SHARED SMOKE

 Twenty-four years ago, in a townhouse-style apartment, a routine bath time for a young mother and her infant son turned into a moment of inexplicable terror—one that would later intersect eerily with the sudden death of their building’s manager.

The tenant, a stay-at-home mother (SAHM) with a nine-month-old baby, lived with her husband in a two-floor unit perched above the building’s management office. The manager, described by the tenant as an older, often unpleasant woman who chain-smoked Camel non-filter cigarettes, had been a source of tension since they moved in. The manager, nicknamed “Juno” by the tenant in reference to the unhelpful social worker from Beetlejuice, had expressed resentment over renting the townhouse to them, making racially disparaging remarks about the husband and falsely accusing the couple of lying about the pregnancy to secure the unit.

Maintenance was a persistent struggle. During a cold winter, the apartment had no functioning central heat, forcing the family to rely on space heaters. Other issues included an arcing ceiling fan and a duct-taped garbage disposal.

On the day in question, the mother was bathing her baby in an upstairs bathroom, using a space heater placed on the counter to ward off the chill. As she prepared to lift her child from the tub, the stationary heater suddenly began rocking violently. Acting on a surge of instinctual dread, she grabbed the baby’s suction-cup bath seat, lifting the child out and over the side of the tub onto the floor just as the heater yanked to the end of its cord.

The heater struck the shower
door, bounced off the tub, and landed on its side on the floor—triggering its automatic shut-off. But the danger seemed to transcend the physical.

According to the tenant, the corner of the bathroom then grew inexplicably darker, “filling up with shadows” despite no change in lighting or source of smoke. Simultaneously, a thick, unmistakable smell of Camel non-filter cigarettes filled the air—the same brand smoked incessantly by the manager, Juno. The odor was so potent it induced coughing and chest pain, yet no visible haze was present. Most unsettling was an overwhelming sensation of hatred and malice, as if a hostile presence were in the room.

Frightened, the mother grabbed her baby and a towel and fled downstairs, refusing to return to the second floor until her husband came home.

When her husband returned, he investigated the bathroom. He found no electrical issues, no smoke damage, no residual cigarette smell, and the space heater, when returned to the counter, operated without rocking. He initially dismissed the incident.

Later that evening, however, the couple heard the manager’s adult son causing a commotion downstairs near the mailboxes. It was then they learned the shocking news: Juno, the building manager, had suffered a massive heart attack in her office earlier that day. She was found dead in her chair, a Camel non-filter cigarette still in her hand—at approximately the same time the mother experienced the rocking heater, the chilling shadows, and the overwhelming scent of her cigarettes.

The tenant remains convinced that the events were connected—a terrifying, inexplicable moment of crisis that mirrored, and perhaps somehow intersected with, the manager’s passing in the space directly below them. Whether viewed as a profound coincidence or something more, the story endures as a deeply personal and unsettling memory of a day when domestic routine collided with the inexplicable.