I sold a haunted apartment

My name was Chen Mo. Two years earlier, after losing my job, I had gone to work at my childhood friend's agency.

My childhood friend was a real estate agent. He owned two branches, and I worked at one of them.

With my gift of gab, I did pretty well in the business. In my first year, I paid cash for a car worth over three hundred thousand yuan, and in my second, I saved up a fair bit more.

If I kept this up for another ten years or so, wouldn't I be living the dream?

But a few days earlier, something had happened at the agency.

It started with an apartment I had sold. Less than six months later, the couple who bought it came to demand that we reverse the sale, claiming I had sold them a haunted apartment.

What counted as a haunted apartment?

Generally speaking, it meant a property where someone had died an unnatural death, such as murder, suicide, or an accident.

But to buyers, any apartment where someone had died counted as haunted, whether the death had been natural or not.

Our industry had explicit rules about this. If someone had died in a property listed for sale, regardless of whether the death was natural, we had to disclose it to the client in the contract. Selling it without the client's knowledge violated industry rules and damaged the reputation of the entire business.

There were always people who broke the rules, but I was someone who followed them.

I repeatedly assured the couple that no one could possibly have died in that apartment. I even called the seller in front of them to confirm it.

The seller said the same thing: the apartment wasn't haunted, and no one had died there.

But the couple seemed to have something wrong with their heads. They insisted someone must have died there, saying that whenever they slept in the master bedroom, they felt a pair of eyes watching them. It had given them nightmares every night for the past six months.

They came to make a scene at our agency every day, seriously disrupting our business. In the end, they left us no choice but to call the police.

Later, my childhood friend Meng Yifan and I went to the police station with the couple.

After hearing the whole story, the police were at a loss for words.

After all, the couple couldn't produce any evidence that someone had died in the apartment. All they could say was that they felt a pair of eyes watching them while they slept.

With the agency's business suffering, Meng Yifan was furious too. He said the couple had mental problems and needed to see a psychiatrist.

That set off another shouting match at the police station.

The police were thorough. They sent two officers to ask around the neighborhood and investigate whether anyone had died in the apartment. They also checked their internal records for any homicides in the area.

Their conclusion was that no one had died in the apartment, and there hadn't been any homicides in the area either.

My name was finally cleared, and the police warned the couple not to cause any more trouble at our agency.

I thought that would put an end to the whole farce, but less than two days later, the couple came back.

This time, they resorted to outright bullying, insisting we reverse the sale and compensate them for their emotional distress.

"Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. We're stuck with a pair of lunatics!"

Meng Yifan was so angry he wanted to hit someone. He called us all over. "Everyone, think of something. If they keep this up, we can forget about doing business. Next month, none of us will have money for food."

Our coworkers were helpless too. Even the police had tried mediating. What else could they do?

It was only because beating people up was illegal that the couple hadn't already landed in the hospital with broken bones.

I said, "Since they claim the apartment is haunted, let's stay there for two nights. If everything seems normal to us, then it's not the apartment that's wrong. It's those two."

Everyone agreed with my suggestion.

"Leave it to the second-in-command to come up with a plan."

"Let's see how they make trouble after that!"

Meng Yifan agreed too. Patting my shoulder, he said, "Since our second-in-command sold the apartment and came up with the idea, we'll leave this difficult assignment to you, second-in-command."

I didn't object. It didn't seem like a big deal.

Never mind that the apartment wasn't haunted. Even if it were, I wouldn't have been afraid.

In the end, Meng Yifan invited the couple inside. After plenty of persuasion, they agreed to let someone from our agency stay in the apartment for two nights.

They seemed very confident. They said that if there was something wrong with the apartment, we had to bring in the seller and discuss reversing the sale.

We prepared for the worst too. If the sale really had to be reversed, at most we would refund the agency fee, and I would give up my ten-thousand-yuan commission. After all, if they kept making trouble, we would only lose more.

There was just one thing I couldn't understand.

The couple were absurdly confident, as though we were guaranteed to experience something abnormal if we spent two nights there.

Even if something abnormal really did happen, couldn't I just keep quiet and lie? Then they wouldn't be able to reverse the sale, would they?

Of course, having their word on it worked strongly in our favor.

I simply didn't believe in any of that superstitious nonsense.

That evening.

Meng Yifan brought several high-definition cameras to the agency.

If we were going to prove there was nothing wrong with the apartment, we naturally needed evidence to back it up.

The footage from those cameras would be our evidence. Not only was it high-definition, but it recorded sound too.

"Thanks for doing this, my second-in-command."

Meng Yifan handed me the cameras and joked, "If a ghost shows up, give me a call. Preferably a female ghost. I'll head over that very night and bang her."

Meng Yifan and I were closer than he was with his girlfriend, so we often joked around.

Besides, he didn't treat me like an employee. Otherwise, the people at the agency wouldn't have called me the second-in-command.

"Come on, it's no trouble. I'll just treat it as a couple of days off."

Carrying a bagful of cameras, I drove to the apartment.

The couple had moved out half a month earlier and hadn't stayed there since. Before leaving that day, they had handed us the keys.

Half an hour later, I arrived at the entrance to the residential complex.

It was an older complex, built twenty years earlier with large, single-level apartments.

These had been considered fairly nice homes at the time. Though the buildings had originally been walk-ups, elevators had been added a few years earlier, along with an overall renovation. The complex still looked pretty good.

I found somewhere to park, then headed inside.

The apartment was number two on the fifth floor of building three. As I reached the foot of building three, I noticed an Old Lady staring at me.

The Old Lady was quite old and leaned on a cane, looking very curious about me.

"Young man, you don't live in our complex, do you?"

"Oh, no. I don't live here."

Out of professional habit, I enjoyed striking up conversations, so I started chatting with the Old Lady. "I sold an apartment here, but the buyers insist there's something wrong with it. I'm here to stay for two nights and see whether there really is a problem."

The Old Lady froze. "Which one?"

I pointed up. "This building. Five-two."

The Old Lady's expression visibly changed. She took a step back and looked at me. "Five-two... was it sold six months ago?"

I quickly nodded. "Yes. Have you lived here all this time? Do you know that apartment?"

The Old Lady was talkative too. "My husband and I moved in as soon as this complex was built. I've lived here for twenty years."

So she was a longtime resident.

I asked again, "Then do you know if anything... ever happened in this complex? In five-two, for example..."

The Old Lady glanced up, seemingly toward the fifth floor, then said, "That apartment has been sold twice. Once by you, and once fifteen years ago. After it was sold the first time, no one ever lived there."

I was startled. The apartment had been sold before?

The seller had never mentioned that to me.

Of course, it was his choice whether to mention it. How many times a property had been sold didn't affect any subsequent sale.

But why had no one lived there after it was sold the first time?

Why buy it only to leave it empty?

"Ma'am, was the apartment ever rented out?" I asked.

The Old Lady shook her head. "No. It was always empty. Young man, there's nothing worth staying for in that apartment. You should head home."

With that, the Old Lady left and stepped into the elevator for building four.

These added elevators were installed on the outside of the buildings, with transparent shafts.

I watched from below and saw that the Old Lady lived on the fifth floor too.

She went into building four, and I went into building three.