I want to share a story that's been making the rounds in the Jung-gu area of Daegu.
I can't say for certain it's true. It came to me secondhand, from someone who's lived in that neighborhood a long time.
Somewhere in Jung-gu, in an old residential quarter where the alleyways bend like a crooked spine, there's a house. From the outside it looks like nothing — just a worn-down place, moss creeping up the outer wall, a few roof tiles stacked above the gate. The kind of house you'd walk past without a second glance. Nothing remarkable about it.
But they say that whoever becomes the owner of that house — only the owner — starts to unravel before long.
I heard about one man who bought it a few years back. He was in his fifties, had poured every last bit of his retirement savings into the place. The first month after moving in, he was fine. But somewhere into the second month, he started noticing something wrong in his throat. Before the third month was out, the doctors were telling him something serious. His family was perfectly healthy — his wife, his children, all of them eating and sleeping under the same roof. Only him.
Strange, isn't it.
And it wasn't just him. According to the older residents, the house has changed hands more times than anyone can count, and each time, something similar happens. One man's business collapsed overnight. Another had an accident with no explanation. Then the family that's left puts the house on the market for whatever they can get and leaves in a hurry. There was even a time, they say, when someone moved out without taking all their things.
But there's one detail I heard that I haven't been able to shake.
A person who'd lived in that neighborhood since childhood mentioned that when you pass by the house, you sometimes catch a light flickering inside in the early hours before dawn. Not the stuttering of a faulty fluorescent bulb — something different. A low, yellowish glow. Even during the periods when no one was living there.
One morning, passing by at that hour, this person glanced through the gap in the gate without really meaning to — and saw something sitting on the wooden floor of the veranda. A rice bowl. A small rice bowl, placed right in the center of the floor.
It had rice in it. Still warm, they said. Steam rising from it.
They told me their skin went cold all at once, and their legs simply wouldn't move. Like their feet had been fixed to the ground. They stood there, unable to look away, and then something like a shadow passed beside the bowl. Slightly smaller than a person. No sound at all. It simply drifted past. Slowly, without a sound.
They haven't gone down that alley since.
The older people in the neighborhood have known about that house for a long time. They know — and yet no one has ever reported it to the district office, or done anything about it. They just leave it alone. They take different routes, and when someone new comes along who doesn't know, they say nothing. They just watch.
The house is still there, they say. In the same spot.
Not long ago, it went back on the market.
