This happened in 2015 when I was still in college in Beijing. I was in my fourth year of university, and everyone was busy working on their graduation projects. In China, university semesters typically run from September to July each year.
It was around April, and though it wasn’t winter anymore, the weather was still quite cold. My girlfriend was majoring in illustration, and her classmates were all working with their respective mentors. Since most of the professors lived near the campus, it was convenient for students to have classes at their mentors’ homes.
Due to some circumstances, her appointment with her mentor got rescheduled to around 7 PM. Thinking it would be nice to have dinner together after her class, I decided to accompany her to her mentor’s place.
Chinese apartment buildings are usually part of a larger community or “compound” containing multiple identical buildings. Chinese housing designs, especially in the north, often prioritize the direction the apartment faces because winters can be bitterly cold. “Facing South” is a common concept, where rooms like the living room or master bedroom get more sunlight while less important spaces like the kitchen or study face north. However, in Beijing, especially after the skyrocketing housing prices post-2008, apartment designs often tend to be more cost-effective “corridor-style” buildings. These buildings consist of long rectangular structures divided into individual apartments, accessed via a common corridor. One side of the apartments has windows facing south, while the other side faces north. I mention this because her mentor’s apartment was on the north side, and it was on the fifth floor.
In Chinese beliefs, houses that don’t receive sunlight regularly are considered to have “excessive yin energy.” But young people rarely take such beliefs seriously. Financial concerns often outweigh concerns about “spirits.” The fifth floor, which is technically the fourth floor (as “four” sounds like “death” in Chinese), is also considered inauspicious. In Chinese culture, it’s common for buildings to label the floor above the third floor as the fifth floor, skipping the “fourth” due to the superstition surrounding that number. I heard that some real estate developers even add a mezzanine level between the third and fifth floors that’s so low you need to stoop to enter it, and regular residents can’t even access it.
Back to that evening. It was already dark when I accompanied my girlfriend to her mentor’s place. We took the elevator up to the fifth floor, and when the elevator doors opened, we were met with complete darkness. The only source of light was the green glow from the emergency exit sign. Looking back now, I realize that even during the day, this corridor would have been pitch black without any lights because there were no windows.
We walked through the completely dark corridor and knocked on the mentor’s door. She entered the apartment for her class, and I was left alone in the hallway. I decided to go to the supermarket nearby to pass the time.
However, when I reached the elevator, I noticed that it had returned to the first floor. While elevators do have a feature that automatically takes them to the first floor, it usually doesn’t happen within such a short time frame, especially when we had only been talking to the mentor for a few minutes. I didn’t think much of it at the time and pressed the elevator button, eager to get out of the dimly lit corridor.
The elevator arrived, and I stepped inside. As I was about to press the button for the first floor, I noticed that it was already lit up.
Someone had pressed it before me.
The elevator was empty except for me. After what felt like an excruciatingly long 30 seconds or maybe a minute, the elevator reached the first floor, and the doors opened. I quickly stepped out of the elevator and away from the building. I didn’t run because I was afraid that if I did, whatever presence might be there would sense my awareness of its existence.
Every time I think back to that incident, I’m still puzzled. If the elevator had come down from a floor higher than the fifth, it could have been explained as someone pressing the first-floor button and not taking the elevator. However, I distinctly saw the elevator coming from the first floor, which was impossible if someone had pressed the first-floor button. So…
Years later, after we had graduated and the mentor had moved away, I visited his new home. During our conversation, he mentioned that in the old apartment building, he sometimes saw a woman sitting in his living room.