Ah, should I even be telling this… It didn't happen to me directly, but the person who told me was shaking so badly that something shifted in me too, after that day. You want to hear it?
Right in the middle of Gangnam. You know those sleek office buildings near the station — glass facades, lobbies polished to a shine. An IT company moved into one of the upper floors. They'd been out on the outskirts of Seoul and relocated to Gangnam when they expanded. I'm not certain, but I heard this was about ten or so years ago.
When they were signing the lease, the old man who owned the building apparently pulled the CEO aside and warned him — plainly, insistently. Said the land had history, that it was an old dokkaebi ground, that they absolutely had to perform a rite before moving in, that even just setting out a bowl of makgeolli as a formality would do — he went that far. But the company people just laughed it off. What kind of company does a shamanistic rite in this day and age? I get it, honestly. Don't you?
But from the very week they moved in, strange things started happening.
At first it was just employees falling ill one by one. People who'd been perfectly fine suddenly getting nosebleeds, or headaches that dragged on for days with no cause. They'd go to the doctor and be told nothing was wrong, to go home and rest. So everyone chalked it up to the stress of the move, to the change in environment, and let it go.
But the real strangeness came at night.
There was a team that worked late often. One evening — deadlines piling up, a handful of people still there at eleven, midnight — the office lights on, the air conditioning droning in that hollow way it does at that hour. One employee came back from the bathroom and caught a smell in the corridor. Thick and sour. Makgeolli. But no one had brought any alcohol into the office. They were certain of it.
As that employee was about to sit back down, a sound came from an empty desk a little ways off. Laughter. It's hard to describe exactly — the person said it was neither a man's nor a woman's, but it was the kind of laughter that felt wrong in its cheerfulness. A snickering, like this — heh heh heh. Except muffled, as if the mouth were closed, low and unbroken. And it wasn't just once. It kept getting closer, little by little.
The moment the employee startled up from their seat — they felt something rising in their throat. And then, actually, they vomited blood. Bright red. Not a lot, but unmistakably blood.
The hospital found nothing wrong. Overwork, they said.
After that, the story spread through the team, and someone quietly asked the old building owner about it. He let out a long sigh and said: "That's why I told you to hold the rite. That ground needs to be shown respect before it stays quiet. If you don't appease it, it starts asking."
The company left not long after. Officially, they announced it was due to deteriorating business. But everyone who'd been inside knew.
What really made my skin crawl was what came after.
The next company that moved into that space didn't last either. And the one after that. The building is still there — but that one floor keeps turning over. Companies move in, then leave. Move in, then leave.
Then one night, someone passing by the building late looked up toward the windows on that floor. In the darkened glass of the empty office, something was standing there.
Standing like a person. And laughing — heh heh heh.
