freaked out and dropped to his knees in prayer, but that didn't help. He felt his chest tense up and he couldn't breathe, so he ran out and sat outside the bathroom waiting for me.

I went straight to the room, not knowing what to expect. True enough, the plastic strip was dangling from the ceiling, exposing the cables. I gave the boards on the door a light tug. They still held fast. As we went downstairs to look for Z, J told me that she'd been right beside me. But I hadn't felt a thing, and actually, I'm glad I can't sense such things.

As we were discussing things downstairs, another crash came from the room upstairs, right above where we were. We looked at each other, but continued the discussion. J got so freaked out he started tearing.

We decided to return upstairs with some food, and apologize for boarding up the door. When we entered the room, the plastic strip was on the floor, entirely off the ceiling. Of course, it could've been gravity that did it. But J's "sacred scroll", which had been on the table, was now lying on the floor.

We apologized, and explained that we were only renting the house for two years and didn't mean any harm. If she didn't like the boards, we'd tear them down right away. We hoped we could all get along together, and that she'd leave us alone. If she needed any money, or had any difficulties, we'd try to help. I even wrote phrases like "money", "investigate upstairs" (there's an additional level just below the roof that we don't have easy access to - who knows what's up there?), and "want to leave", and left chopsticks that she could use to indicate what she wanted.

Then the food was taken downstairs and left outside the back door, we hung up J's "sacred scroll" in the room, along with some of his crosses, and we all squeezed into my room to spend the night. No one wanted to remain in the master bedroom, and for good reason.

I never used to believe. I mean, I know J has "the eye" and all, but it's hard to really believe in spirits. Once you make up your mind to accept one supernatural incident, it kinda opens up the door to a whole mountain of stuff, bullshit included. Now, after this, I can't pretend these things don't exist anymore.

Let's see what we find in the morning.

Addendum: My room's safe though, for those of you who've visited, or are thinking of visiting. So it's still cool.