{"id":748,"date":"2025-06-04T01:31:38","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T23:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dviewpoint.com\/?p=748"},"modified":"2025-06-04T01:36:40","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T23:36:40","slug":"contrato-temporal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dviewpoint.com\/en\/contrato-temporal\/","title":{"rendered":"Temporary Lease"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Since I was very young, I considered myself a skeptic. Maybe because of the way I was raised, or perhaps due to that need to verify and explain everything. Still, over the years, there were experiences that\u2014sometimes unintentionally\u2014pushed me to look beyond the obvious. No matter how rational you are, there are things that simply don\u2019t fit into any scientific model. And although I\u2019m a firm believer in critical thinking, I also believe there\u2019s a boundary\u2014a blurry line\u2014where the unknown peeks through.<\/p>

If you're reading this, you probably share that curiosity. That urge to get closer to what we don't understand. Maybe you've also felt, at some point, a presence\u2014or that something was watching you. Perhaps you've even wondered whether it was real or just your imagination. But some situations, no matter how much we analyze them, resist being revealed. This is one of them.<\/p>

When I was three, my parents moved into a large, old chalet-style house in Bernal, south of Greater Buenos Aires. I have memories from as early as two years old, and I can say with certainty that from the very first day in that house, I felt something. It wasn\u2019t just a presence\u2014it was a very unusual weight. An energy I couldn\u2019t describe, but that, without a doubt, made itself known. That first night, I had a nightmare. And then another. And another. I could only sleep peacefully if I crawled into my parents' bed.<\/p>

Over time, I learned to live with it. To ignore it. To stop thinking about it. But the house remained\u2014present\u2014and every so often, it gave off signs: a sound in the middle of the night, footsteps on the stairs, whispers in the hallways, shadows that weren\u2019t ours. Some neighbors said strange things about the previous owners, but no one ever gave details or confirmed anything. As if talking too much might awaken something.<\/p>

The house was imposing. From what I later learned, it had been built by a priest who was also an architect, sometime in the 1930s or earlier. A neoclassical home of 500 square meters, with white columns, marble floors, a huge salon, and a staircase crowned with a crystal chandelier. It had three bedrooms upstairs, along with two bathrooms. Downstairs, a kitchen-dining area that opened onto a large garden, another bathroom, and a small room at the back of the garage, seemingly meant for a servant.<\/p>

Even though it was clearly a home for the upper class, something about the layout always struck me. The way the spaces were connected reminded me of those old Buenos Aires tenements\u2014buildings adapted to house many people, with subdivided and overlapping areas. I thought about it so often I began dreaming about it. In one of those dreams, after the priest\u2019s death\u2014who, according to history, had no children\u2014the house was occupied by European immigrants of the era (Spaniards, Italians, French, English, even Germans). I could hear their arguments, their shouting, their footsteps, slamming doors, voices slipping through the walls.<\/p>

Some friends who visited felt strange sensations, a kind of discomfort. One of them, who had previous paranormal experiences, once saw a woman in her fifties dressed in black, standing beside the staircase. It took him a few seconds to tell me\u2014he had frozen in place.<\/p>

Years went by, and when I was already in college, after several break-in attempts in the neighborhood, someone finally got in. They tied up my godmother. The police came but did nothing. One officer even joked that with a house like that, he\u2019d rob it too. That was the last straw. My parents decided to move to the city, and we left the house behind.<\/p>

But two years later, I decided to go back.<\/p>

I invited a friend to try living in the house with me. It was far too much space for just one person. We moved in with her two Persian cats. At first, everything seemed normal. But the moment I stepped through the door, the atmosphere was so thick it felt like I was submerged in a deep pool. In the almost 22 years I'd lived there, I\u2019d never felt such oppressive density as I did that day\u2014it was as if \u201csomething\u201d had claimed the house during the time it had been \u201cvacant.\u201d<\/p>

My friend, much more skeptical than me, didn\u2019t feel anything... at least not at first. But as the months went by, she started to change. We both did. We were exhausted, drained of energy, as if something were constantly feeding off us. The air grew even heavier, nearly suffocating. We didn\u2019t argue, there was no conflict. We simply withered.<\/p>

One night, around midnight, I walked over to her room. She was lying in bed, in pajamas, glasses on, reading a book. The cats were asleep beside her. I suggested we go out for coffee at the gas station a few blocks away.<\/p>

We went out just like that, in our pajamas, without thinking. We ordered caf\u00e9 con leche and sat at a table. There was a quiet moment where we looked at each other carefully.
\u201cWe\u2019re like two old people,\u201d I said. \u201cLook at us. We\u2019re wrecked.\u201d
She chuckled wearily.
\u201cLiterally,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s like we\u2019ve been married for forty years, our kids moved out, and we\u2019re still living together out of habit just to avoid the hassle of a divorce. We live with two cats and drink coffee with milk at 1 a.m. like two retirees who forgot to take their sleeping pills.\u201d<\/p>

We laughed a little more, but not out of amusement. It was more of a bitter acknowledgment of what was happening to us. The next day, I went outside and spoke to some of the older neighbors. After a few careful questions, they confirmed the rumors were true: one of the previous owners had committed suicide in the kitchen with a shotgun, after his partner died in an accident.<\/p>

The story fit, though it didn\u2019t fully explain what we felt in that house. Because what was there\u2014if there was something\u2014wasn\u2019t just grief or sadness. It wasn\u2019t just a presence either. It was something deeper, more engulfing, as if it had rooted itself in the house. Something that didn\u2019t want to be seen, but didn\u2019t want to be forgotten either. And we were nothing more than two \"temporary tenants\".<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Since I was very young, I considered myself a skeptic. Maybe because of the way I was raised, or perhaps due to that need to verify and explain everything. Still, over the years, there were experiences that\u2014sometimes unintentionally\u2014pushed me to look beyond the obvious. No matter how rational you are, there are things ... <\/p>\n

Read more “Contrato Temporal”<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cuentos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dviewpoint.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dviewpoint.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dviewpoint.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dviewpoint.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dviewpoint.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/dviewpoint.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":767,"href":"https:\/\/dviewpoint.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions\/767"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dviewpoint.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dviewpoint.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dviewpoint.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dviewpoint.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}