The Cold Room at Casa Rosales

I first saw the Casa Rosales on a damp Tuesday afternoon, when the fog rolled off the river and wrapped the colonial streets of Valdivia in a grey shroud. I was passing through on my way south, chasing a story about a drowned village, but the old house—with its peeling paint and crooked balconies—seemed to beckon. A faded sign by the door read ‘Hospedaje Rosales.’ The price was too good to pass up, and the landlady, a wizened woman with hands like gnarled roots, offered me a room at the top of the stairs.

The room was clean but cold, with a single window that looked out over a tangled garden. The walls were painted a sickly yellow, and the floorboards creaked under the weight of my footsteps. I dropped my bag on the bed, noticed a faint stain on the ceiling that looked like a face, and shook my head. I was tired, and my imagination was playing tricks. I went out for a walk, found a small café, and stayed until the lamps flickered on. By the time I returned, the house was silent, the only light a dim bulb in the hallway.

I undressed, slid under the thin woolen blanket, and closed my eyes. Sleep came slowly. Then, just as I was drifting off, a feeling settled over me like a wet shroud. It started as a vague unease, a prickle at the back of my neck, then swelled into a suffocating weight on my chest. It was anger—pure, undiluted rage—but it wasn’t mine. It pressed down on me, filling the room with a malevolent presence. My heart hammered. I gasped for air, threw off the blanket, and fumbled for the lamp. The light clicked on, but the feeling didn’t recede. It intensified, and I could swear the temperature dropped by several degrees.

I sat on the edge of the bed, hugging my knees, trying to rationalize. It’s exhaustion, I told myself. A reaction to the dreary town. But the anger bubbled up inside me, as if I was channeling someone else’s fury. I saw flashes of a woman—a pale face, dark hair plastered to her cheeks—screaming, her mouth twisted in a silent roar. The vision was so vivid I flinched, expecting her to lunge at me. And then, just as suddenly, it vanished. The room felt empty again, but the cold remained.

I didn’t sleep that night. I stayed awake, tracing the peeling wallpaper patterns, listening to the house groan around me. By morning, I convinced myself it was a nightmare. I went about my day, took notes on the drowned village, and returned to the hospedaje with a sense of dread. That night, the same thing happened—except this time, the vision lasted longer, and I heard a faint, whispering voice, like a radio tuned to static, saying: ‘Why did you let him?’

I couldn’t take it anymore. I confronted the landlady the next morning. She looked at me with hollow eyes and said, ‘You slept in the yellow room. That was my sister’s room. She killed herself there, twenty years ago. She caught her husband with another woman. She hung herself from the ceiling beam. The stain you see is not water damage.’

I packed my bags and left that day, but the cold stays with me. Sometimes, in quiet moments, I still feel that rage simmering just beneath my skin, and I hear that whisper: ‘Why did you let him?’ I never found out who ‘him’ was. But I know I will never sleep in a room with a ceiling stain again.