The Det House is haunted. That’s the word I got from Matt Wilkes this morning when I stepped into the office. Interesting! I know the building at 48B Tran Phu is pretty old, probably built in the 1920s or there about, and that our section of Hanoi goes back to the French colonial period. I also know Matt isn't a guy prone to drama. If it had been the other guy on duty, I may have been a little more skeptical.
Matt started the conversation talking about the weird animals we have over in that building. I naturally thought he was talking about the rats over there, something he has talked about on several occasions already. Rats are ubiquitous in Hanoi, and the subject was a little stale, to be honest. When he mentioned the screeching in the night, I knew he was talking about the owls that reside in certain corners of the city. He didn’t know the noise was coming from owls, but after considering for a moment, he saw the probability in the source of the spooky noise. He then started talking about the other noises: The loud lady, the slamming doors, and the whisper in his ear at night. I immediately dismissed the lady,and initially the slamming door because of the guards on their security rounds. But the Vietnamese woman whispering in his ear at his bedside in the middle of the night, the one he tried to chalk up as a dream, and the doors slamming in adjacent rooms when he is the only one boarding in the building did pique my interest. Matt said he has heard some people talk about it, and others who won’t talk about it because they don’t want us at the office thinking they are nuts.
Is the house haunted? Maybe. There is no doubt that the history and events in this area could conjure ghosts, if they exist. I will keep my ears open, maybe some good stories will come from it.
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