Our Screaming Neighbor- A Scary Story

Scary Hallway- Will Hartl

A couple years ago, I got engaged to an amazing woman. My fiancé and I decided to move into a small studio apartment in her city. I had been working in a small town a few hours south of her when we first met and since we couldn’t see much of a future for us in my area I jumped at the chance to try on life in the big city. We found our studio in our second week of apartment hunting. We were looking for a small place to live in for a few months since we were just starting out and didn’t have much saved. It was a little cramped for two people but clean and in a convenient area close to her job and her parent’s home. The room was also remarkably cheap, especially because the surrounding neighborhood was home to a lot of doctors and medical schools. We jumped on the place and about a month after putting down the deposit we started moving in.

***

I was the first one who spent a night in our new place. I commuted to and from the city from the small town I had been working in every weekend for about two months before the wedding. My goal was to gradually move my stuff into our new place before my contract with my small-town job ended. The second or third weekend our new queen-sized bed arrived at the studio and I decided I’d spend Saturday night there rather than driving to my soon to be ex home in my small town on the same day.

My fiancé joined me for home cooked pasta (my specialty) at our new place before leaving to finish some work at her office. I felt bad that she had to work on the weekend and that we couldn’t spend a full night together, but I understood. After she left, I cleaned up, read a book and played a game on my laptop before I started to get drowsy. I tucked myself into the fresh, crisp sheets of our queen-sized bed, stretched out and within a couple minutes I was drifting off.

I was almost fully asleep when I was startled awake by a woman’s terrifying shriek. It was so startling that I sat fully up in the middle of the bed, eyes wide. I scanned desperately for the source of the noise. Yet there was no one. I wondered if I had experienced a lucid nightmare but some part of me knew that what I had heard was real.

Slowly, I got out of bed and after putting a jumper over my night-ware I decided to step out into the hall. In my mind, I was wondering if the scream had come from someone in another apartment. Was one of the neighbors in some kind of danger? I opened the door and stepped out into the white fluorescent light of the hallway. The doors to all the other studios on the floor were shut tight; the hall was empty. I stood alone for a few moments waiting to see if something would happen. It did. Another scream split the quiet. I flinched and tried to determine where the sound had come from. It sounded close but I just couldn’t tell what the source was.

Another minute or two passed as I waited to see if anything else happened, but nothing did. No one came out of their apartments and there were no other sounds. More confused at that point than fearful, I ducked back inside my studio. I tried to go back to sleep but all I could think about were those two random screams. The next day, I called my fiancé and explained to her what had happened. She thought the situation was strange too. She didn’t have any explanation apart from a neighbor having nightmares. I drove home late on Sunday and when I stayed in the apartment the next weekend all was silent at night.

***

At the end of October, I fully moved into the studio. I barely spent any time there over the next three weeks as I had to help my future wife move her stuff in and get ready for our wedding. We tied the knot in the middle of November and spent about a week on our honeymoon before we returned to our new home. While we had stayed in the studio off and on since I had heard those two screams, neither of us had experienced anything out of the ordinary during our nights there. We had completely erased the incident from our minds by the time we returned from our honeymoon.

Apart from our bed, the single room that made up our studio had one small table with two wooden chairs and a small shelf next to the kitchenette. Since my wife and I were both still young we hadn’t accumulated a mass of stuff yet to put in our place. Even so, we were squeezed together, but it didn’t bother us too much. We had started looking for bigger places to move into the next year.

A couple days after we got back from the honeymoon, I was at our table searching for apartments on my laptop. It was about midday on a Sunday and my wife was watching a program on our TV while lying on the bed. I had my headphones in, listening to Queen, when my wife suddenly sat abruptly up and turned off the TV.

‘What?’ I asked, as I took off the headphones.

My wife had barely opened her mouth when I heard it. A quick but heart skipping scream followed by a hard slam. We waited a few seconds in shocked silence before another scream split the air.

This time, we could tell that it was coming from the wall behind our TV. I got up and pressed my ear against the wall. No other noises or sounds came.

Since we assumed the noise was coming from the apartment next to us, we decided to check and see if our neighbor was ok. We went out into the hall and rang her bell a few times but there was no reply.

