Ghostbusters

In Japan, some apartments have their rents slashed by 20, 30 or even 50 per cent below market rates. The reason is chilling, yet deeply human: someone died there. A quiet natural death, an unnoticed passing in solitude, or a tragic suicide — all become labels under which these units are classified as jiko bukken — haunted properties that have absorbed the emotional residue of the last moments of death.

"My first experience with these stigmatised apartments began in the second semester when I planned to move out of my university's dormitory," said Asad, who is currently doing a master's in a university in Tokyo and needed to save more money to support his sister's marriage back home in Gujranwala.

To many landlords, death is not just folklore — it is a business reality. People hesitate to move into such spaces, fearing bad luck, discomfort, or simply the unsettling knowledge that someone died in the same room. So, to fill vacancies faster, landlords do the most rational thing markets do when facing stigma: they lower the price.

Real estate operates not only on concrete but on perception. In Japan, property agents are legally required to disclose if a death occurred inside, especially if it was unnatural. Even natural deaths matter, particularly because Japan is ageing faster than almost any society in the world. With more elderly living alone, lonely and unnoticed deaths are increasingly common. Some bodies are discovered after weeks — a trend becoming more common in the homeland too.

I still remember accompanying a friend to a realtor's office in Tokyo to rent a jiko bukken apartment. The agent — a woman in her mid-thirties - took the disclosure process so seriously that she called in an English-speaking translator just to ensure we understood every detail of what had happened to the previous tenant. She didn't merely tell us; she performed it. Standing in the middle of the room, she enacted the scene of a resident collapsing from a heart attack in the restroom — a bizarre blend of real estate briefing and live theatre. Only after she was convinced that we fully comprehended the "essential" information were we allowed to sign the contract. To reassure us - or perhaps to frighten us — she made sure nothing was left unsaid.

A death is no longer an isolated tragedy — it is becoming a social phenomenon. As these cases rise, a new industry of Ghostbusters has emerged.

If you are having strands of white hair as you read this script, you must be old enough to remember the movie Ghostbusters, released in 1984, directed by Ivan Reitman and written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, who also star in the film. It has become one of the most iconic pop-culture films of all time, combining science fiction, comedy and paranormal adventure. The story follows three eccentric parapsychologists, who lose their jobs at Columbia University because the faculty sees their ghost research as nonsense. Instead of giving up, they start a ghost-catching business in New York City, calling themselves "Ghostbusters".

Armed with futuristic proton packs and ghost traps, the team begins capturing spirits around the city. They soon gain popularity, hire another member and take on increasingly dangerous paranormal threats.

In Hong Kong and Taiwan, "haunted flats" also rent for less. In Korea, entire buildings lose value upon a suicide. In South Asia, people avoid buying homes where death occurred — sometimes not out of law, but culture and religion.

This leads me to a question I cannot escape: if death stains a room enough to lower its rent, does a happy life ever raise its value? Should a home that heard a child's first words, saw birthdays, meals shared and friendships formed, not be considered enriched rather than neutral? We treat death as an imprint on space — but what about joy? Do rooms really hold memory like fabric holds scent? Perhaps that is why people feel inexplicably at peace in mosques, shrines, churches and spiritual spaces: they are soaked in generations of whispered prayers, trembling hands, quiet confessions and moments of surrender. Does this mean we know very less of what actually surrounds us?