I was never one to truly believe in ghosts. Sure, I loved watching ghost-hunting shows and have even been on a few investigations myself. However, for the most part, I was pretty sure that a lot of ghostly experiences were just people freaking themselves out.
And then I moved to Florida, and my roommate and I were convinced that we were either cursed or there was a ghost living in our A/C unit.
Let me start at the beginning. When my roommate and I moved into our new apartment in Fort Lauderdale, we found a water leak in the A/C that damaged the floor in the master bedroom. Maintenance came in, told us it was leaking from the right side, and -- we thought -- fixed it. Apparently, not. Over the next several days, maintenance was in and out of our apartment. The leak would stop for a bit. Then it would start up again.
Rinse and repeat. One night over wine, I joked that the A/C was possessed by a ghost and asked if we should sage the apartment. My roommate said absolutely not. I then suggested a wine offering. That was also vetoed as my roommate didn’t want to attract ants. However, we both vowed to peacefully coexist with the A/C ghost.
The next day, the maintenance guy came back and said he thought there was a problem with a certain pipe. As he’s saying this, he reached under said pipe… and ended up slicing his hand so badly that he had to go to the ER and get a cast.
The ghost apparently did not like our conversation about sage and wine.
The maintenance appointments continued. They fixed it, then the unit would leak from the other side. They thought it was unbalanced, so they rebalanced it. The A/C started leaking equally on both sides.
At this point, my roommate told me that her boyfriend’s mother was convinced that she was cursed. I scoffed at this. Until my roommate reminded me of all the trouble she had at her last apartment in Seoul with her toilet. Here are some of the highlights:
• A plumber found men’s socks shoved down in the pipes. My roommate was on the hook, even though she lived alone, didn’t wear men’s socks, and definitely hadn’t flushed those down the toilet.
• A different plumber later found THREE BRICKS in the toilet pipes. My roommate was no longer on the hook.
• After they removed the bricks and replaced her toilet, her washing machine shimmied across the bathroom and right into the new toilet, knocking it over. She had to get another toilet.
I then remembered the nearly four-year saga I went on with the water pipes in my own apartment in Seoul that led to me walking in from work one Friday to find my entire bathroom in the middle of my living room.
Yes. We were definitely cursed. Everything culminated in one fateful morning when I woke up to the sound of the coffee pot brewing from the kitchen. This was highly unusual as I typically couldn’t hear anything over the A/C. I got up, padded out of my room, and discovered it wasn’t the coffee pot gurgling. It was the A/C.
It had finally given up the ghost. (Pun intended.) We spent an entire day -- during late summer in South Florida -- without air conditioning and almost the entire weekend. At this point, maintenance was completely done. They replaced the entire unit. And finally, there were no more issues with the A/C. Nothing but sweet, cool air.
It could have been a vengeful ghost. It could have been a curse.
Or it could have just been a defective A/C unit. I suppose we’ll never know.