 

‘She’s probably going through some personal issues.’ My wife surmised. ‘Let’s just try and ring her later.’

We went back in and a few hours later we left to meetup with some friends for dinner.

***

Over the next three months, the screams continued. At first they came at random times but eventually they started happening mostly at midnight and at around three or four in the morning. They were always the same; loud, shrill and quick. They usually happened in clusters of three or four within ten minutes to half an hour of each other. We knew that our next-door neighbor was the source. Yet despite repeated attempts to contact the lady inside she never opened her door. She also didn’t respond when we started yelling back at her through our shared wall either.

We got so fed up that we went to our building manager to complain about the noise. He told us that none of the other people on our floor had complained about any screaming from that apartment and that the lady who lived there had, mostly, been a great tenant. He did admit that the lady had some severe mental issues that kept her from working and that she almost never received visitors. Her bills were paid by her grandmother who, though she was well enough off to care for her financially, didn’t have the heart to come and see her very often.

While we certainly felt bad for the girl, my wife and I were losing a lot of sleep. Unable to get our building manager to take any action we decided to ask some of the tenants on our floor if they would agree to help us force his hand. When we talked to three of our other neighbors though, they all said that they had never heard any screams from the room. They genuinely had no idea what we were talking about.

That baffled us but we guessed maybe since we were the only ones directly next to the screaming lady’s room that maybe we were the only ones that actually heard her. We decided the only thing we could do was speed up our search for a new home.

***

One night around the beginning of December, my wife went on a business. I was left on my own in the apartment for almost a week. I went to my day job and returned to the apartment only in the early evening. It was during those nights when I was home alone that I started hearing new sounds from next door. The screams continued but they were sometimes followed or preceded by the most maniacal cackles I’d ever heard. The woman’s laughter was as loud as the screams, but it lasted longer. Sometimes it stretched into almost half an hour of incessant, maddening laughs that rose and fell like some rumbling storm of insanity.

I became more frightened of the laughter than the screams. I lost more sleep and my condition got so bad that I seriously contemplated renting a hotel room until my wife returned. In the end, I opted for another solution. I started drinking more at night and it seemed to numb my sense enough to wear I was no longer bothered by the laughs or screams.

Then, the night before my wife was due to come home I drank almost half a bottle of whiskey and passed out early. I was and still am someone who doesn’t handle hard liquor well. I woke up around three am to vomit up everything I had swallowed earlier.

Our bathroom was close to the hallway, so as I clung to the toilet bowl like a dear friend, my ears picked up a sound coming from outside. The sound must have distracted me because my stomach immediately calmed. I listened intently from the bathroom floor. The sound I was hearing was a door opening. The creaking and squeaking were so slow but so loud that I could pinpoint whose door it was; our screaming, laughing neighbor’s.

As soon as I figured this out, I got up and softly went over to our table to get my phone. I had gotten a doorbell camera installed at our studio a few days before my wife left on her trip. I could turn it on using an app from my phone whenever I wanted. I switched it on and watched the feed as the camera turned on.

I waited, but all the feed showed was the empty hallway and the door of the studio directly across from ours. As I kept my eyes glued on the small screen in my hand I kept listening for new sounds. One minute passed and then another. The empty hallway looked back at me from my palm. It was like some invisible presence was daring me to make a move.

I was almost about to open the door when suddenly, the doorbell rang. I still couldn’t see anyone on the camera feed. I took a few paces back from the door watching the empty space in front of my door in shock as the bell rang a second time. I didn’t want to open the door.

Instead, I yelled in my angriest voice ‘What do you want?!’  

The feed abruptly went into static and I heard the screaming neighbor’s door slam shut. That was followed by the sound of two feet madly rushing back and forth across the floor of the next-door apartment.

I stood in frozen fear watching my empty wall as the pounding of the feet went on and on back and forth like an insane marathon. Then the screaming started again but this time it was different. Instead of the quick frequent bursts that had come before, this scream was one long continues shriek. I could follow it moving back and forth on the other side of my wall in rhythm with the feet.

I decided then and there that I’d had enough and called the police. I told them what had been going on for the last few months and told them that I needed someone there immediately. Of course, as soon as I had finished explaining the situation to the operator the running and the screaming stopped.

