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If I want to say “I heard that many people died in this place in the past” with the “have heard” tense, which one of those two below is the correct one?

  1. I have heard that many people died in this apartment.

  2. I have heard that many people had died in this apartment.

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1

The first is correct:

I have heard that many people died in this apartment.

Informally we might say, I've heard many people died in this apartment.

The second uses the past perfect. It is well explained here. And you can test yourself.

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  • Saying, I have heard that many people have died in this apartment, would work just as well and be idiomatic. It's have and had that don't work together.
    – EllieK
    Commented Dec 21, 2022 at 16:17
  • Yes, your sentence works fine, but "have died" is not what the OP asked about. And I think we CAN say, "I have heard that many people had died in this apartment by the time the ambulance arrived."
    – Old Brixtonian
    Commented Dec 22, 2022 at 1:41
  • I'm not sure we can say that. I heard that many people had died before the ambulance..., works and I have heard that many people died before the ambulance.... works but I have heard that many had... doesn't work. Your past perfect is clashing with your present perfect. Drop one and everything works.
    – EllieK
    Commented Dec 22, 2022 at 16:21
  • Hmm. This needs more thought than I have time for at the moment. Or maybe more than I'm capable of! We'll see after Christmas.
    – Old Brixtonian
    Commented Dec 23, 2022 at 9:18
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The first sentence is correct.

The second is incorrect because past perfect represents a time that is more past relative to some simple past time, "the past of the past", but there is no simple past time in that sentence for the past perfect to be more past than.

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