Halloween is almost here, and in preparation for the spookiest night of the year, we invite you to uncover the eerie and unsettling stories that have long sent shivers down the spines of those brave enough to listen. Join us as we delve into a chilling Korean ghost story for Halloween, where the line between the living and the supernatural blurs, and the unexplained becomes the hauntingly real. These are the stories that will linger in your thoughts long after the candles have been blown out and the pumpkins extinguished. Are you ready for a bone-chilling adventure through the dark corners of Korean ghostlore? Then, let’s get into it!
Disclaimer: The following story is based on/paraphrased from “A Hitchhiking Ghost in Korea” by Haruo Aoki, Western Folklore 13, no. 4 (1954): 280–81. The original author, Haruo Aoki, heard this story from a certain Miss Oeda in 1941 and presented it as it was recalled by Mr. and Mrs. Shimo. The story below has been embellished for dramatic effect. Reader discretion is advised.
A Hitchhiking Ghost in Korea
In the eerie midnight hush that draped the city of Kunsan in an otherworldly shroud, a taxi driver from the Guntaku Cab Company received a chilling telephone call. The voice on the other end was devoid of warmth, and it emanated from a place that sent shivers down his spine – the municipal crematory.
Without hesitation, he steered his taxi through the labyrinthine streets, guided only by the dim glow of the moon. There, in the haunting proximity of the crematory, he found her: a spectral figure, a young lady of perhaps twenty, standing as if caught between two worlds.
With a heavy heart, he invited her into his cab, a decision that would irrevocably alter his reality. She directed him with hollow eyes, her voice a mere whisper of the living. Her destination? The hardware store of a man named Mr. Shimo.
The streets unfurled before them, the night growing colder and more sinister with every passing moment. As the taxi pulled up before Mr. Shimo’s store on Meiji Street, the girl asked him to wait while she retrieved his fare. The driver, perplexed and uneased by her words, watched her disappear into the night.
Minutes turned to an eternity as he sat outside, his unease festering like a shadowy specter. The driver had no reason to distrust the girl, for Mr. Shimo had been a fixture in Kunsan for years, a respected and unassuming citizen. Yet, dread clawed at his heart, and a foreboding atmosphere descended upon him like a thick fog.
The girl, however, did not return. Panic clawed at the driver’s sanity, and his impatience surged like a relentless tempest. Desperation led him to rap at the door of the Shimo residence until the door swung open, revealing Mrs. Shimo – her eyes heavy with the weight of slumber. Her disheveled appearance betrayed nothing of the unnerving revelation she was about to deliver.
When the driver asked her about the girl’s whereabouts, she claimed to know nothing of the girl or the taxi ride. Confounded, the driver described the young lady who had entered the cab, the girl who had departed in haste, only to find out that it was the deceased daughter of the Shimo family. The same daughter who had succumbed to death’s embrace mere days before, her life extinguished and her body delivered to the very crematory that had summoned the driver that night.
Recognition washed over the driver, the revelation plunging him into the abyss of terror. His breath caught in his throat, his vision blurred by the spectral image of the girl. As the weight of his ghastly revelation bore down upon him, his health withered away, and his sanity teetered on the precipice of madness. The chilling specter of that fateful night would forever haunt his dreams, reminding him of the thin veil that separates the living from the unquiet dead.
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