It was a single room in the centre of Yambol with an alley kitchen and wet room, it was damp but furnished with not just old furniture but cheap in a league well below MFI standards.
The bed was a well-worn sofa and fractured metal protruding like a badly made bed of nails. It was a good job that cardboard box wasn’t used back home as a fire starter as it was handy as a mattress. No cooker or no fridge, it was very basic living but it was winter so the wet room could pass quite easily as my fridge for a few months. The cooking on my camping gas system brought over from the UK came into its own. It was somewhere to base myself and not have to worry about travelling to work and back in the car, time and petrol\gas cost were behind me now.
Well the place was cheap and convenient but somehow it felt strange there on the first visit and the wonder as to why someone else hadn’t snapped it up for its position in the dead centre of town and a rent of about £7 a week!
It was when I moved in that things started to happen and my thought turned to the reasons I’m here and no one else! Entering the three-door passageway on reaching the top of the stairs a chill fell over me A sudden tingly spine and a slight apprehension about going onto the apartment. Trying to ignore this was difficult but it was my home during the week now and this was where I intended to stay for the foreseeable future.
Even with a few of my personal possessions in the apartment now it still felt as if this wasn’t my place. In the first evening this feeling that I was being watched increased to a point that by the time I lay on my bed of nails I was positively scared.
That first night was horrendous, there were no curtains in the one room and I could see the lamp lit tree in the street motionless so I knew there was no wind. So why were the windows in the kitchen door rattling? Other rattles and knocks and scratching from different parts of the room started, it was a night of commotion and activity in the apartment in contrast to the calm street Yambol High Street outside.
This went on all night and my mind working overtime trying to work out a sensible reasoning behind this happening. At one point I felt something that just seemed to lean on my feet, jumping up, there was nothing there but a shadow moved as this happened. I was at my tether’s end and had the light on for the rest of the night!
The morning couldn’t come too soon and it didn’t end there on my white sheet there was a blood stain that travelled through the foam mattress underneath, through the cardboard box and a drip on the floor underneath the bed. This was where I felt the presence near my feet. I check my body for signs of it there but couldn’t see anything from me. I was beside myself fearing another night here
I knew for a fact this place had a guest, I knew for a fact this apartment had history and I knew for a fact that in my own mind now that this apartment was haunted!
My conclusion was backed up every night thereon. The rattling door continued some night but other things happen every night, usually at around 2-3 o’clock. Shadows moving, the display cabinet glass door suddenly would rattle even though it was magnetically shut and secure. One night I actually saw a vase slightly shift on the windowsill. Knocking on wood and scratching sounds were common and then there was the heavy footsteps in the corridor and a knock on the adjoining wall, even though all the three doors were locked with no access the to anyone else but me!
At this stage I was petrified and on the point of moving out of the apartment; I just couldn’t cope with the sleepless nights and fear of being in the apartment alone, even during the day. I had nowhere else to go so a strong constitution was instilled as I decided to accept the goings on there. In my mind the thought that this guest hadn’t actually done me any harm, all I had to do was come to terms with it in my head.
As the days went by I talked to the moving shadows and asked the rattling door to ‘keep it down’ as I was trying to sleep. The footsteps outside and the bloodstains didn’t happen again but I knew when this character was around. I knew for sure the every night at around 2-3 in the morning the room would suddenly drop in temperature to become chilly and then things would begin to happen. At these times I just automatically wake up like an alarm clock had gone off. Now awake I would just tell the Bulgarian ghost to, ‘Shut up!’ or ‘Stigger (stop)!’ and usually the goings on would also cease or at least calm down a bit.
I had been living there for three months now alongside this Bulgarian ghost; we have an understanding now. He can stay around as long as he’s not too noisy. No footsteps outside, no vases moving and no more bloodstains on the bed! I had threatened him with a priest to perform exorcise on an occasion, this must have turned the fear table on the ghost as this seemed to frighten him away for a few nights. But he did return and I end up apologising not to get on the bad side and give reason for him to seek revenge.
We got on fine, in fact we ended up pretty good friends with our time together, when we left the apartment it was quite a shame we had to leave the ghost!
And Galia, she doesn’t believe a word of it, although I do believe that she didn’t want to believe any of it. She after all was witness to so many of these instances herself!
Well all Bulgarians are indeed very friendly, including their ghosts!
Driving a car in Bulgaria is a nightmare. The conditions of the roads are one thing but the road sense of Bulgarians is the main contention and cause of so many problems. It is worse at night and the advice from an expatriate here who has been driving for a number of years here, to others who aren't familiar with Bulgarian roads is simply - Don't drive at night!
