Short Story: The Haunted Apartment

By Aditya Amar Bodhi

This is a real story. My apartments were constructed 67 years ago. My grandfather told this tale to me, and how it all started.

A man was shot dead at a tea stall nearby. After investigations, the police found out that the murderer was from our apartments. They raided his house but could not find him. Everyone assumed he was killed by the ‘spirit’ of the man he had murdered. My grandfather told me how people became superstitious at that time. But, to be honest, one thing that freaked me about this incident, is that the body of the murderer was never found.

These days, nobody believes in ghosts. Everyone thinks it is a lie from the past. It is something that is cooked up from movies. But, the look on grandpa’s face, even today, seems real. He says the problem with modern people is that they don’t believe in anything other than logic.

At present, I have three good friends in those apartments, Aarav, Shubhi and Sameer. All three of them love horror movies and that’s why we came up with a game: zombie survival.

In the game, we all team up and imagine that we are in a forest. We hunt for supplies. And in doing so, we find the hiding place of zombies. The place which we used as the hiding place up until now, was under-construction these days. But, Aarav insisted that we go on playing the game.

And so, Sameer found a place which was the same as that in grandpa’s story. Shubhi and Aarav seemed happy and said we should call it the ‘new hiding place.’ I too had no problem with it. And so, we decided to play there from the next day.

We went straight to the new hiding place but the look of that block made our bravery drain out. The whole block was neglected for a long time.

As we were exploring the place, a door somewhere closed with a loud bang. We all screamed. We took flight and ran upstairs in that block and entered a house. Feeling safe, we turned back. Behind us was a man. His eyes white-coloured, his feet pointed backwards. He was blind. I saw a hole in his forehead, and it occurred to me, “Was this the man who was killed in the tea stall?” Well, I never believed in it until now but when I saw it right in front of my eyes, I could not deny it.

We ran downstairs, out of the block screaming and panting. We somehow escaped it. As we regained our breath, we decided never to enter that block. That incident still haunts me.