As soon as we opened the door, a large, elongated doll, covered with a white cloth and hung by a rope, suddenly popped out and swung back and forth.
It would have been fine if it was just a doll covered with a white cloth, but the problem was the horror-like eyes and mouth drawn with smeared ink.
It wouldn’t have been scary if it had been an announced horror, but this unexpected horror, when we were expecting to rest, caught us a little off guard.
The effect was maximized because it was that time of day when it was getting darker.
Kim Dobin, the most timid of the five, was already clinging to Gyeon Ha-jun’s back, making incoherent sobbing sounds.
Since the snow was getting heavier, we went inside the lodge for now.
We found the light switch and turned on the lights, but they didn’t brighten as much as we thought, either because the lights themselves were dim or the place was just that dark.
“Aaah!”
We rushed over to Kim Dobin’s scream, finding him pointing a trembling finger at a picture hanging on the wall.
The worn-out picture frames, hung like windows, contained ghost paintings and photos in poses as if they were about to jump out of the frames at any moment.
“Ah, come on. If it had been a window, I could understand screaming. What’s so scary about pictures and paintings? They were obviously hung there to create a sense of horror.”
“Ahhh, don’t say that! It’s scary!”
“Geez, you coward.”
Clicking my tongue, I glanced around the lodge.
Putting aside the eerie atmosphere, the ghost paintings on the walls and the yellow talismans plastered here and there made this place feel more like a haunted house than a lodge.
The strange Japanese dolls and unidentified shamanistic items occupying the display cabinet felt more like a gimmick than anything scary.
In fact, the more blatant the decorations, the less scary it became.
Of course, that seemed to be just my opinion, as Seo Ye-hyun, who came over to look at the display cabinet next to me, promptly turned around and walked away from it.
“Is the fireplace just for decoration or what?”
We were guided to a shed in the back of the lodge and given a camcorder. Judging by the firewood piled up in the shed, it seemed the fireplace was not just for show.
“Call us right away if anything happens.”
The staff left, and we were left alone in this haunted lodge, or whatever it was, with only a camcorder and cameras installed everywhere.
It was clear that we were supposed to get footage by experiencing the haunted house ourselves.
Well, it would be less scary without the staff constantly reminding us we were on a show.
“Ahhh! Guys!”
Another loud scream from Kim Dobin echoed.
We rushed over to find a dismembered mannequin crammed into the fridge.
“Hey, it’s just a mannequin. Why are you so scared of something like this?”
Half-heartedly, I took the mannequin out of the fridge and put the groceries we bought inside.
Somehow, Kim Dobin was clinging to my back like a leech.
“Those talismans are scary. Can’t we take them down?”
“Dobin, how do you know what those are? What if they’re real talismans?”
The other scaredy-cat, Ryu Jae-hee, stopped Kim Dobin, who was about to tear down the talismans stuck all over the walls.
“But don’t you hear something… like a sobbing sound?”
“Guaranteed, there’s a recording device hidden somewhere.”
I asked Kim Dobin, who was nervously looking around, clutching my arm.
“Dobin, didn’t you mention wanting to do a haunted house video before?”
“That’s just for 30 minutes! We’re not supposed to spend the night in a haunted house like this!”
“This isn’t even a real haunted house, just a lodge made for this show. I don’t get why you’re so scared.”
“I don’t get how you can be so unfazed by this…”
There were four rooms in the lodge.
Since Kim Dobin and Ryu Jae-hee insisted they couldn’t sleep alone, we decided to let them share a room, while Gyeon Ha-jun, Seo Ye-hyun, and I took one room each.
The staff said there was one big room and three small rooms, so we generously offered the biggest room to the youngest members.
Although we hadn’t checked the rooms yet, chances were high that they were decorated like the rest of the haunted house.
Because the youngest members whined about being too scared to go into the rooms, saying they felt like there was something in there, we all took a camcorder and decided to explore the rooms together.
First up was the room I chose.
“Huh, there’s nothing much in here.”
“No way, if you open something like this… Ahhh! See, I told you! Get this off me! What is this!?”
As soon as Kim Dobin opened the closet, something sprang out and covered his face.
Kim Dobin was on the verge of fainting from the long, stiff hair that covered his face.
What had attacked Kim Dobin was a mannequin dressed in a white shroud with a long-haired wig on backward.
After propping the mannequin back up and closing the closet, Ryu Jae-hee, looking pale, turned to me and asked.
“Can you sleep in here?”
“As long as I can’t see it, sure.”
“What if the mannequin suddenly opens the closet and strangles you while you’re lying in bed…”
“Wow, Jae-hee, you should be a writer.”
I opened the bedside drawer just in case and found a bloody knife and a rusty old pair of scissors. At first, I couldn’t understand why they were there.
“When you fall asleep, the ghost mannequin comes out of the closet, holding a knife in one hand and scissors in the other, staring down at you from beside the bed.”
Hearing Ryu Jae-hee’s rambling in a trembling voice, I instantly understood why they had placed those there.
You could create a whole scary story with just two props.
“Do you hear something? There’s a ticking sound, but there’s no clock.”
“Oh, ASMR.”
