If you ever buy your apartment off the plan… Research it well beforehand. Don’t think it’s just dodgy construction you have to worry about.
Warning: contains horror themes
Author’s Note:
You hear about buying off the plan as being this thing you should always be wary of doing. Never know what you’ll get, when all you have to go off of are computer-generated pictures that try so hard to look real.
I think, in part, it’s just that that’s frightening: that they try to make those pictures look real. Those glossy spreads in magazines, covering local real estate for sale, don’t tell you straight up this isn’t built yet. That you have to go looking for that admission somewhere in the sales pitch for the flat. There’s something ominous in that for me. Like they’re trying to trick you, and the reality of the place is unknown.
That sort of fear, for me, bled into the real life horror stories of buildings with shoddy construction. Such as the Grenfell Tower fire, in London, where, in 2017, 72 people died as a result of that far-too-flammable exterior coating. Or that horrendous building collapse in Florida this year. In June 2021, people were sleeping a bit past 1 in the morning when the Champlain Towers South building collapsed. That wasn’t a new build that killed 98 people, though, but rather oversights in maintenance and reporting.
You hear of cracks in high rise apartments. You see them. My sister’s flat, back when she lived in one, had a crack that got wider every year. Big enough to fit a marker in by the time they moved. I saw cracks growing wider on the ground floor of a tower I’ve worked in.
And then, of course, I had the fun experience of going up the side of a tower of apartments under construction in this rickety temporary elevator tacked onto the side of it.
All of that together inspired a healthy dose of fear in the possibilities that face you living in mega structures that may not be all you think they are. But rather than a story based on my terror going up that rickety elevator, or my wariness about structural cracks and fires, I thought I’d take it a different direction. Just to spite my own fear, I suppose.
Attributions:
Podcast intro and outro music:
The Dark Tile , by Rafael Krux. Full licence purchased.
Episode soundtrack:
Otherworld Evil by Brian Holtz Music
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/7546-otherworld-evil
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Windswept Plains by Brian Holtz Music
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/8039-windswept-plains
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Lost Place Atmospheres 002 by Sascha Ende®
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/7665-lost-place-atmospheres-002
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
The Lantern Library 