Ah, should I even be telling this… I heard it firsthand, from someone who actually lives in that neighborhood. I can't swear to every detail, but it's about an old Japanese-style house somewhere up in Seodaesin-dong — the kind you find when you turn into one of those hillside alleys. Low roof, long eaves hanging down. Whether anyone still lives there, I honestly don't know. But that's the house.
So the story goes… there's a well tucked into the far corner of the courtyard. Not just any well, though — it's got a cover on it, and that cover is plastered with talismans. Not just one. Layers of them. Yellowed paper covered in dense, hurried brushstrokes, sheet after sheet pressed together and bound with cord so they won't come loose in the rain. Someone actually verified this. Said they saw it with their own eyes.
This person was passing through that alley one evening in late autumn when they noticed the gate was open. They looked inside without really thinking about it. And there it was, across the courtyard — the stone rim of the well, black with moss, and on top of the cover, all those talismans. The strange part was that it happened to be a particular day on the lunar calendar. They weren't certain, but they thought it was around Baekjung.
They stopped and stood there looking — and then a mudang came out from inside the house. She didn't meet their eyes. Didn't acknowledge them at all. She simply walked past as though they weren't there and lowered herself down in front of the well. Quietly. Without a word. And then she began to murmur something, and the sound was wrong. One voice, but it came back doubled, like an echo — except there was nowhere for an echo to come from. That was the part that frightened them most, they said. Why would sound fold back on itself in a courtyard that small?
They knew they should leave, but their feet wouldn't move. They just stood there. The mudang pressed her hand over the talismans on the well's cover and poured something out, letting it run down — and at that moment, a smell rose from the well. Earth, but not ordinary earth. The smell of water that had been sitting for a very long time, of wet wood rotting somewhere deep. And the thing was, they said, it hadn't drifted over on the wind. It had simply appeared, right there in front of their face.
Then the mudang raised her head. Not looking toward them, not looking at the well — somewhere in between. She lifted her hand and drew it slowly down over the cover, over all those yellowed talismans. The way you might try to soothe someone.
The next morning, they woke up to find two lines on the back of their hand, like nail marks. They tried to tell themselves they'd scratched themselves in their sleep — but the direction was wrong. The marks ran from the inside outward.
The house is still there, apparently. And the talismans are still on the well. Someone keeps replacing them with fresh ones.
