Messages in pot pourri
Moved into a flat in ye olde Edinburgh during my student days. Found, in my wardrobe, a little pink pot-pouri doll bearing the message "Happy New Home". A nice present from the previous occupant, I assumed.

A couple of days later my flatmate found a letter from the previous tenants, stashed in a drawer under her bed which just said something like "Any problems with the flat, feel free to call us on..." and then a mobile number. All very nice, we thought, the people who lived here before us must be lovely nice people, must be just in case we have trouble figuring out how to work the boiler etc etc. Eh no.

The flat turned out to be a total hellhole. For a start it was haunted. And I mean HAUNTED. Numerous sightings of a very nosey and vocal woman ghost, who was prone to violence, especially when it involved knocking over things made of glass. It got so bad that there were occasions, during our exams, when we all slept in the same room for "safety in numbers" reasons. By the end of the year we were nervous wrecks. It also doubled, as all student hovels do, as a reputable hotel for the local mouse population. Imagine a scene from that well known pied piper tale with the rivers of rats running everywhere and they had a particular penchant for swinging on our grill pan, which they used as their own personal obstacle course. Bits of the toilet had been stuck together with sellotape and the landlord was a totally dodgy git, although I probably owe him my degree, as I'd never spent so much time in the Library in my life, just so I didn't have to go home.

We never did call the previous occupants. They'd probably have just laughed at our misery.

Happy New Home? Sarcastic bastards...
(aninotay, Mon 4 Jul 2005, 16:03, Reply)