Now, this goes back a ways… well, not that far back, actually. Happened just a few years ago, and I didn't see it myself — only heard it told. But listen anyway.
You know Jeju Island. Plenty of people walk the Olle trails out there. And somewhere along one of those trails, there's a place called Geomun-so. It means the Black Pool — and doesn't that name alone give you a feeling? The forest around it is so dense that proper light can't get through even at midday, they say. The leaves knit together so thickly you can barely see the sky. So you can imagine how dark the water is. They say if you lean over and look down, you can't make out your own reflection. Just black water, black as ink, staring back at nothing.
And there's an old rumor about that place. A young woman is there — a woman who died with a grievance still burning in her. Nobody knows exactly how she went. Some say she drowned. Some say she was pushed. Nothing's certain. But whatever the wrong done to her, it runs so deep that she's there still.
The strange thing about this ghost is that she doesn't only draw in women. Men too, they say. She doesn't discriminate. Doesn't that make it worse, somehow?
The story I heard goes like this. A few years back, a man walked that Olle trail alone. He was in his forties, the kind who hiked often and knew his way around the outdoors. It was late afternoon, and a fine rain was falling. The sound of it hissed softly against the leaves, and the smell of the forest rose up around him. He was just passing the path beside Geomun-so when —
His feet wouldn't carry him forward.
He kept drifting toward the water. Not by choice — his body simply leaned that way, as though something had taken hold of the weight of him. He tried to pull himself together, tried to turn his head away. And that was when he heard it.
Weeping.
Not the rain. Not the wind. Something closer than that — close as a mouth pressed right up against his ear, a sound so quiet it was almost nothing: a soft, hitching sob, the swallowing of breath. It seemed to resonate from somewhere inside his own head. He spun around —
In the middle of the pool, just beneath the surface, a white arm was reaching upward.
Not floating. Rising — as though pushing up from below, stretching toward the sky from just under the skin of the water. The fingers were spread wide. The wrist was bent at an angle. The skin looked pale and taut, bloated the way skin gets after long submersion. And it moved. Very slowly. Not drifting — gesturing. Beckoning. Come.
He locked up where he stood. His legs refused him. His breath caught and stopped in his throat. The rain went on hissing, but the weeping didn't stop — if anything it seemed to draw nearer. His body kept tilting toward the water.
He couldn't tell you how he ran. When his senses came back to him he was far down the path, gasping, bent double. He made it to where other people were before he could breathe properly again. And when he looked down at his feet —
His shoes were soaked through to the ankle.
He had no memory of stepping into the water.
It's not certain what happened out there. But that's why people say you should never look into that pool when you pass by Geomun-so.
Because something down in the water might already be looking up at you first.
