Ah, should I even be saying this… It didn't happen to me directly, I just heard it from someone — but the person telling it was so dead serious that I got chills without even meaning to. I can't say for certain, but it's about a luxury apartment right in the heart of Gangnam. I won't say the name. Apparently, people who know just know.
The building itself looks completely respectable. Marble in the lobby, a clean security booth, the kind of place where you take one look and think, the people who live here are different. But among certain circles, people whisper about it — you just say "you know that apartment?" and everyone immediately does.
The story goes that a few years back, a fairly well-known actress moved in. Lead roles in dramas, that level. Less than a month after she moved in, she suddenly collapsed on set. Exhaustion, they said at first. But the strange thing was, no matter how many tests the hospital ran, every result came back normal. Physically fine, but her face stayed pale, she kept losing weight, and the staff around her said she'd just stare blankly into empty space. She ended up dropping out of the drama midway through, and after that, she vanished completely.
The person who told me all this apparently worked a short stint as a security guard at that apartment. I couldn't verify it myself. But what he said keeps coming back to me and I can't make it go away.
According to him, between two and three in the morning — only during that window — footsteps would come walking down from the far end of the corridor. It's a carpeted hallway. There shouldn't be any sound at all. But he said they came through heavy, slow, and perfectly clear. At first he figured it was just noise from upstairs. But one night he followed the sound. He walked all the way to the end of the corridor, and there was nothing. Just a wall. A dead end. But the moment he stood in front of that wall, the temperature of the air changed completely. It was the middle of summer, and yet it felt like he could have breathed out a cloud — that cold just rose up and hit him.
But stranger than that was the smell.
Incense. Not the kind you'd burn at a temple — something sweeter, heavier. The kind of smell that hangs in a funeral parlor when someone has just died. And he couldn't figure out where it was coming from. It was spread through the entire corridor, but when he checked the ventilation, nothing. When he sniffed at each door, it wasn't coming from any one place.
But you know what actually gave me the worst chills?
That night, after he'd followed the footsteps and was standing there in front of the wall — cold sweat, legs that wouldn't move — someone placed a hand on his shoulder from behind. Actually placed it there. The full weight of a palm, pressing down. He turned around, and there was no one. An empty hallway.
But the hand on his shoulder wasn't cold.
It was warm.
That's what scared him most, he said. If it had been cold, he could have told himself it was a ghost. But it was warm — warm like a living person's hand. He quit that same night. Didn't even collect his things.
The rumor that everyone who passes through that apartment comes out a little wrong is apparently still going around. Whatever is in there, I don't know. But that warm hand — whether it was something living or not — that's the part I still can't stop thinking about when I'm trying to sleep.
