A man was hiking alone deep in the mountains of Korea. He was hunting for a rare species of wild mushroom. 

The weather was getting unpredictable, and unfortunately for him, a storm was rolling in. 

It grew dark and began to pour. It was too late for him to turn back so he ran further up the trail, deeper into the mountains until he could find refuge from the downpour. He eventually came across a small shelter. It was an enclosed structure with a dirt floor. He was soaking wet and his glasses immediately fogged up upon entering the pitch black interior. Night had fallen.

He took his glasses off and squinted, hoping his eyes would adjust to the darkness. It was just an empty space and he was alone. But after a minute, he noticed something bizarre: there was a framed portrait hung up on the back wall. Upon further speculation and harder squinting, he noticed there was not one, but many portraits all around him. Someone came to this shelter before and had decorated it for some odd reason. 

He set a blanket down from his bag and laid down on his back. When he looked up, he saw a larger portrait with multiple people in the shot…mounted to the ceiling of the shelter. 

‘Strange…’ he thought, as he drifted off to sleep.

When he woke up the next day, the storm subsided and the morning light peeked through all of the dirty windows and the skylight —the ones he mistook as framed portraits.

I’ve heard many versions of this urban legend. Here’s my version.

It’s about a young girl, maybe 11 or 12 years old. Her parents had to go out of town for the weekend to tend to a family emergency and left the girl in the care of an old neighbor who had lived alone in the house for decades. 

The first night she was there, she noticed some old family pictures on the wall.  The old man she was staying with once had a family: a wife, and a daughter who was about her age in the picture.  She never saw them around so she assumed maybe the wife passed away, and the daughter was probably an adult living on her own somewhere.

It was getting late so she walked down the hall to the bathroom to brush her teeth and get ready for bed. On the way, she passed a bedroom. The door was shut but the light was on. Out of curiosity, she peeked through the keyhole.

She could sort of see the back of a girl’s head, sitting on the floor facing the wall. She figured that was probably the daughter, and wondered why she never saw her before. The girl continued to the bathroom and then soon after, went to bed.

She woke up in the middle of the night and had to go to the bathroom again. It was around 2 or 3 am. On the way, she passed the bedroom again. The light was still on and the door was still shut. She peeked through the keyhole but something dark and vaguely red was obstructing her view.

She squinted really hard to try to figure out what it was but gave up and went to the bathroom. As she made her way back down the hall, she peeked through the keyhole again. The dark, red-ish thing was still there. She continued and went back to her bed.

The next morning, she passed by the door again and peeked through. Nothing but natural light and an empty room. As the girl sat and had breakfast with her neighbor, she asked if his daughter was going to join them. 

She was unaware that the family was in a severe car accident years ago and the neighbor was the only survivor. The wife died instantly in the crash, and the neighbor and his daughter were rushed to the hospital where the daughter later died. Before her passing, the doctors had to remove her eyes for having ruptured during the accident. When the girl peeked through the keyhole the night before, the dark thing she was staring into was the daughter looking back.

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My grandma on my dad’s side passed away when I was around sixteen. She lived in Houston so I didn’t see her very much or know her very well. In fact, I’ve only visited her twice in my life, and she visited us in Seattle once.

The first time I visited, it was during the summer and I was six. In my memory, Texas was a very exotic and adventurous place. It was my first time on the plane! I remember going to the beach and finding dead, iridescent jellyfish littered in the sand. Wild peacocks roaming about (am I crazy? does Texas have wild peacocks? I remember seeing peacocks.)… A spontaneous lightning storm… Banana trees… A tortoise in the backyard… 

The second time I visited, I was a sophomore in high school during the late fall. It was a completely different experience. Overcast skies, broken lawn chairs, boarded windows and foreclosed properties… The neighborhood was eerily empty and each house looked home to a crime scene. My grandma’s was no different. The bulbs were dim, the carpets were stained, there was laundry hanging everywhere, and hoards of junk scattered about… Plus the place reeked of weed because of an orphaned delinquent cousin I have who lived with my grandma.

