I Hired a ‘Professional Haunter’ to Haunt My Best Friend’s Apartment as a Prank, but Nobody’s Laughing Now

 

I figured it’d just be good for a laugh. That’s all. No deeper thought behind it, no grand plan or expectation of genuine results.

I was just trying to fuck with Caden.

I’ve known the guy since I was ten, maybe eleven. That was when he transferred to my middle school, and I don’t exaggerate when I say we’ve spent the majority of the ensuing years busting each other’s balls.

You know how it is. You know somebody your entire life, get to know them so well and reach a point where you’re so close that sometimes the only emotion you can really feel toward them is annoyance.

We had that from pretty much the moment he strolled up to my cafeteria table and laughed at my “faggy” Toy Story lunch box while simultaneously asking for a seat. I fired back at his dumbshit haircut and told him to pull up a chair. He was a stranger in a strange land and right away it was clear that our senses of humor meshed.

He’s my best friend.

Well, he was anyway.

See, as we got older, our insultingly friendly barbs and verbal jabs escalated into a never ending war of pranks and general fuckery.

We went through all the classics - prank calls and hand buzzers, bags of dog shit on the front step (Caden’s parents were not particularly happy when I pulled that one). Kid shit. Even at that age, we’d always get each other back. Neither wanted the other to have the last laugh.

But during college, as roommates, things took a more extreme turn. There’s just something about being in your early 20’s that turns men into drooling fucking morons. Animals.

I’d slip some laxatives into Caden’s food while he was in the can, laughing my ass off outside the bathroom door as he swore revenge while puking out of both ends. He’d use my school email on a school computer to sign up for a pro-bestiality newsletter out of Seattle that produced original content. Tough one to explain to the head of Student Services.

We were nearly expelled on more than a few occasions. Wild as it got, it was fun though. The two of us thrived off the chaos in some way. Caden was an annoying Motherfucker with a dumbshit haircut, but he was the annoying Motherfucker with dumbshit haircut who I could always count on.

Our friendship stayed strong even after college and the two of us getting real jobs and our own places. The pranks and bullshit decreased in frequency , but we made up for that with their intensity.

Caden’s most recent attack had been quite the feat - he’d seen a news report about a car spotted near the scene of a double murder just outside the city. The car just so happened to roughly match the description of my own - silver Toyota Corolla. The report mentioned a busted right tail light , so Caden took the liberty of sneaking over to my apartment complex under the cover of night and cracking mine just before phoning a very concerned tip to the local police.

I spent just under ten hours in a police interrogation room that day, after they showed up at my door at the crack of dawn and practically hauled me away in my underwear.

They had me really sweating there a few times too - grilling me with crime scene photos and demanding an alibi. The problem was, all day they had a hard time getting in contact with the one person who could prove I wasn’t anywhere near the Taco Carnival dumpster where the bodies were dumped on the night of the murders.

Yep, Caden.

It was dark outside by the time they let me go after finally getting him on the phone and verifying that on the night in question, we’d sat in his apartment all night getting stoned and watching Texas Chainsaw 3D.

He came and picked me up from the station, and we laughed our asses off the whole ride home. It was truly Caden’s magnum opus.

The question immediately formed in my mind: how do I top this? How do I get him back.

I got the answer a few days later.

I was browsing a site I use sometimes that hosts people looking for all kinds of things - Jobs, housework, sex. Lots and lots of sex. I’m a horny single guy in my late 20’s who lives alone, I have to exhaust every possible avenue.

After messaging a few “Women Seeking Men” who I prayed to any gods listening weren’t spam bots with fake profiles , I decided to click over to the general “Personals” section.

There were tons of weirdos on this site who would post any stray schizoid thought that went through their wacked out heads. It was usually good for a quick laugh.

That’s where I found him.

I mean, how could I not click on the post with a title like this?

Professional Haunter - I Will Haunt the Waking Life of Whoever You Choose

Professional Haunter. At first glance, I had no idea what the fuck that meant. But it only took me a second to recognize the potential, and a wide grin spread on my face.

Could I hire some nutcase who thinks he’s a ghost to show up at Caden’s apartment and harass him? He’d never see this coming, and I could wipe that dumbshit grin off his face. A fitting follow up to the police station debacle.

I clicked the link and was immediately greeted with a wall of nearly unintelligible text:

Through powerful manipulation of the spectral realm I am able to make contact with the greater mind of the universe with a process called transposition, the veil between the waking life and consciousness is ever thin and can be pulled back freely olny by one skilled in powerful manipulation of the spectral realm. This dangerous honed skill was perfected three hundred and seventy years ago in a Tibetan monastery and used for foul purposes by the CIA until it was reclaimed by the order which has taught me the ability. Call for more informtaion

At the bottom though, was a phone number. I whipped my cell phone out and dialed it straight away. It only rang once before someone on the other end picked up.

