The Flickering Light in Room 9

Ever since I was a child, I’ve been able to see and hear things that others can’t. At first, it was just a feeling, a cold spot in a warm room, a whisper that seemed to come from nowhere. But by the time I was ten, I could see them: figures, sometimes dressed in old-fashioned clothes, sometimes in modern ones, but always faceless. They’d stand at the edge of my vision, or in the corner of a room, watching. My family knew I had this ‘gift,’ as my grandmother called it, but I was the only one who seemed to be haunted by it.

My most vivid memories come from the year we lived in the old apartment on Crescent Street. The building was a crumbling Victorian that had been converted into cheap units, and our unit was on the third floor. My room was small, with a single window that looked out onto a fire escape. From the first night, I heard them: a low, guttural laughter, like a group of men sharing a joke, coming from the corner near the wardrobe. It would start around midnight and continue until dawn. The taps in the bathroom would turn on by themselves, and the kettle in the kitchen would boil with no one near it. My mother said it was just the old pipes, but I knew better.

The laughter in my room grew louder as the weeks passed. I would lie in bed, my heart pounding, listening to the sound of glasses clinking and low murmurs. I remember once, I worked up the courage to approach the corner where the sound was loudest. As I got close, the air turned icy, and I felt a hand brush my shoulder. I screamed, and the laughter stopped. For a moment, there was a dead silence, and then a single voice hissed, ‘Don’t tell.’

A few weeks later, we heard about the tragedy next door. The family in the unit across the hall: their teenage son was cleaning a gun that he thought was unloaded, and it went off. He died on the spot. I remember the ambulance lights flashing through my window, the screams echoing in the hallway. The family moved out shortly after, but the apartment remained empty. A year later, on the anniversary of his death, his sister, who was around my age, went into that same room and shot herself. She survived but lost her sight. The doctors said she’d never see again. Her mother, in a hushed conversation with my mother, said that her daughter claimed to have seen her brother standing in the corner of the room, laughing, right before she pulled the trigger.

After that, the activity in our apartment escalated. The laughter was no longer confined to my room; it followed me through the whole place. I would see figures darting in the hallway, their faces always obscured. One night, I woke to see a man in a fedora and long coat standing at the foot of my bed. He was pointing at the floor. I looked down, and there was a pool of dark liquid, spreading like blood, but there was no wound on me. I closed my eyes and prayed it would go away, and when I opened them, he was gone, but the spot was still damp.

We moved out shortly after, and I convinced my parents to let me have my own room in the new house, away from any shared walls. But the spirits didn’t stay behind. They came with us. In the new house, it started with small things: a misplaced item, a cold draft, a whisper of my name. The figures returned, always faceless, always watching. I’ve learned to live with it, to ignore them as much as I can. But I’ve realized that they’re not random; they’re drawn to places of trauma, to moments of violent death. The laughter I heard in that old apartment was the ghost of the boy next door, replaying the last moments of his life. And now, I see him everywhere, in every corner, his face still blank, but his laughter echoing in my mind.

I’m 24 now, and I’ve never told anyone the full extent of what I see. But I know that when I look at a face, sometimes I see the ghost superimposed, a translucent mask that covers the living. And I know that the laughter is always there, just below the surface, waiting to break free. Last night, I dreamt of Room 9, the apartment where it all began. In the dream, I was standing in that corner, and the boy was there, his face finally visible. He was crying, not laughing, and he said, ‘She saw me. She saw me. And she’ll never see again.’ I woke up screaming, and in the darkness of my room, I saw a figure in the corner, laughing. It was the same laugh, but this time it was coming from a face that looked exactly like mine.