So this man who apparently was my uncle (apparently) was also at the house to greet us. After a while, he mentioned that my cousin was crazy and needed to see a shrink because of the disturbing, but farfetched claims he made about the house. He would see people running through the house, through the walls and out to the yard when no one else did. And a couple of times, he shouted for everyone to rush to the living room to see the woman that was on the ceiling. 

Whether or not those claims were true, the house had a negative vibe. Anyway, before we left that night, my sister and I decided to tour around the house to re-visit old memories. When we got to a bedroom, we both remembered it was the room in which we slept during our first visit. She went up to the window and started to get really freaked out about something.

She told me that when we first visited, she woke up to a knocking at the window in the middle of the night. A little boy was peering through, watching us. She ignored him and went back to sleep.

She only realized during our second visit that the house was built on a slope, and the room we slept in was on the second floor of the house. 

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This one doesn’t involve ghosts, but it’s still disturbing as hell and worth the read. 

So, when I was a freshman at RISD, I was walking up the hill to go back to my dorm. Walking down the hill was this well-dressed black man wearing aviators whom I paid no attention to. But suddenly, he stopped me and asked in the strangest, high-pitched voice “escu’ me, do you… ha’… cigareh?”
“Sorry, I don’t smoke,” I said. And I continued up the hill.

 

WEEKS (maybe even months) later, the same exact thing happened in the same exact spot with the same exact well-dressed man wearing aviators.

“escu’ me, do you… ha’… cigareh?”
“……. Sorry, I still don’t smoke,” I said and I continued up the hill.

Fast Forward to…
That summer, I was working at the Residence Life Office while this Pre-College program was happening for high school kids who were interested in applying to RISD. 

I was walking down Thayer St. with two of my friends. Both were RAs and both were named Emily. 


Right in front of Nice Slice Pizza, these two pre-college girls yelled out “Emilys!” And the four girls began to talk. I didn’t know them so I stood on the side, fiddling with my phone. Then I did a double-take. 

Standing in a circle were those four girls, and a well-dressed black man wearing aviators. The girls seemed oblivious to his presence, and he was just standing there staring (I wasn’t sure what at because of his aviators). Their short conversation ended and the girls said bye and dispersed, but then the man stopped one of the Emilys and said, “escu’ me… (inaudible muttering) ro—xyyy” (I think he was reading the brandname on her shirt)
Something didn’t feel right with him so I went up to them and took my friend away and whispered “Let’s go.” 
I looked back and he was just standing there with an expression-less face and his aviators, staring. 

Fast Forward to…
The end of the summer. Exterior. Night.
Pre-College had ended and I was helping one friend move down the hill and another friend move up the hill on the same day. It was exhausting and it basically took all day long. At the end of the day, around 9 or 10 PM, everyone was in the dorm bringing in the last of my friend’s things. I was outside the dorms, alone, carrying in the very last box.

It wasn’t too heavy, but it was large and awkward to carry so I sat it down on the ground for a second. As I did that, I heard a noise near me and I looked up. As if appearing out of thin air and less than two feet away was that man. I froze. 
And this time, he wasn’t wearing aviators. 

One eye was staring at me, and the other eye was pointed in the opposite direction. His face was completely expressionless and blank like an iguana. Or a cockatoo. After 4 or 5 seconds of blank staring, he whistled like a cuckoo bird and drifted backwards, retrieving into the darkness—his one eye still on me.

I then ran into the building, incredibly confused/disturbed and trying to assess the situation and figure out what the actual fuck I just experienced. 

Fast Forward to…

The summer before senior year. I stayed in Rhode Island because I was interning on Moonrise Kingdom. By then, I had told my story about the guy with the crazy eyes to quite a few of my friends. Including one RA friend, Sara. That summer, she gave me this picture: 

That was him. “Where did you get this photo??” I asked.

Public Safety had sent out that picture with a warning notice to the RAs on campus. That man was posting fake ads, attempting to lure young students to meet for a “job interview” at a location which turned out to be an abandoned warehouse. He was a convicted rapist.

Happy Halloween, everyone. Stay safe tonight. Travel in groups.
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