Two officers came to my door first along with the building manager. I opened the door for them. While the officers were initially skeptical of my claims because of the smell of alcohol in the apartment, when I explained that the neighbor had a history of mental illness they agreed to try and speak to her. They rang the woman’s door several times and identified themselves as officers. When there was no answer the building manager agreed to open the door for them. After it was unlocked the officers went inside, followed by the manager. I stayed in the hall.

Even though I was about an arm’s length away from the open door, the terrible, rancid smell that emerged from the room overwhelmed me and I nearly vomited again. The building manager emerged just a few seconds later. He stumbled into the hall and fell on his back against one other studio doors.

He fainted as I tried to attend to him. I heard the officers inside the woman’s room radio for a corner and an EMT. The manager had just come too when one of them stepped out and said that I would need to be questioned more and that officially, the woman’s room was a crime scene.

I spent the next couple hours in my apartment talking to detectives and investigators as forensics people and other officials entered the neighbors’ room. I told my story again and again to the detectives and while they didn’t suspect me of foul play, I knew they didn’t really believe me. Still, they eventually let me go saying that they would be in touch if they needed anymore information from me.

My wife arrived back home from her trip as soon as the investigators had finished talking to me and I hugged her tenderly for a while as I tried not to cry.

I wouldn’t find out the full story until the next week when I talked to the building manager who was still shaken from, he had seen and read some more details in the local news.

So, apparently when the officers and manager had entered the studio they had immediately found the young woman who had been renting the apartment dead in her bed. All around her were a series of manic suicide notes which she had scattered all over. Yet when the coroner was able to do an autopsy on the badly decomposed body he said he couldn’t find any proof that the woman had died from anything other than natural causes. To make it even more strange, he had determined that the woman had been dead since at least the beginning of October; meaning she had been lying dead in the flat for the entire time we had been living there.

Why Blind Skepticism Isn't Always the Smart Approach- The Many Realities of Covid-19

I’ve spent a great deal of time the last couple of months watching the US struggle with the Coronavirus from afar. I count myself lucky that I found myself in a country (South Korea) where the government’s and society’s response to the Covid pandemic was swift, comprehensive, and undoubtedly effective. While many people I know Stateside have needed to go into lockdown, stock up on supplies and socially distance (or else do work deemed essential and risk infection) my wife and I have not had our lives impacted to nearly the same extent. Apart from having the start of ours schools’ academic year pushed back, spending more time at home and spending less money because some our income was curbed, we’ve been able to live our lives with a great deal of normalcy, which can’t really be said for a lot of my fellow Americans.


It’s surreal to contrast the way the US has been impacted on this virus to the experiences of South Korea, and many other countries, who have dealt way more successfully with Covid-19. There are a lot of reasons for why the US is struggling so much. Certainly, the US has a larger population than many other countries and it is a very large global trade center. There’s also the matter of America’s extreme lack of adequate social safety nets in the form of affordable healthcare, an emergency UBI or unemployment system and lack of any kind of rent or mortgage freeze. It also hasn’t helped that US national leadership (not just the Trumpster Fire but also his administration) has botched the response badly, being slow to act in the beginning and then failing to provide adequate testing and essential medical supplies. Every subsequent failure of the US government gets deflected, especially from conservatives, onto China, even though the virus’ origin has no correlation to how widely it was allowed to spread inside the US once it made landfall. Both South Korea and the US had their first confirmed Covid-19 cases on the same day (January 20) yet in Korea we have yet (as of this date) to break 11,000 confirmed cases. That’s including the recent second wave outbreak that happened in Seoul recently. The US has almost 123 times the number of cases South Korea. It (America) does not have 123 times the population.


Yet out of all the factors that I think have contributed to America’s devastating struggle with Covid, there’s one that’s stood out to me a lot with the recent anti-lockdown protests and the viral surge of conspiracy theories. Fundamentally, Americans, even in what should be a very unifying moment of crisis, can’t agree on a single set of facts about the pandemic to base their reality on. The sheer volume of ‘information’ on the virus online and the vast number of narratives, counternarratives conspiracies and general bullshit about the Coronavirus means that Americans can absorb themselves into whatever version of the crisis suits their biases or desires. We’ve become so used to having our view of the world spoon fed to us through social media and a proliferation of ideologically polarizing media that we’ve made it impossible for us to see a single comprehensive but unified Covid-19 crisis. 


