I have a story for you today — something that happened over in the Jongno area.
It didn't happen to me directly. I heard it from someone I know, and that person heard it from someone else. So how much of it is true, I honestly can't say.
It started a few years back, apparently. The first reports came from the alleyways around Gwanak-gu, but at some point the same kind of story began circulating through the residential streets of Jongno as well.
It's about a woman. She was living alone on the third floor of an older villa building somewhere in Jongno. One night, coming home from work, she stopped for a moment in front of her door. Something felt off. She told herself she was just tired and let it go — but the next morning, on her way out, she saw it.
There were markings beside her doorbell.
Small letters. She couldn't tell if it was ballpoint or marker, but whoever wrote it had pressed close to the wall — the lines were faint, barely there. Two rows of symbols, something between Greek and Latin characters. Things like α… X… β… J. A combination that meant nothing she could make sense of.
At first she assumed it was kids messing around. She wiped it off and forgot about it.
Then similar photographs started appearing in the local online community. The same kind of markings had been found at other villa buildings, in other alleyways across Jongno. That was when the chill finally set in for her.
An interpretation began to spread among people. The markings were a code, the theory went. Someone preparing to commit crimes, going door to door and leaving information marked in symbols. Things like: this unit is a woman living alone, this one is empty during the day. Each symbol supposedly meant something specific. Nothing was ever confirmed, but the story kept circulating.
Quite a few people filed police reports, apparently. But here's the strange part — the CCTV footage showed nothing. Some of the buildings had cameras covering the alleyway, and in the footage from the night before each marking appeared to the following morning, not a single person passed through. No one ever determined who had written them, or when.
Even after wiping the markings from her doorbell, the woman couldn't sleep properly for some time. There was a reason for that.
About four days after she'd cleaned it off, she woke past midnight to use the bathroom. That was when she heard something from the direction of the front door. Not scratching. Not knocking. Just the sense of something in contact with the door. That was how she described it — not a sound, but a vibration. Something she felt through the soles of her feet rather than heard with her ears.
She couldn't move. She stayed frozen until, after a little while, it went quiet.
The next morning, when she went out, there was something written again in the spot she had wiped clean.
Whether it was the same symbols as before or different ones, she couldn't say — she'd been too frightened to look properly. She just took a photograph and came straight back downstairs.
What happened after that, I don't know. That's where the story ends for me.
But the person who told me this said one last thing before we finished. They said to go check your own doorbell. Especially if you live in an older building.
The thing is, though — that wasn't what stayed with me.
Not the part about the markings coming back after she'd wiped them away. Not the part about the CCTV showing no one.
What I kept turning over in my mind was this: the woman had felt something was wrong the night before she ever saw the markings.
Which means that whatever it was — it was already there before she knew to look.
