It was the first or second night in our apartment on Carlos Pellegrini and Lavalle. We were sleeping relatively soundly, when I awoke with a start and thought I saw something, transparent and white, move past me. I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming or awake - I was in one of those “in-between” states. In any event, I gasped loudly and woke myself up. Once fully conscious, I saw that there was nothing there. I chalked it up to jet lag and settled back to sleep.
Not much later, I woke up to Mi Amor gasping, sitting up, and saying “Whoa. Oh. Wow. Okay.”
“Mi Amor, is everything okay?”
“Yes, yes. I just need some light. Turn on the light!”
I turned on the light and Mi Amor jumped up, looking all around the apartment before coming back to bed.
“What’s wrong honey?” I asked, a little worried.
“I don’t know if it was a dream or not, but there was an ugly old woman tapping my arms and saying weird things. I think she was saying to go. She was really scary. Ugly and scary.”
The rest of the night, I proceeded to have strange dreams, blended together, involving people grabbing me, trying to steal my things. You could say that my sleep wasn’t quite restful. The following day his mother gave us a bottle of holy water to bless the apartment with, hoping it would help.
The next couple of mornings, I noticed that we were rather cranky with each other and I couldn’t figure out why. Here we were, together in Buenos Aires, his birthplace and my “Tango Mecca”, and we were arguing - but only in the apartment, and particularly in the mornings.
About two or three nights after that first strange night, I awoke to Mi Amor tapping my shoulder and whispering, “Ok Tina, it’s time to leave.” “Uh?” was all I could muster up. “Come on Tina, it’s time to go. We have to leave. You wanna get your clothes first?” “Uh? What’s happening? Leaving? Uh?” “Yeah, we gotta go honey.” I sat up and said, “What’s going on??!!” Next thing he said was “Oh, well, I guess we have time. You can sleep some more first before we go.” I shook his shoulder a little bit and said, “What are you talking about?” He was now totally awake and said, “Oh, nothing. That was strange…”
Needless to say I woke up the next morning not feeling rested at all. I asked him what that had been about, and he confided in me that he’d sort of half-awake/half-asleep seen a dark cave or doorway near my side of the bed, with a glowing light which he somehow knew signified that we had to exit out that way, immediately. The mere thought of it sent shivers up my spine. We knew something was off. We continued to pray and sprinkly holy water on the apartment. This wasn’t what I’d had in mind when I came to Buenos Aires.
The following day, after another night of strange, startling dreams and visions, Mi Amor came to the bathroom where I was putting on my makeup, and he said, “Tina, we need to get out of here. I don’t want to stay in this apartment any more. It’s haunted. Or something is terribly wrong with it. But we can’t stay here.” For some reason, I felt the need to argue about this and didn’t want to leave. I wanted to give it another chance. I begged him to let me have one chance to try and really cleanse the apartment. I don’t know why I wanted to try so hard. If I really thought about it, the apartment really did have a strange, creepy, hollow energy to it which, looking back, was absolutely terrible. But I wanted to give it a chance. Maybe it was just us, you never know.
That afternoon we’d gone to one of the many santeria shops in Buenos Aires, and purchased various types of incense with different purposes, a white candle for purification, and two dream catchers. I was surprised that we couldn’t find sagebrush, which I’d really been counting on to cleanse the apartment. I also bought some crystals whose purpose was to turn negativity into positivity. Hey, we were willing to try anything. I sat poor Mi Amor down in front of me in the bedroom and I lit the white candle and prayed, very deeply, for whatever it was to go and for positivity and light to enter the room. I went around the apartment with the different types of incense, praying again. And at last, we used the holy water which his parents had given us.
I had a terrible nightmare that night, I thought I’d seen something again - that strange, white “something” passing by. I couldn’t sleep at all until morning came. Before I left for my Spanish lesson in the morning, I looked at him and said, “You’re right. We need to go. And tonight we’re sleeping in the living room. Forget the bedroom.” We agreed that he’d at least talk to the landlord to see if we could get even part of the rent back. As it turns out, he was perfectly willing to give us our deposit back, but he was not going to return any of the rent to us. At this point, we were fine as long as we could get out of there. But we swear to this day, that he knew something about the apartment that he wasn’t willing to admit. He kept changing his story on us about how long he’d rented that apartment, etc… nothing seemed to line up with him. We didn’t like it.
We slept in the living room for two peaceful, uneventful nights before finally moving into his parents’ house for a bit - and finally, through my Spanish teacher, we found a wonderful, bright, sunny apartment more or less in Congreso, with a very comfortably, cozy energy, where we felt right at home and slept very well the rest of our time in Buenos Aires.
I assure you that this is all true. If you’re going to Buenos Aires, avoid the creepy place on Carlos Pellegrini and Lavalle. If you want a wonderful place to stay that feels good and is very comfortable and close to everything, let me know as well and I can put you in touch with the right person.
