Is someone in da house?

You know how people say dogs and cats can "see" things? Years ago, I had a really strange experience in Singapore with my dog, Jack.

One day, for no reason, he could run INTO the kitchen with no issues but he could not GET OUT of the kitchen. It was illogical. There was NO door. It was just a corridor with a half step (no more than an inch tall) but Jack couldn't pass the line that separated the kitchen from the living room. He kept barking whenever he was trapped in there with his eyes looking upwards at a specific spot but he was barking at thin air. What freaked me out was his eye line. He was looking up at something and he paced left and right ducking his head past the step, then looking up to bark at whatever "it" was standing in his way from getting out of the kitchen. I had to physically carry him out each time but this was never the case when I moved in. Out of the blue one day, this happened.

I even put his food bowl down in front of the kitchen area coz I couldn't believe this weird behavior. Jack always eats right over his food but when I placed his food bowl near the half step, he couldn't eat in that location. He walked over to get a pellet and ate AWAY from that area. And he ate this way pellet by pellet at a painfully slow pace. But when I moved the bowl AWAY from where "IT" was standing (look I don't know what IT was but there was something obviously there), he just ate normally with his head in the bowl.

I didn't know what to do. I asked people who lived in the building if they experienced anything unusual and to my surprise, a few stories popped up. For starters, there were CCTV cameras in the lifts and a woman saw 2 children in there. The doors closed and when they opened again, the kids weren't there! She asked the guards to check the tape but there was no one in the lift, even on the playback.

(courtesy of kiss kiss bang bang: flickr)

OkaaaaY. I was freaked. I was thinking to myself "why don't I just wait for the lease to expire and get the hell outta this place??" Yikes. But I needed to do something about the current situation.

A friend of mine recommended a feng shui man/medium who seemed to know the layout of my place even though he'd never been there, don't ask me how. He said I had an "altar like" object in my apartment that had brought this spirit into my house. Huh? I couldn't think of anything that fit this description. I asked him if the spirit was 2 kids? He shook his head, no. It was a man he said. "Oh that's just grrrreat! So there are 'kids' in my elevator and a 'man' standing in the doorway of my kitchen preventing my dog from getting out of it.

Could this whole building be like what? A Starbucks for ghosts?" The no nonsense feng shui man/medium gave me holy water from the Buddhist temple and said to sprinkle it everywhere, especially the bedroom which had a lot of shoes in it (how did he know that? There was an empty bedroom in the house and it only had shoes and a couple of boxes in it)

He said to tie a red string around the "altar like" object when I find it (how's a bunch of thread supposed to contain a spirit anyway? But I was too scared to ask anymore questions) I nodded and thanked him for his time. The last thing he said to me was "if the red string doesn't work, throw the entire object out. Get rid of it"

I went home and started looking at every tea light, object or ornament I had. Ah ha. Found it on a ledge. This MUST be it! My girlfriend Sharifah bought me a gold plated Borobudur temple which looked like 3 pyramids and many many steps as a souvenir from her holiday in Indonesia.

I tied a red string round all 3 pyramids, sprinkled holy water everywhere and gave it a few days. I put Jack in the kitchen (since he was the ghost detector) and the same thing happened. He was stuck in the kitchen unable to make it past the half step. Oh dear. He started barking at IT again blocking his way out of the kitchen.

There was no choice. I had to throw the temple souvenir out. I gave it a week keeping my fingers crossed.

Ok, here goes. I put Jack back into the kitchen and he ran right out, past that invisible line he previously couldn't pass like it NEVER happened. He was able to run in and out of the kitchen just like old times. Phew, I was so relieved! But I still moved out when the lease expired! ;)