I played a small joke on my wife and daughter, and it has backfired.
Recently, my wife and daughter have been on a different sleeping schedule, so I’ve been sleeping in my daughter’s room while she sleeps with her mom. One night, the wind was really strong. The door to the bedroom rattled hard. I then heard the loud footsteps of one of our neighbors. They were so loud they sounded like they were inside the house, moving away from the door.
The next morning, I told my girls about it, saying it was a ghost.
If you look on Google Earth, you can see that our neighborhood of Pungmu-dong was carved out of cemeteries. So I’ve joked for a long time that our apartment complex was built on top of graves, like in “Poltergeist.”
Now my wife is taking it seriously. My daughter complained of feeling a coldness while sleeping on the sofa after it looked like the cat was spooked. Now they’re starting to say the ghost is coming into the master bedroom and walking around the apartment.
My wife had a serious talk with me. She thinks it’s because one of our verandas isn’t organized. She said that ghosts are attracted to darkness and clutter. I also have in my possession a set of Baoding balls I inherited from a deceased friend. She believes the cluttered veranda and the balls are bringing in the ghosts. She wants me to clean up the veranda (which I should do anyway) and dispose of the balls.
Last night, there was another incident. It would have freaked out most people, but for some reason I kept my cool.
I was in bed watching YouTube with my earphones when I heard something fall down outside the bedroom. I felt the air change and noticed that my fan had turned off. I was wondering maybe the crash was a circuit breaker going off, and the power had been turned off.
I got up turn check if the light worked. It did.
I looked down and saw the fan was still plugged in. I was thinking maybe the cat had somehow pulled out the cord. I looked outside and saw a hook with a suction cup that was on our door had fallen down. That was the noise.
I turned on the fan. The fan is controlled by a single button, which changes the different speeds. It also has a remote, but I’d lost that a long time ago. I went to turn off the light when I heard the fan beep.
It had changed its settings all on its own.
I switched it back to low. Then it went haywire like the toys in “Close Encounters.” It beeped and beeped and beeped as it changed to different modes all on its own.
I went out to see if my wife was playing a trick on me by using the remote. But she and my daughter were asleep in the master bedroom.
“Okay. Now that’s a little freaky.”
I turned on my video recorder to see if I could catch it, but it didn’t do anything.
I’ll admit that I was concerned. I kept the light on for twenty minutes while I did some research on how the fan could do that. It turns out that on RF receivers, they can be activated by other remotes or radio waves. I think something happened with our downstairs neighbors that set off the fan. They may have the same fan and used the remote.
It didn’t happen again that evening.
What do you think it was?