I waited for the person to greet me or identify themselves or speak at all. All I heard was… nothing. Well, that’s what I thought at first anyway. Listening closely, I detected a quiet and raspy breathing. Shuddered, halting breaths. It sounded like somebody intentionally breathing as slowly and quietly as they possibly could.

I finally cut in.

“Hello…?”

A startled gasp from the other end. A raspy voice to match the breathing spoke, but their voice sounded slightly distant and garbled. Like they weren’t talking into the receiver.

It was a man, that much was clear.

“Ah fuck,” the near but far off voice exclaimed. “Ah shit, god dammit, fuck. Fuck. Hold on. Fuck.”

There was the sound of objects clattering to the floor as the man stood up, and his footsteps as he wandered away. I laughed to myself. This was already amazing. I couldn’t wait to sic this freak on Caden.

The line had gone silent again, but after a few moments that quiet , raspy breathing returned. I hadn’t heard the man walk back from wherever he’d run off to. I tried again to engage.

“Hello?!”

I was met with nothing but a soft chuckle, followed by a strange squelching noise. It sounded like a sopping wet sponge being squeezed as hard as humanly possible. I opened my mouth to speak again but was cut off by the sound of heavy footsteps clomping into the room. The man was back.

“Hello? Hello? Hello?” He asked three times in rapid succession as he picked up the phone.

“Uh yeah,” I answered while trying to maintain my train of thought after the weirdness I’d just listened to. “Listen pal, I saw your personal ad.”

The man said nothing. In the background , behind the silence , there was a faint sound of caterwauling. Like a mewling cat with an injured paw.

“On Private Personals? For the Professional Haunter?”

“Of course.” The man finally replied. His voice still had a strange distant quality even as he now spoke directly into the phone. “You’re interested in manipulating the spectral realm. These are powerful forces that only I am qualified to tamper with.”

I stifled a chuckle. We’d cut through the treacle now and gotten to the meat. This was perfect.

“So let me understand,” I cut him off as he rambled about the spectral plane and manipulating forces of power. “Youll go to a location I provide and… haunt it?”

“Yes,” came the robotic reply. “Any waking space can be manipulated and inhabited by the power stored in the outer reaches of my phantom brain. I will lay claim to the space and cleanse it with hideous energy. The haunt is a powerful ritual that fundamentally changes the metaphysical makeup of all involved. Comprehend the gravity of what you’re sanctioning before you make your decision.”

Before I could respond, the man suddenly snapped into a rage, screaming away from the phone at something or someone in the room. “GOD DAMMIT. FUCK. SHUT THE FUCK UP. STOP. FUCK. STOP. FUCK. FUCKING CUNT. STOP. FUCK.”

The background caterwauling came to a dead stop , and the man resumed his spiel as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

I’d heard just about all I needed to. This psycho would show up and cause some havoc wherever I instructed him to. I pictured Caden waking up in the middle of the night hearing this tweaker skittering around inside his walls. “This sounds perfect, I’ve got a place I’m really looking to cleanse with some hideous energy. Just name your price.”

“Payment.” The man uttered that single word in response. “Payment is tendered after the ritual is complete and successful, it can’t be measured in the waking realm.”

Fuck it, I thought. I’m in this deep. I’ll slip the mad bastard a c-note after he’s done punching holes in Caden’s drywall.

“Understood,” I finally replied. I gave him the address of Caden’s complex along with the apartment number. “How soon can you get over there to uh, you know. Begin haunting.”

“Tomorrow.” With that last flat answer, the man hung up.

I burst out laughing as soon as I pressed end on the call. Rubbing my hands together in anticipation, I shot Caden a text making plans to get together at his place the following day. I needed a front row seat to this performance.

A very small, but not nonexistent, part of me did wonder if maybe this was pushing things juuust a bit too far. But my mind kept going back to those sweat soaked hours in the interrogation room being screamed at by an out of shape cop with onion breath. It even went back to that very first comment about my faggy lunchbox.

Caden was my best friend, but he had it coming.

The Professional Haunter hadn’t given me a specific time frame, so I figured it would be best if I just hung around Caden’s the entire day. It turned out I didn’t have to wait long.

Around noon, as we sat with our eyes glued to Re-Animator for the eight hundred and ninetieth time, there was suddenly a loud tapping on Caden’s living room window. Fuck, it was happening. I tried to hide my smile as Caden looked at me quizzically. “What the fuck?” He asked. I shrugged.

