The Porcelain Choir

The day we moved into the old farmhouse, the realtor warned us about the plumbing. ‘It’s got a mind of its own,’ she said, chuckling, but her eyes were uneasy. My uncle had built the place forty years ago, on the site of a former military hospital that had been abandoned after the war. They’d bulldozed the wards, but the foundation of the old laundry wing was never fully removed. They just layered concrete over it. The bathroom on the ground floor, the one with the cracked tile and the perpetually dripping shower, was exactly where the hospital’s morgue had been.

I was fourteen that summer. My parents, my older sister, and I had come to clear out the place before we sold it. My dad was in the kitchen, scrubbing decades of grease from the stove. My mom was in the garden, pulling weeds. My sister was upstairs, arguing on her phone. I was in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet, just wasting time. It was eerily quiet. The house had that hollow silence that makes you think you’re being watched. I let out a small, accidental fart. It was nothing, just a little puff of air. But then, from the shower, five feet away, came a perfect mimicry. A soft, wet, muffled fart, like something had been holding it in and finally let go. The shower curtain was open, the tub empty. I froze. I waited, but nothing else happened. I told my dad later, and he laughed it off, said it was a pipe. But I knew. That ghost was mocking me.

That was the first time. The second time, I was brushing my teeth before bed. The mirror was fogged from my shower, and I wiped it clean. Behind me, in the reflection, I saw the clear outline of a handprint on the shower wall, just above the soap dish. I turned around, but there was nothing. I touched the tile, and it was freezing cold, even though the room was steamy. I left the bathroom that night with the door closed, and I’ve never felt so relieved to hear my own footsteps.

Years later, I came back for my mother’s funeral. We’d sold the house to a young couple, but they’d called us, complaining of strange noises. They were scared. I agreed to come out and check the plumbing. I walked into that same bathroom, and the air felt thick, like standing in a crypt. The toilet was new, but the shower was original. I stood there, and I whispered, ‘Show me.’ I don’t know why I said it. I think I wanted to prove to myself that it was all in my head. For a moment, nothing. Then the faucet turned on by itself, just a trickle. And from the pipes, I heard a sound that wasn’t a fart. It was a low, singing hum, like a lullaby, but off-key. It echoed through the room, bouncing off the tiles. I slammed the door shut and never went back.

I later learned from a neighbor that the barracks and the hospital had been used during an epidemic. They’d burned the bodies in the back, and the ashes were buried right where the house now stands. They said the dead didn’t like being covered up, so they’d moved into the pipes. That bathroom, with its thin walls and hollow fixtures, was their choir loft. Every flush, every drip, was them trying to sing. And that fart, that little, pathetic noise, was their way of saying, ‘We’re still here. We’re always here.’ I haven’t been back since. But sometimes, late at night, when the house is quiet, I can hear that same wet, muffled sound from my own bathroom, and I know they’ve followed me home.