Apartment No. 103

In 2000, a truly terrifying experience happened to my family and me. I was 10 years old at the time. My parents bought a four-room apartment, number 103, on the ninth floor. We'd been living with my grandmother before, but we'd always wanted our own place. So when my parents saw the ad for this apartment, they were immediately hooked. The apartment was absolutely enormous—we were all so thrilled to have it sold to us that we didn't even notice the suspiciously low price, which, compared to other apartments in the building, was almost half that.

I have my own room in this apartment, which I was incredibly happy about. My parents were also quite happy with the purchase. But things weren't so great with the residents of the building. There were constant complaints about us—sometimes they'd say something was stomping around on the floor in our apartment, sometimes they'd hear bloodcurdling screams coming from our apartment all night long. The police even came to our house a couple of times. But we, living in that apartment, never heard anything like it!

About a month passed. My mother and father were arguing frequently at the time—he'd come home and yell for no apparent reason. As they later told me, they were both constantly nervous—my mother because of my father's antics, and my father just because, for no apparent reason. With the arrival of summer, we noticed that no matter how much we opened the windows to let in more light, the apartment still felt gloomy and damp, even though the sun was shining right through our window. My mother tried washing the windows several times, but nothing changed.

One night, when my father was supposed to come home, a thunderstorm started. I was watching TV. My mother sat down next to me and hugged me, and that's how we fell asleep. Later, in my sleep, I heard the front door open. "Father," I thought sleepily. Taking off his shoes, he came into the living room and lay down, hugging us. I calmed down and began to fall asleep, but my mother, for some reason, started. At that very moment, the door opened again. "It's me!" my father's voice rang out in the hallway. I was overcome with unbearable terror; I couldn't even move. The light in the hallway came on, and my father appeared in the doorway. "Where's my mother?" he asked. I looked around—neither my father nor my mother, who had been hugging me, were there. I simply started shaking, tears welling up in my eyes. My father walked into the living room, turned on the light, and sat down next to me. I swore to him that my mother had been with me just a minute ago. And then my mother emerged from the next room, having fallen asleep there...

We soon moved out. No one bought the apartment. We even set the price lower than what we paid ourselves, but to no avail. As it recently turned out, that building was slated for demolition, and we received compensation for the apartment we vacated ten years ago. They say several human remains were found in the rubble of the demolished building—this was after the building was inspected and checked several times after the evacuation.