A concerned look across his face, Caden stood and with just a hint of apprehension, drew the curtain.

Even being the mastermind behind this whole situation, I was shocked by what I saw standing at that window.

There stood a man, sheet white and completely nude. The Haunter’s face was sallow and sunken, wide yellow eyes darted back and forth between Caden and I. His mouth hung open so wide that it was as if his jaw had popped and come unhinged, exposing a black abyss rimmed with a few jagged and rotting teeth. He was completely bald , and missing both his ears. Even from this angle I could just barely see the small holes where they once had been , and the clear markings of where they’d been surgically removed.

My eyes made their way over his entire body, seeing that it was covered in roughly healed scars and strange, runic tattoos. Some of the scarred flesh was gouged so badly that it caused clear pits and indents a half inch or so deep. The tattoos were symbols , or a language of some kind that I couldn’t understand. A scan of his visible lower half revealed that much like his ears, the man’s penis had also been removed. There was nothing between his legs but a shriveled patch of scarred flesh.

Obviously this raving lunatic was a fair bit crazier than I’d anticipated.

Most alarming though was what the Haunter held. What he’d been tapping the window with. A massive , jagged knife. The blade itself had razor sharp teeth and a black handle with a red ornamental design.

Caden screamed. “What the fuck?!”

The Haunter went into a rage. Spittle flew from his gaping maw as he slammed the window harder and harder. Suddenly, it shattered completely. We shielded our faces as shards of glass exploded in our direction.

The man’s cries instantly became louder as he quickly hopped over the newly opened window, clearly slicing his thighs as he did so.

Caden and I backed against the wall as the Haunter slowly advanced toward us, one hand outstretched holding the knife and the other clutching his hairless head. He rambled more of his wicked diatribe the entire time.

“The waking plane has been thrown into disarray - FUCK, FUCKING SHIT - a haunting will cleanse this hellish place of the lethargic energy that sits here and replace it with new and powerful hatred from a far away place. CUNTS, DIRTY ROTTEN CUNTS. FUCK. FUCK. STOP. Stop stop stop the special barrier can be shattered only in this moment when the voices are at their quietest.”

Caden grabbed my shoulders in terror and screamed into my ear. “Sean, what the fuck is happening?! We have to run, Sean!”

Caden was right. It was a safe assumption that the man was about to kill us or torture us or do god knows what. I couldn’t move though, couldn’t scream or anything. I was transfixed by the man’s yellow eyes , locked square with mine. Somehow he seemed to know that I was the one. He only uttered one last word.

“Begin.”

With that, he plunged the knife into his neck and began furiously sawing. My jaw dropped and Caden screamed as the Haunter ripped and tore into his own throat. Rivers of black blood flowed from his neck down to the floor below as the wet gurgling sound that used to be his voice met with the tearing of meat.

By the time he was through, the man had almost entirely sawed his own head clean off. He collapsed face down in the massive pool of his own blood.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the man’s body as we heard distant sirens growing near. Some prank.

A neighbor had evidently heard the commotion and called the police, and once they arrived things progressed rapidly.

Caden and I were both questioned as to what exactly had happened, and if either of us knew the psycho who’d performed a self beheading in the living room. Caden told them no, of course not. I lied through my fucking teeth and they seemed to buy it.

I figured that there was really no way the incident could be traced back to me anyway, the Haunter had no identification and I’d called him on what I assumed was a landline.

The cops told us they’d give Caden a call if anything came up, but it was unlikely they’d find much info on what was probably a wacked out drug addict in the throes of an episode.

As the body was carted off, leaving only a dark pool of wet crimson soaking into Caden’s rug, the two of us sat back on the couch in a dazed silence.

“I’m gonna have to get that window fixed…” Caden mumbled absentmindedly.

His face was pale, eyes glazed over. He truly looked traumatized by the experience.

Maybe it had been kind of worth it after all. I couldn’t take credit for the “prank”, but it would probably be a while before Caden tried to pull one over on me again. Plus, I didn’t even have to worry about paying anybody.

The mood had shifted, and it didn’t seem like we’d be finishing Re-Animator, so I told Caden that I was feeling a little rattled and going to head home. I offered to let him stay at my place til the window was fixed, but he declined in that same zoned out way.

As I walked out the front door, for the briefest moment, a strange feeling passed over my body. My ear tingled as I swore I heard that same dry and whispery chuckle from my phone conversation last night with the man.

I chuckled to myself and walked out into the afternoon warmth.

