We Have a House Spirit and His Name is Fridolin. | Favorite Everyday Life

I no longer remember exactly when we first noticed it. It was probably the oven rack.

Not that an oven rack is a particularly remarkable item – you slide it into the oven, you take it out with hot food, you let it cool down, put it away in the cupboard, and forget about it until the next time you need it for a casserole. Until one day you want to retrieve the rack from the cupboard and realize: it’s no longer there. Nowhere. Not in the shelf where we store the baking trays. Not in that shallow drawer under the stove, which is explicitly meant for storing the rack but is too small for two baking trays and a rack. And not anywhere else. A substantial oven rack, which you can’t just overlook between two envelopes… simply gone. 🧐

The baking tray followed sometime later. At first, we speculated that someone might have taken it to work or to friends to transport a dessert or something similar and forgotten it there. Intense interrogations, witness questioning, consulting the calendars of all the roommates from the past months, and of course, a thorough reorganization of our already very tidy household yielded no results.

Then it was the egg cooker. It always stood, always, always in the same spot in the cupboard. We didn’t use it often, but when we did, it was reliably there. Until recently – suddenly, no trace of it. No one could remember it being broken and possibly disposed of. An egg cooker is not exactly something you drag to a party.

Everything’s gone. 🤷‍♀️

It took us a while to draw the only logical conclusion. But eventually, it stood there inescapably in the room, just like the egg cooker used to stand in the cupboard: We have a house spirit.

His name is Fridolin.

If you’re thinking of creaking floorboards, damp stone walls, and wildly romantic ivy growing on the facade, you’re mistaken. We don’t live in an enchanted old building with history and secret passages. We live in a house that I built myself ten years ago. Floor plan known, materials known, no previous tenants, no unresolved incidents in the past. There’s nothing here that would logically explain a spirit.

And yet, there he is: Fridolin.

You can find the following here:

• Meet Fridolin.
• A culinarily curious little fellow
• Bonnie is a silent victim
• The attempt with the scouring milk
• The thing with the spoon
• The moth
• Attempt at a character study
• What to do when you have a house spirit?
• An open ending

Meet Fridolin.

I want to emphasize at this point that I am not a superstitious person. I do not believe in ghosts, nor in supernatural appearances, and certainly not in the kind of beings that walk through walls and perform creepy acts in horror movies or Supernatural. What I do believe in are facts. And the facts are as follows: An oven rack, a baking tray, and an egg cooker have disappeared from our household without anyone having a plausible explanation for it.

I have considered all rational possibilities. Did someone throw them away? No, because you don’t accidentally throw away an oven rack. Did someone borrow them? No one borrows an egg cooker and doesn’t return it. Moreover, that would be so absurd that we would have remembered it. Are the items simply somewhere we haven’t looked? This theory does not hold up against a certain number of cupboard inventories, and as I said, it’s quite tidy here thanks to my inner Monk.

So: Fridolin.

I named our house spirit Fridolin because that name wonderfully fits a being that seems to have a clear idea of what it wants and what it does not want while haunting kitchen cupboards. Fridolin sounds like someone who has principles. Who does not steal indiscriminately, but selectively. Who has developed a taste.

And that’s what’s interesting about Fridolin: he clearly has a plan.

A Culinarily Curious Little Fellow

When you look at the previous disappearances, a pattern emerges: oven rack. Baking tray. Egg cooker. These are not random items; they are all kitchen equipment. Fridolin is not interested in books, socks, the remote control, or glasses – although recently stolen glasses are actually a classic in the relevant house spirit literature. No, our Fridolin has a culinary interest. He wants, in my theory, to bake and cook. Or at least keep that option open.

The disappearance of the egg cooker particularly occupied my mind. An egg cooker is not a glamorous device. It cooks eggs. That’s its only function, and it fulfills it with a certain dull reliability. Why would a house spirit steal an egg cooker?! He can’t really tease us with it; we use the thing far too rarely. So either Fridolin particularly likes perfectly boiled eggs, or he intends to eat healthier in the future.

I’m betting on the former. Fridolin seems like someone who likes 5-minute-and-not-a-second-longer eggs. Moreover, he doesn’t seem to have much of a balanced diet, as there’s also the matter of the chocolate…

About once a year, I get cravings for coffee chocolate. I generally almost never eat chocolate, but sometimes it just has to be. So I recently bought a bar and put it in the fridge; if I’m going to eat chocolate, it has to be cold and snap when bitten. My roommates prefer other types of chocolate and regularly buy them in sufficient quantities in the quiet hope that they will last a few weeks. They never last a few weeks. I already knew that – I had just attributed it to other factors that I won’t elaborate on here.

