Today I want to share a story that's been circulating around the Chuncheon area.
It's about a house that used to stand in Samcheon-dong. They say it's been demolished now, but the people who know exactly where it stood still tend to avoid that stretch of road. Ask them why, and they all trail off without finishing their answer.
From what I've heard, the house started getting a reputation about ten or so years back. In the beginning it was just an abandoned place — no door, every window broken, one side of the roof caved in. The locals would pass by without so much as glancing at it. As though something told them it was better not to look.
Then people started showing up on dares, one or two at a time.
Among them were three men in their early twenties who went inside one night. One of them talked about it later — nothing confirmed, but this is what he said. The smell hit them the moment they stepped through the door. Not mold. Something sweet and faintly raw. His exact words were that it smelled like old blood. It followed them the whole time, clinging to the back of the throat.
The three of them moved deeper inside and found three rooms. The door to the innermost one was hanging half open. It was the middle of summer, but standing in front of that door, a wave of cold air rolled out at them — out of an empty house with no power, no air conditioning. He said that was the part that got to him most. Not fear exactly. Something more instinctive than that, a revulsion that settled in the body. His feet didn't back away, but they wouldn't move forward either.
They agreed to take a few photos and leave, but two of their phones died at the same moment. Only one still worked. When they got home and looked at what it had captured —
There was a photo of the three of them standing together.
Four pairs of feet.
Take a moment with that.
Three of them side by side, and there at the left edge of the frame — one extra pair of feet. Human feet. But the heels were facing the wrong way. The other three were all facing forward, toward the camera. That fourth pair was turned in the opposite direction. Whoever it belonged to was standing right there among them, looking the other way.
The friend who saw the photo woke up in the middle of that night with the sensation of a hand resting on his leg. He sat up. No one was there. But running from his thigh down to his ankle were scratch marks, lined up in neat, even rows. Too long to have done himself, he said. Too uniform.
There's one particular rumor that keeps coming up whenever people talk about that house. Among whatever was inside, there was said to be one that the others deferred to. A woman. A handful of people claimed to have seen her face, and every single one of them described her the same way. Local shamans reportedly cut all ties with the place, saying the presence there was too strong to approach — though none of that has ever been verified.
The house is gone now. Demolished, and something new built in its place.
But here's the thing.
People are still saying that whoever moves into that building doesn't stay long. When they're asked why they're leaving, the answers are always vague.
Can't sleep, they say. Something keeps drawing their attention to the foot of the bed.