A lot of the time, the BS information about the virus and the effects of the pandemic has come from corporate media outlets with strong ties to one particular ideology or ‘alternative sources’ of information. Often these alternative sources of info are little more than a few memes online or a website that often fails to have any scientific or academic backing to the bogus data or arguments they are making. This includes videos like ‘Plandemic’ or the ‘Two Bakersfield Doctors’.



To me, the popularity of these kinds of conspiracies and alternative narratives goes hand in hand with the general lack of trust in any kind of ‘expertise’ or ‘authority’ that comes from what someone dubs ‘mainstream media’ or any kind of establishment institution. This isn’t just big media conglomerates like CNN or MSNBC. Even medical experts and scientists are being lumped in as part of the ‘establishment’.


Over the past few years, I’ve encountered more and more people who seem to have what I consider to be a blind distrust of any kind of establishment or mainstream worldview. On one level, I get where that skepticism comes from. It is important to be critical of any source of information, even if it’s one you trust. Large corporate media outlets and even universities can undoubtedly hold certain biases that influence the information they give. What’s always intrigued me though about people (especially online) who loudly and vocally criticize mainstream narratives or sources is that they often don’t apply that level of skepticism to the alternative sources they rely on. They don’t ask if maybe their blind skepticism of everything mainstream, is itself a kind of bias or cognitive dissonance and fail to see that a source or theory that has an alternative voice isn’t by default more authoritative or authentic.


The appeal of alternative sources also lies in the fact that they can, on the surface, seem more authentic and thereby more legitimate. Often, there’s something very raw about a seemingly ordinary person talking to you, directly through a Youtube video or a radio speaker. There’s something cool and unique when you find an obscure article in a corner of cyberspace that lends credence to a view a lot of people around you don’t take seriously. It gives us the sense that we are in on some special insight or knowledge when it comes to understanding the world. And in an individualistic society like America that’s a very appealing state of mind. You want to be seen as someone who’s both outside the norm but outside the norm because on some level ‘you get it’ more than your friends or family members who watch CNN do.


On some level I also think our recent infatuation with alterative sources is a product of our consumer culture. We live in societies now where our default setting is as a customer or a consumer. Everything is expected to be tailored to our every desire. Every time we order a dish at a restaurant we expect that if we’re not satisfied with something that the staff will do everything in their power to change their product so that it fits our desires. We’ve become so accustomed to the idea of ‘the customer is always right’ that now a lot of us feel justified in tailoring our media and information consumption to suit our own biases, prejudices and what we want to be true about the world. When we encounter a piece of information that counters or goes against the narrative that we’ve been telling ourselves about how the world works and how we work in it we feel justified in saying that’s ‘fake news’ or ‘the source is biased’ or ‘MSM lies’ because we’re the customer and by default we’re always right. If I want to believe the Chinese government deliberately started Covid-19 to destroy America I can. If I want to believe that Trump didn’t really mean what he said about injecting disinfectants and he was really referring to seemingly scientifically sound, I can. If I want to believe that Covid-19 isn’t actually very dangerous and or that the lockdown in the US is just an excuse to curb civil liberties and create a police state I can. I’m the customer and whatever worldview I want is right by default.


Obviously though, reality is reality. America leads the US Covid 19 cases and Covid 19 deaths. You don’t get to that place by having a great or even adequate plan to counter the virus in place. What we are seeing now in the US is the limitation of having multiple views on reality play out in the public space. What we are seeing is what happens when people trust their guts with something like a pandemic that requires trust in academic and professional expertise. What we’re seeing is that blind distrust of any and all kinds of authority is not the smarter or more rational position and that sadly a lot of people have died and will continue to die unnecessarily in the States because the ordinary person can’t bear to be wrong.

Thoughts From Coronacountry

Carrying on.

I live in Seoul, South Korea (as many of you know). I first heard of the Coronavirus while I was traveling in Vietnam at the end of January. The day I found out about it, I had come from visiting the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi. There I had stood in line for a little over an hour with several dozen (maybe more) Chinese tourists.

