The Salted Food Storage

I’m not one for the supernatural. I’m a guy who trusts empirical evidence and the scientific method. I’ve slept in centuries-old inns, walked through abandoned asylums, and even spent a night in a reputedly cursed forest—never felt a thing. My friends call me the ghost repellent. So when my Aunt Marta passed away in the autumn of 2003, I expected the usual: a somber gathering, relatives swapping stories, and the inevitable feast laid out in her cramped apartment in the old part of Kraków. They said her place was haunted, but I scoffed. Old buildings creak, pipes groan, and drafts sneak through gaps. It’s all explainable.

But that night, I found myself in the pantry—a narrow, windowless room at the end of a hallway, its entrance covered by a heavy woolen curtain that stopped just below the knee. I was fifteen, hungry, and the main table had been stripped of the good stuff. So I slipped behind the curtain, armed with a flashlight, to grab a bag of pretzels and some pickled herring. The room was lined with wooden shelves, stacked with jars of preserves, sacks of potatoes, and boxes of crackers. A single bare bulb hung from the ceiling, but it flickered badly, so I relied on my flashlight. I was in and out in under a minute.

As I turned to leave, my light swept across the floor near the curtain. There, just visible in the gap between the wool and the wooden floorboards, was a pair of small, bare feet. They were pale, almost bluish, with wrinkled toes like they’d been soaked in water for too long. I froze, my heart thumping. The feet didn’t move. I crouched, my hand trembling, and lifted the curtain. Nothing. The hallway was empty, dimly lit by a single wall sconce. I told myself it was a trick of the light, a shadow cast by a coat rack. But the feet had been distinct, with five toes each.

I dismissed it, grabbed my snack, and returned to the living room where my cousins were playing cards. I didn’t mention it. But later, I had to go back for a glass of water. The kitchen was through that same hallway, past the pantry. I braced myself, walked briskly, and avoided looking at the gap under the curtain. As I passed, I felt a draft—cold, unnatural, like walking through a freezer aisle. I got my water and hurried back. I told myself it was the old building’s insulation.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I was assigned a cot in the living room, but every creak put me on edge. Around 2 AM, I heard a faint scratching from the kitchen. I told myself it was mice. But the scratching grew louder, more insistent, and then—a soft, wet thud, like something heavy dropping onto the floor. I lay still, my pulse hammering. Then I heard the curtain rings of the pantry slide along the rod. I held my breath. The sound stopped.

The next morning, I checked the pantry. The shelf of pickled herring was in disarray, as if something had rummaged through it. But the strange thing: a jar of salted herring had been opened, and the brine had spilled, leaving a sticky puddle on the floor. No one admitted to taking any. My aunt’s old cat, which had gone missing weeks before, was found the next day dead in the yard, its fur matted and reeking of salt.

Months later, I learned from the building’s super that a previous tenant, an old woman, had died in that pantry. She had a heart attack while reaching for a jar of salted fish. They found her curled on the floor, her bare feet swollen. And every year on the anniversary of her death, the tenants complained of cold drafts and the smell of brine. I stopped calling myself a ghost repellent. Instead, I now knew: some things don’t need belief to exist. They just wait, patient as salt, for the right moment to seep through the cracks.