Well – after the purchase, I forgot my coffee chocolate for a few days. And when I finally tiptoed to the fridge, there was… only half a bar left in the package. 🤔

I live, I should mention at this point, in a shared apartment with my best friend and her family. This is usually information that should not be overlooked in connection with missing chocolate. Shared apartments and chocolate are a complicated story, and I don’t want to accuse anyone. But all the roommates sincerely professed their innocence and added that they didn’t even like coffee chocolate. Well. That leaves Fridolin as the prime suspect!

Sweets and chips seem to suit him in general. There is a strange discrepancy in our household between the amount of sweets and snacks that are purchased and the amount that is actually still available when you look for them. We have long struggled for explanations, held roommate crisis talks. Now we finally know the reason… 👻

Bonnie is a Silent Victim

There is another point that adds a nuance to Fridolin’s character profile that I do not want to conceal: he also seems to have no qualms about less high-quality food.

We now have a dog. Bonnie is a sincere animal with impeccable character and a very clear relationship with food – she likes it, she wants it, and she does not share it. That’s not a criticism; it’s just a description. Bonnie and her bowl are one.

Or at least they were, until Fridolin started to take an interest.

The routine is always the same: we bring Bonnie’s bowl into the kitchen in the evening, fill it to the brim with her canned food, place Bonnie’s bowl in the living room, and then usually leave the room to continue cooking in the kitchen. Seconds later – it doesn’t even take a minute – Bonnie stands sadly at the kitchen door. With eyes that say: An injustice has occurred. 🥺 The bowl is empty. She got nothing. She can’t explain it, but she urgently requests a refill.

The bowl is indeed empty. Spotless, to be precise.

I want to point out at this point that I do not consider Bonnie to be above any suspicion. She is, after all, a dog. Dogs and full bowls have a known dynamic. But Bonnie is an honest creature and would never deceive us! Also, the speed of the process – seconds, really just seconds – suggests that there are forces at work here that exceed the capabilities of a simple dog.

So Fridolin not only likes chocolate and popcorn. Fridolin also devours dog food.

This is a development that surprised me a bit. One imagines a house spirit with culinary ambitions to be somewhat more selective. Baking tray, egg cooker, favorite chocolate – that sounded like someone with standards. Dog food sounds like someone who is simply hungry and doesn’t hesitate.

Bonnie, in any case, continues to profess her innocence. I believe her. Most of the time.

The Attempt with the Scouring Milk

At some point, it occurred to me that Fridolin’s culinary interest might need to be understood as part of a larger pattern. Whoever collects oven racks, baking trays, and egg cookers thinks in categories. Kitchen. Household. Perhaps, I thought, Fridolin is not only a gourmet but also someone with a penchant for domesticity. Someone who wants not only to cook but also to live and likes to actively contribute.

That seemed like a real opportunity!

I didn’t want to simply tolerate Fridolin. I wanted to show him that we acknowledge his presence, that we appreciate it, and that if he’s already living here, we would also be willing to give him a meaningful task. No one should say we are bad hosts.

So I started making him offers.

I placed scouring milk and cloths in the bathroom, clearly visible, a definite invitation. I left the room, gave him time… I didn’t expect anything, but I hoped.

Well. Nothing. The bathroom looked the same the next morning as it did before. The cloth was still there, dry, the scouring milk untouched, and the sink not scrubbed.

But I didn’t give up that quickly! Maybe a spirit just can’t handle liquids? So I placed the duster in the living room. Prominently on the coffee table, where Fridolin couldn’t possibly overlook it. The duster is nice and light and handy; I even put a new Swiffer cloth on it to see if Fridolin would use it. Again, I left him time. Again, I hoped.

And… again nothing. 😶

It took me a while to accept that. But eventually, I had to draw the conclusion that the data suggests: Fridolin does not clean. He has, if you look at it soberly, a very selective understanding of domesticity – namely one that encompasses only the pleasant parts. He cooks. He eats. He drags things away that he needs for whatever. But cleaning? No.

Seen this way, Fridolin is a perfectly normal roommate. 🫠

The Thing with the Spoon

The most direct sign of life that Fridolin has given us was a few weeks ago when I took two bowls for popcorn out of the cupboard. I always handle things carefully, so I don’t slam the cupboard doors open, and I also place dishes down gently...