LifeStory | Zaki
Zaki Rubenstein | Do You Have a Favorite Story or Adventure?
"Do You Have a Favorite Story or Adventure?"
“I have a ghost story.”
You have a ghost story?
“Yeah.”
Go.
“Okay. So I was traveling, I was backpacking through Turkey with an ex-boyfriend, and we took a midnight overnight bus from Istanbul to this place called Cappadocia. Cappadocia is on the very eastern border of Turkey. And if you Google it, you'll see that it's very distinct looking. It looks like a foreign planet. It has these formations, these like cave formations that come out of the ground, sort of like most caves are in like a mountain. These are like standalone caves, right. And so we were, you know, exhausted when we got there. We checked into our little Airbnb, not Airbnb, but like a bed and breakfast kind of place. And we took a nap and it was just like, I didn't sleep very well. I was really uncomfortable, got up, went to dinner, were exhausted by the time night fell. So we went to sleep and I noticed before we went to sleep it was, there was, you know, this place was kind of weird. It had like a giant cross on the ceiling. And we were staying inside of these caves, so there was no windows. So when you close the door, it was like pitch black, like you couldn't see in front of your face, like your hand, like nothing. So we went to sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night and I'm lying there like there's something in the room with us. And I'm just like debating whether I should wake up my boyfriend or not. And I'm like, I don't know, this feels weird. Maybe I'm just being paranoid. So then I hear, Hey, Zaki, you awake? And he woke up and I'm like, Yeah. And he's like, There's something in the room with us… And I didn’t say anything, right?! So every single hair on my body stood up. I was like, Oh My God, that’s what I was thinking! So then I was like, oh my God, what do we do? What do we do? What do we do? So he's like, I don't know, maybe like, let's find the light, let’s put on the light because there's a lamp by the bed, right? So we're fumbling around and shit is flying everywhere. We can't see anything. Finally he finds the electric outlet, he turns on the lamp and once the electricity came on, it was gone. Whatever it was, the feeling was gone. But we were so freaked out that we slept outside of our room, like under the stars in front of our door because we were like, refused to be in the room. So then the next day we go to breakfast and I see the proprietor of this bed and breakfast, and I say, you know, I got to tell you, something really weird happened to us last night, and you're probably going to think we're really silly. But then I told him the story and he's like, well, you know, you're like the third person that complained about that room this month. And I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, well, you know that Cappadocia was the first place that the Christians settled after Christ was crucified. And I was like, oh really? Like I kind of pretended that I kind of knew it, but I didn’t do any reading about this place before we went there. And he's like, yeah, the disciples, you know, they fled to this area of the world and they set up the first churches, which is why you have a giant cross on the wall. And he's like, you know, the tradition of burying people in the in the yard of the church, so it kind of started here. But they didn't have yards, so they buried the people in the walls. And I said to him, so there are people buried in the walls. In the room that we're staying in. And he's like, yeah, there's bones in there. And I was like, okay, we outta here! We got on the next bus out. And it was so weird because I don't believe in ghosts and I don't really like, that's not my thing at all, you know? I don't know what happens after we die, but there was something weird going on in that room, and nothing like that has ever happened to me since. But that happened. And there was another human being who felt the same way as me. So, you know, there was corroboration. So that's my ghost story.”