When I read the news about the virus, my initial reaction was one of 'Wow, that's crazy' and little else. It was a big story but like most people who heard about Covid-19, it felt remote. Sure, I had rubbed shoulders with Chinese tourists but they probably weren't from Wuhan and they probably didn't have the virus. Besides, the media always hypes up things anyway.

For the next two days the story grew. When I flew out of Hanoi back to Incheon, all the customs and immigration officers in Vietnam and Korea were wearing masks. Posters explaining the symptoms of the virus were up in both airports. By the time I got back to my apartment, the virus felt more real but for the next few weeks the proximity to the danger I had felt in the airport faded. The remoteness returned. Covid-19 went back to being something on the periphery of my life.

A poster I saw in the Hanoi Airport.

That break only lasted a day or two as I quickly realized many Koreans were concerned about the virus. Some were so fearful of Korean citizens evacuated from Wuhan arriving in the country for quarantine, that they staged angry protests against the government and pelted officials with eggs.

Yet for the most part life continued for me. Sure, people around me were more fearful or concerned about the virus. Masks and medical supplies started running out in pharmacies. Some people I knew had travel plans interrupted. But for the most part things were as normal as they were before I left for Vietnam.

Then a large outbreak in Daegu (a city in central Korea) shot up Korea's rate of infections. Suddenly, the virus was more real than ever. My wife and I, both teachers, had the start date of our school year pushed back by several weeks. As the days went on fewer and fewer people could be see out and about in our neighborhood.

In about two weeks, Covid-19 went from a story I mostly saw through my screen to being something that I saw in the world around me. It was there in the massive stacks of groceries I saw being stockpiled outside local super marts for home delivery. It was in the empty spaces that started growing bigger and bigger on sidewalks and highways. It was in the darkened interior of cafes and restaurants shutting down earlier than they had before.

Home delivery boxes at a grocery store near my home.

By 'it' I'm not referring to the virus, but the shadow it and the attention around it have cast over people's thoughts and lives here.

As I've seen 'it' grow over the last few months becoming more and more real to those across the world, I've tried to hear out the two voices I hear whispering to me every time I click on a new article or see a new post. Those voices are- Be concerned, Don't panic.

The stronger voice was 'Don't Panic' in the beginning. It was a voice that reminded me of media hype and hyperbole, the dangers of social media exacerbating human emotions, the racism and prejudices that can be stoked into harmful actions when people don't pause and accurately asses the true danger something like the Coronavirus really possesses to them.

The closer the virus got to me, the more 'Be Concerned' grew in strength. As of last week, I only go outside with a mask on. My wife and I have made sure to buy plenty of them along with medicines. We've decided not to try and travel anywhere this year (despite how naturally travel hungry we are). Partly, this was out of concern for the virus itself but also because so many countries are now setting restrictions on travelers from South Korea.

'Be Concerned' reached its highest level last weekend when my wife came down with a fever. Thankfully, she recovered within a day and showed no other signs of the virus. Since she usually gets some sort of illness during the winter months, we felt safe concluding that she didn't have Covid-19. Yet it was the first time that we had to confront the serious possibility that we might both have to be quarantined.

After the brief scare of the fever, 'Be Concerned' has gradually become more even with 'Don't Panic' as I think it should be. I'm glad to be in Korea during this outbreak. I can access the high quality and highly affordable healthcare system of the country if I do get sick.

The extra time away from my full time job has given me plenty of time to read, write and watch some movies in the Netlflix queue. The atmosphere in my life is one of wait and see. Wait for the rates of infections to go down and then see how to move on from there.

In a way, technology and the internet have made self-quarantine easier than ever. While 'Be Concerned' and 'Don't Panic' ebb and flow depending on which article or mocking meme I click on, I'm certain that 'it' will pass and when 'it' does they'll be plenty of good things waiting on the other side.

Thoughts on the Shallow Traveler

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” -Mark Twain

"Romanticism, which encourages variety, meshes perfectly with consumerism. Their marriage has given birth to the infinite 'market of experiences', on which the modern tourism industry is founded. The tourism industry does not sell flight tickets or hotel bedrooms. It sells experiences. Paris is not a city, nor India a country - they are both experiences, the consumption of which is supposed to widen our horizons, fulfill our human potential, and make us happier." -Yuval Noah Harari 

Like a lot of people who have traveled frequently and or have lived abroad, I've heard Mark Twain's quote on how 'Travel is fatal to prejudice...'. Yet as I've gotten older, and as I've become more familiar with many kinds of tourists, I've become less certain that traveling in and of itself is enough to make people less narrow-minded and more wholesome in their views.