“Wow, you have nerves of steel…”
There was probably a recording device somewhere, but I couldn’t be bothered to find it. It wasn’t like nails scratching a chalkboard, just a ticking sound, so whatever.
Anyway, my room had a sudden-appearance mannequin ghost, and next up was Gyeon Ha-jun’s room…
“Is this supposed to be a murder scene?”
The crime scene tape on the floor, the bloodstains, the police line around the bed, the blood-spattered blankets.
A human-sized rag doll with no face, sitting on a piano bench, head down on the keys as if dead.
Bloodstains on the piano keys and what seemed like a pool of blood beneath the piano bench.
Of course, the “blood” was 100% just paint.
As soon as I lifted the blanket, a rag doll covered in red paint popped out, making Kim Dobin scream and collapse to the floor.
Ryu Jae-hee, saying he couldn’t watch, left the room, but quickly returned, saying the living room was too scary to be alone in.
“I can’t sleep here.”
Gyeon Ha-jun declared his defeat plainly.
Next was Seo Ye-hyun’s chosen room, which surprisingly was normal.
“I finally picked a decent room.”
Seo Ye-hyun flopped onto the bed, only to start freaking out silently as he pointed at the ceiling.
Following his finger, I saw a ghost photo, smiling ear to ear, stuck to the ceiling.
It was positioned perfectly to make eye contact with you when lying on the bed.
“Come to think of it, there’s probably a talisman under the pillow… There really is.”
Sure enough, lifting the pillow revealed a neatly placed talisman. Seo Ye-hyun also admitted defeat.
“I can’t sleep here either.”
“You can’t see it if you close your eyes.”
“Then do you want to switch rooms? Seriously, if you don’t mind, let’s switch.”
Seo Ye-hyun pointed to the ceiling and clung to me, his face turning pale.
However, I didn’t want to wake up after a good night’s sleep and exchange glances with a ghost picture, so I firmly refused.
So far, out of three rooms, only one had been deemed suitable for sleeping.
Finally, we opened the door to the last room.
“Wow, this one actually feels like a ghost could come out. You’d probably get sleep paralysis in here. Even I’m a bit scared.”
“Can’t we just leave? Can’t we just leave this place?”
I clicked my tongue at the scene that looked like it had been transplanted straight from a shaman’s house.
Was this place used as a movie set or something? It was impressively realistic.
There wasn’t even a bed here, just a thick mattress spread on the floor.
“So, this is where the incense smell was coming from.”
Incense burned away in the incense burner.
I slowly looked over the offerings and straw dolls placed on the altar.
The lack of dust indicated these items had been brought in recently.
If there had been dust, it would’ve been even scarier, but that’s a shame. Of course, the two scaredy-cats who had to sleep in this room were saying this level of fright was too much already.
Looking at the faded Buddhist paintings covering the walls, I seriously questioned whether these should even be up in a place like this.
If my room had the ticking of a clock, then this one had the sound of bells tinkling.
Ryu Jaehee, who was more terrified of this kind of orchestrated horror than jump scares, urged us to leave, pushing us toward the door.
Before anything else could happen, we quickly fled the room, feeling like we might actually get haunted if we stayed longer.
“So… really, the only room we can sleep in is the one Eden chose…?”
“Honestly, that room’s not exactly unscary either, but the other rooms are simply unlivable, so that’s the issue.”
“But isn’t that room too small for all five of us to sleep in? It only had a single bed.”
“What can we do? We’ll have to bring blankets and all sleep together in the living room.”
I ended up carrying out the blankets from the shaman’s house room because the others were too scared to go back in.
These guys sure knew how to make their older brother work.
“Wow, I guess we didn’t need to worry about getting footage.”
Just going around the rooms and capturing the scaredy-cats’ reactions would be enough for a whole episode.
It seemed like they had planned a night at this haunted lodge just in case the winter sea content ended up being boring.
As expected, hiring talented graduates from good universities makes a difference.
With hollow eyes, Ryu Jaehee mumbled while staring at the ceiling.
“…I can’t sleep.”
“Should we all take turns telling ghost stories or something?”
“That’ll probably make it even harder to sleep. And they say if you talk about ghosts, they’ll come and listen.”
At Ryu Jaehee’s response, Kim Dobin, who had his blanket pulled up over his head, muttered, telling us not to say things like that.
“The living room’s scary too, what are we supposed to do?”
“Well, if that’s the case, we could sleep outside, then. What else can we do?”
Seo Ye hyun, who had been avoiding looking at the cabinet, walked over to the window and checked the scene outside with a serious expression.
“The snow’s getting bad. What if we get snowed in again, like we did at our vacation place on the first day?”
“At least that was in the city. If we get snowed in here, there’s no way ou—”
The booming sound of a grandfather clock interrupted my words.
This was the first time I’d seen an actual working grandfather clock.
Kim Dobin, who was closest to the clock, freaked out, saying a ghost might come out of it, and caused a scene, demanding to switch spots.
Later on, both Seo Yehyun and Ryu Jaehee woke up screaming from simultaneous nightmares and woke us all up. We then spent the rest of the night searching the living room for the source of the sobbing sound we kept hearing.
And finally, morning came.
The joke we made last night about this being a no-win situation had come true.
***
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