Caden and I went a few days without really talking or interacting much - I figured he was pretty shook up from the incident and I’d been digging into a new MMO anyway. In the midst of a multi hour grinding session, my phone buzzed to life. Not a text from Caden, but a call. It had to be important if he was using the dreaded intended function of our cellular devices.

I picked up after one or two rings. “Caden?”

I could hear shuddered breaths through Caden’s nose, but he didn’t speak.

“Caden?” I said it again.

“Sean…” he finally mumbled my name after a few more seconds of panicked breathing.

“I haven’t slept since Saturday. Since…” he trailed off, his voice tinged with a sense of hopelessness, almost pleading.

Until now , the half of me that found some measure of schadenfreude in Caden’s reaction to the horrors of the Haunter took precedent over the sympathetic half. I mean like I said, as pranks go things couldn’t possibly get much better.

Now though, just in the last few seconds, it was starting to feel more like a 50/50 split. There was just something to the quiet desperation in the sparse words he’d spoken.

Maybe I’d let him sweat enough.

“Listen Caden…” I began. I was cut off before I could continue. Caden assaulted me with a barrage of rambling, frantic information.

“Strange things have been happening Sean. All week. Even that first night when that lunatic broke in and… did what he did. After you left, I was laying in bed staring at the ceiling, just replaying it over and over again. The sound it made, the look on his face… and all of the sudden , I hear this really faint sound. Right next to my ear, almost inside my head. So close that it’s far away.”

Caden paused , and I wasn’t sure if it was for dramatic effect or if he was just composing himself. I didn’t say a word.

“A chuckle. Just this quiet, dry laughter. I snapped up out of bed and flipped the light on. There was nothing there. No one. Of course. Just my nerves in overdrive after the insanity we saw. But Sean, I just… I felt it. I felt that I wasn’t alone in the room. I kept staring at the empty space next to my bed and trying to picture it. Whatever it was, crouching there and laughing in my ear. I didn’t picture anything good. Never got to sleep that night.”

I tried to interrupt the story, tried to talk some sense to Caden. My two halves were now a clear 90/10. This was too much. The Professional Haunter’s one and done stunt had clearly damaged my friend.

“Caden-“ again, he didn’t let me finish. His tale of torment was far from over.

“I sat up all night staring at the tv in the living room. Staring more at that giant dark spot on the carpet. The shitty cardboard I taped over the window. It was freezing in the living room that night. Colder than it should’ve been. The whole time I had that same feeling. Something was next to me.

“Around 6:00, my eyes had started to ache. I decided to take a long shower. Cleanse my thoughts. I turned the water on and just stood under it for a while with my eyes closed, letting the warmth flow over me. Then…”

I knew that this was going nowhere good.

“The noise started. Just beyond the curtain. This fucking noise… I don’t know Sean. It was this weird, wet squelching. Like something trying really hard to breathe through a helmet made out of meat. Sucking the gore in and out with deep heaving breaths. My body went ice cold. Slowly, I turned my head to look. To see. There was a shadow on the shower curtain Sean.

“Some malformed, misshapen thing. Its torso bobbed up and down, spindly arms gesticulating. There was a massive, bulbous orb on its shoulders. As soon as I looked , the circular shadow atop the body expanded and contracted rapidly. The noise got louder. It was like it saw me.

“What else was I supposed to do? I was trapped. There was nowhere to go. I slowly reached toward the curtain, prepared to pull it back and face whatever was out there. The …. Thing. Whatever it was. It raised its hideous arm in tandem with mine. I was sure my fingers were about to feel those long, shadowy digits. I ripped the curtain open, and the shape instantly disappeared. I was alone in the bathroom.”

My heart had started beating rapidly as Caden weaved his tale - had he somehow caught wind of my prank? Was this the beginning stages of his revenge? Caden didn’t talk like this. My friend sounded so strange. Not like himself.

“Well,” Caden continued. “Not quite. Dripping wet and in a state of heightened fear, I glanced over at the bathroom door. The bathroom door which was open just a crack. I’d closed it when I walked in, Sean. Slowly, as if it was some kind of psychic response to my realization, a pitch black hand reached itself through the opening. Almost daintily, it flicked the bathroom light off.

“I screamed as I was plunged into total darkness. The water from the shower pounded on the bath tiles, and I slipped and fell hard as I scrambled for the light. That laughing whisper started again Sean, as I lay there in a heap. And the wet meat sound. Right beside me. I slowly rose and turned on the light, the sounds right in my ear the entire time.