As someone who loves traveling and experiencing different cultures and countries, I feel so fortunate to be living in this time. It's never been easier for people (especially with Western and first world passports) to experience parts of the world that are different from the corner you come from. You can book flights, trains, hostels and tours with a few swipes of your fingers. 

At the same time, I've also begun to notice the shallower aspects of modern travel. Like most everything in our world of smartphones and social media, people seem less interested in experiencing something new and more focused on making sure they're seen experiencing it. Travel is less about a traveler seeing a place and more about a traveler seeing themselves in that place. (Thanks Jens Hieber for that great bit of wisdom ;) ) 

Getting the perfect selfie, finding the right monument, landscape or human backdrop that makes your gorgeous face seem adventurous, cultured and global. To an extent, everyone who travels does these things. I definitely have.

I also try my hardest though to dig, at least a little, into each country I visit. Sometimes I read a book about or set in that place. I watch a documentary or two. If I manage to break my introverted shell when I'm in a country, I'll ask some local people questions about their views on certain issues or topics. I delve into aspects of the local culture or nation that are not always particularly easy to talk about or insta-worthy. 
In my view, travel shouldn't have to be shallow in order to be a good experience. In fact, I find greater meaning in my travels when I confront a difficult issue that forces me to confront my feelings, prejudices or biases. 

On my recent trip to Vietnam, I made a point to visit a military cemetery for Vietnamese war dead (mostly from the Vietnam and French Indochina War) outside Hoi An. This small town near the coast, is an extremely popular place for foreign tourists. It has a well maintained old town near a river. That means it's easy to get great selfies and photos in exotic and clean looking surroundings while also shopping for souvenirs and good food from around the world. 

The military graveyard had not been something on my initial itinerary but because I was keen to learn more about the local angle on the Vietnam War I made a point to go. I was especially intrigued because I could find very little detailed information on the cemetery online (at least in English).

I found a ride from the old part of town pretty quickly and within ten minutes I was at the cemetery. During the fifteen to twenty minutes I spent there, I was the only visitor. When I left I couldn't help but feel melancholy. I was sad not just because of the heavy atmosphere the cemetery conveyed but also because I knew how overshadowed this place was by the way more selfie-genic streets of Hoi An which were just a few minutes away. Out of the hundreds of foreign tourists I had seen taking photos in the market and at the riverside, I would have thought at least a few would have bothered to come over.

None of this to attack Hoi An. It's a very cool place. I would easily go back there. I myself took a lot of photos in the old town and I could easily spend more time in that part of Vietnam if I had the chance. It just saddens me that so many travelers don't want to see and learn more about the places they are wandering through. While traveling has never been easier, it's also never been easier for tourists and foreigners outside their home countries to insulate themselves from the people, history and places they visit.

When people think of a 'clueless-tourist' the image that often comes to mind is of an older person who stays in a resort on the beach in a developing country, never leaving except on a guided tour to a famous monument or a tourist market; every aspect of the program tailored to their cultural norms and personal whims. 

I think though, there are many ways tourists can fall into having shallower and more insulated experiences than they might think. Hostels and backpacker restaurants and bars can be just as much of a bubble as a luxury resort. A twenty something who goes to the south of Thailand and gets drunk every night while lying on a beach everyday with people from their country will not really understand anything about the lives of Thai people who have to try and make a living there. A young French and American couple, who get frustrated with local people begging for money in Vietnam, but won't ask how they're countries' bloody and vicious history in Vietnam contributed to those people's lives. 

As such, they may come back to their home countries with a lot of experiences but will they be the kind of experiences that really make them understand the world more? Will they question themselves, their previously held beliefs and their place in the wider world? Will they learn how to be better and conscientious consumers of the countries they visit in the future? 

In some ways, I'm sure they will. However, when I look at how many prejudices and narrow minds pervade and flourish in our globalized interconnected world, I can't help but think that travel itself is only eye opening if you are willing to open them yourself.