Old Municipal Housing

This is a continuation of the previous post, 'The Apartment I Lived in During My Childhood.' We moved after a vacancy opened up before I started kindergarten. I was happy to move into a larger, two-story house, but my mother complained, "The toilet is dark," and replaced the light bulb. She kept it as bright as daytime even at night. One night, my older brother went to the toilet under the stairs alone. He rushed back upstairs and burst into my parents' room. When my mother asked what was wrong, he tearfully reported, "There was a strange old man in the living room telling me to get out of my house." After that, my younger brother was born, my older brother got married, we started keeping a cat and a dog (which was allowed because they were old), I got a job, and we lived there for a long time. However, there was a problem with the seismic strength, so the building had to be rebuilt, and we moved again. Here's the reveal: The previous resident was an elderly man living alone. A neighbor noticed he hadn't been seen for a while and checked on him, only to discover he had passed away in the toilet several days prior. So, the man my brother saw was the deceased former resident, and the reason my mother insisted on keeping the light on was because he was still there. My brother's response of "It's MY house!" when he was yelled at is also quite something. My mother says, "I don't want to go in there now, and it's a miracle we could live there." To be told this now... I'm glad I'm not sensitive to ghosts!