text: I love my new apartment. It’s a hard loft, converted from a slaughterhouse that closed up back in the sixties. It’s a corner unit where three of the walls are covered in exposed brick. Original rebar posts run from the polished cement floor up through the sweeping, timber-lined ceiling. Huge, warehouse-style windows provide a beautiful view of the lake. All in all, it’s not a bad place to be, especially with its proximity to the downtown core. It was eye-wateringly expensive. It took me five years to save for the down payment. Five years of living in a cold, humid basement with three roommates beside me and twin toddlers upstairs. I spent nearly a year searching, and I didn’t buy until I found a place that made my heart leap with joy. Notwithstanding the realtor’s boast that the slaughterhouse used to kill over 6000 pigs per day before it burned down, this converted loft felt like home the moment I stepped into it. Like all first-time homeowners, there were things I didn’t expect, which took a little getting used to. I didn’t sleep a wink the first few nights I spent there. It was something - perhaps the one thing - I hadn’t thought to ask about during my search. The noise. Every night, I could hear something moving inside the one plastered wall, and perhaps the air ducts. It didn’t worry me too much: it didn’t sound like bugs or mice. It was the soft but distinct sound of a large volume of what sounded like sand. Sand that would slide behind the re-plastered wall and accumulate behind the baseboard. Sand that seemed to move as though caught in a draft. It wasn’t completely continuous - there were breaks once in a while, then just as I was falling asleep, it would continue again, just loud enough to wake me up again. I thought I could try to get used to the noise, but something about it was so oppressive and persistent that it was impossible to ignore. It wasn’t overwhelmingly loud, yet it still penetrated any kind of ear plugs I could find at the drugstore. I actually left the apartment after the first sleepless night and stayed at my friend Jessy’s, but after a couple of days, I realized I was overstaying my welcome. Jessy didn’t understand why I couldn’t just go to sleep in the new apartment I had raved about the week before. So I went back, and tried again. I couldn’t make it work. After two more sleepless nights, I asked Jessy to sleep over with me. Nighttime rolled around, and she settled down on the futon. I turned off the lights and lay flat on my back, not expecting to be able to fall asleep. I heard it as soon as my eyelids started to feel heavy. The rush of sand behind the walls and ceiling. Moving, dribbling, settling here and there around the place. Jessy stirred. She could clearly hear it, too. Neither of us slept that night. The next day, Jessy let me sleep over at her place without a fuss. Once we had both rested up, she offered to take a look inside the wall. She wasn’t a construction worker, but she had helped family members with home renovations before and thought it would be worth it to see if there was something in there, like sawdust, that was being pushed around by a draft at night. She arrived at my apartment and taped a plastic tarp down on the floor in one corner to catch any dust or plaster that came from the wall. She measured out a small rectangle, marked it with a pencil, then used what looked like a box-cutter to slice through the drywall. As she drew the blade across the penciled line, what appeared to be incredibly fine black sand began to pour out. Jessy paused, waiting for the sand to stop. It poured and poured from the tiny wound onto the plastic sheet below. It was dark grey and uneven. Some particles were heavy enough to make a skittering sound, while others were nearly invisible and whirled upwards to hang in the air. It was also unstable. I touched one corner of the mound gathering on the tarp and felt the larger particles collapse under my fingers into fine, dark, dust. Several more moments passed, but the flow of sand from the wall wasn’t stopping. The mound below Jessy’s incision kept growing larger and larger until it surpassed the edges of the sheet and spilled out onto the polished concrete floor. We waited for a long time. I don’t remember exactly how long, but it felt like the stream of particles coming out of the wall would never end. Eventually, it did stop, but when we tried to pick it up in the tarp, it scattered all over the place. I almost cried. Black dust covered my furniture, and our clothes. It was all over the walls. So I stayed at Jessy’s place for the next few nights. I was dreading the return to my apartment, afraid of what ash-covered disaster I would come home to. Jessy offered to let me stay until I found a renter, but I refused. I had paid so much money. I was determined to make this apartment work. So I went back the following afternoon. I was surprised to see that the mess I had fled several days before was completely gone. The hole in the drywall was still there, of course. But I couldn’t spot a speck of black dust anywhere. Even the tarp was clean. I didn’t have an explanation for it, and neither did the building’s concierge. He assured me that no one had entered my apartment while I was gone. I asked if someone from maintenance might have come in, but the concierge denied it. I had an uneventful afternoon. I showered and unpacked a few more things. I set up my new coffee table and topped it with a blown-glass fruit bowl filled with fresh apples. I rolled out a thick-pile shag carpet and positioned a few chairs on top of it. I still needed a sofa, but the place was starting to shape up. When I went to bed that night, I couldn’t hear anything coming from the walls. I supposed that the hole in the wall allowed the sand to escape and that the noise issue would be gone. Unfortunately, I was wrong. The sand wasn’t in the walls anymore though. I could hear it rushing around in the main room of my apartment. I rolled out of bed and opened my bedroom door. The dark dust had swirled into the shape of what appeared to be a slaughterhouse pig. It snorted, and shook its head a little to help the last bits of ash settle into place. I couldn’t move. I was afraid to let the ash pig out of my sight, even for the moment it would take to reach backwards and turn on my bedside lamp. I just stood there, my body stiff, my eyes locked on the creature. The pig, by contrast, seemed completely relaxed. It shuffled around the apartment, bumping into furniture and rubbing dark ash everywhere it went. When it turned its back to me, I managed to gather the courage to reach over and tap the button at the base of my lamp. For some reason, I expected the pig to disappear when the lights turned on. It didn’t. Now apparently able to see, it moved with more energy and began exploring the apartment with greater enthusiasm. It sniffed at my unopened boxes, then wandered to the kitchen. I slowly released the breath I had unknowingly been holding, and tried to massage the tension out of my shoulders with my fingers. Ok... it’s a ghost pig. It could be worse. I muttered some small comforts to myself as I tried not to cry. As my heart rate started to return to normal, I heard a crash from the main room. I couldn’t help but let out a small scream. Something fragile had broken, and I could hear it crunching under the pig’s hooves. It must have been the glass fruit bowl on the low coffee table. I could hear the pig crunching on the apples for about ten more minutes before it settled down. There was no chance that I was going to go back to sleep. I waited until I couldn’t hear anything coming from the next room. Then I waited another half an hour. Once a full hour had gone by, the fear had largely passed, and I felt ready to venture through the half-open bedroom door. The pig was still there. It had nestled into the white shag carpet, apparently sleeping. It was surrounded by broken glass and apple cores. My fruit bowl was destroyed. Black ash covered the coffee table and hung in the air. I stood there. Who was I supposed to call? The concierge wouldn’t be back for another three hours. The pig lay on the shag carpet, occasionally stirring in its sleep. I began to carefully sweep up the broken glass. As the hours passed, the sun began to rise over the lake, and as gorgeous golden light flooded the room, the ash on the furniture that I had been trying to clean began to fade away. I turned to the ghost pig and caught one last glimpse of it as it disappeared. The pig had been back every night ever since. As the days have gone by, I found myself reconciling with the spectral intruder. I mean, most days I wouldn’t wake up in time for the sunrise without *his* help. Of course, I had to make a few changes in my life to live in harmony with the ghost pig. I now know to avoid leaving fragile crockery out on the table. I make sure to leave some easily accessible fruit on the floor; that makes it less tempting for him to try to open up the cupboards and make a mess. Most nights I sleep well, now. My advice for other potential condo buyers is to keep an open mind. When you walk through the right door, you’ll know it. And don’t ever let a building’s quirks stop you from following your heart.