To scare or not to scare, that is the question

About 2 weeks ago, my next door neighbor, Yon had a weird occurrence in her apartment. On reaching home returned home after work she found her laundry basket displaced about 2-3 feet from its original position of being next to the washing machine. She was certain that she hadn’t moved the object for the simple reason that Japanese apartments are space constraint and doing so would leave just about 10cms between the washbasin and the bathroom – impossible for her to stand in the middle.

Caution was the need of the hour, and we checked her house to make sure no one was in her closet, toilet, hiding under the mattress or in the bed. With all the windows and doors closed we found no evidence of someone had broken in, so we concluded that Yon must have forgotten to put the basket back in its place in the morning. As a matter of fact, most of us do our early morning chorus in a haze of sleepiness – routines like brushing ones teeth or going through laundry baskets to find a pair of semi-clean socks, isn’t something anyone pays attention to if you’re sleepy and cold.

Having said this and being certain that she was indeed too sleepy to remember the details we carried on with our dinner in our respective homes.
The next day we went to work and later that evening when we returned home, Yon gave a loud scream on entering her house. She had let the door ajar, so I ran into her room to find her standing in the center of the room pointing at the basket which had been displaced again!
For a second I thought that she might be playing a practical joke on me and had put the basket in the same position as the previous day. But the expression on her face was of anxiety and shock, and matched with mine.

We checked the inner tatami room (this time I had a pan in my hand and she had a huge roller) - whacked the quilt to see if anyone came out, checked the cupboards and bathroom again.
I realized my house was left open, so we went and locked it and quickly came back to Yon’s place. We sat and stared at the basket and called up our company’s HR department. In a jiff our supervisor came over.

We explained the happenings to her to which she gave us some very peculiar but believable explanations and told us what to do next.

(To be Continued…)