“The bathroom was empty, of course. But I was ready to leave the fucking apartment. I rushed into the living room and saw the entire place was completely trashed. It was like a herd of cattle had stampeded right through. How hadn’t I heard it? How hadn’t the neighbors? My heart caught in my throat as I turned to make my way out the front door.

“The door was gone, Sean.”

My blood turned to ice. “Caden…. What the fuck are you talking about?”

My friend sighed, his voice sounding ever more hollow and odd. “The door was gone. Nothing but a smooth white wall. I couldn’t believe it. Still kind of don’t. I pounded on it and scratched my fingernails bloody and screamed til my throat was raw. The funny thing , Sean… the window that that fucker broke. The boarded up window. It was still there. But I just knew that there was nothing on the other side. Not nothing good, not nothing I wanted. Just … nothing.

“At this point I figured I was having some kind of psychotic episode. Maybe from what we’d seen. What happened. I wasn’t coping with it well. How are you coping with it?”

I was caught off guard by the question. Caden didn’t give me a chance to continue.

“I accepted the reality of the situation pretty quickly though. There was this rumbling, Sean. I felt it from my fingertips to the base of my brain. Just this odd feeling. And every light in the apartment burst. I was alone in an endless void.

“The laughter, the wet gurgle, it was everywhere. Skittering, the sound of twisted fingernails clawing at the ceiling and the walls. Moans of hatred. I was suddenly overwhelmed by this hideous abyss. I couldn’t even hear my own screams.

“The longer it went on, the more it took shape. Whatever it was. The laughing thing. The gurgling, bubbling thing. Even in the impossible dark, it’s form became clearer and clearer. Eventually… Well, anyway. That crazy fucker brought the thing here Sean. I don’t know how he did it, but he did.”

My mouth was bone dry. I had broken out in a cold sweat of sheer horror.

“I haven’t slept since then, Sean. Just been sitting here in this wet, cold dark. Thinkin’. You haven’t called. Haven’t texted. I just wanted to talk to you, you know. Wanted to say goodbye to my best friend.”

The tension I felt physically held me in place. Cold sweat dripping from my brow. “Caden, please…”

“We had some really great times, didn’t we buddy? I mean, this was your greatest prank ever!”

With that final line, Caden’s words twisted into a hideous snarl, and an ear piercing laughter erupted into the speaker. Dry and hateful and otherworldly. I dropped the phone to the floor as the line went dead.

Without even thinking, I hopped in the car and raced over to Caden’s apartment. My mind was going a mile a minute. What the fuck had I done? What had happened to Caden? This wasn’t funny at all.

It sounded like Caden had a serious mental episode in response to my (admittedly brilliant) prank. The games between us had gone too far. Now, he was in a state where something not good was going to happen.

It was his own mind, nothing more. I had to keep convincing myself. I had to help him. Otherwise…

As I parked the car and walked my way over to Caden’s unit, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The door was there, not missing like he’d said. There was just a quiet tension hanging over the place.

I banged on the door and called out to my friend. No answer. I walked over to the cardboarded window, prepared to kick it in.

Almost as if in response, the front door slowly creaked open.

Puzzled, I slowly crept back over. “Caden…?” I asked quietly. Trepidatiously.

The door had swung open fully now. Inside Caden’s apartment was nothing. A wall of impenetrable, pure black.

“Caden…” I could hear the meekness and fear in my own voice.

As I stared into that void, steeling myself to go inside, something began taking shape in the darkness.

I squinted my eyes as the outline of a bulbous and orb-like alien head came into focus.

I nearly pissed my fucking pants as the facial features became clearer and clearer. I saw monstrous lips upturn in a wide smile, and a skeletal hand outstretch itself towards me.

I ran back to my car and got the fuck home.

Caden’s gone now. I don’t know what that means. And I don’t want to find out.

My greatest prank proved to be too good - I guess I had “won” our lifelong war. Caden wouldn’t be getting me back, ever. Him and his dumbshit haircut were somewhere else.

There wasn’t much time to ruminate and reflect on my lost friendship though.

That very same night, I heard it. The dry, decayed laugh next to my ear. The feeling of something occupying an empty space.

I should’ve seen this coming.

I mean, it’s not like I can sit here and accuse the Haunter of ripping me off. Of not doing exactly what was agreed upon. Services were rendered, effectively and god damn quickly.

He went and he haunted the shit out of Caden’s apartment. He helped me pull off my greatest work. I just wish maybe we’d worked out some of the details a little better.

Yeah, I know what it wants. Why it’s here.

But see, understanding doesn’t really solve my problems.

Because… How the fuck do I pay a ghost?

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