When I was a kid, I used to take it pretty seriously when people said a ghost appeared in the fourth stall of the restroom.
There were all kinds of school stories like that.
If the metronome in the music room ticked a certain number of times, you’d die. If you listened to Für Elise all the way through four times, a ghost would come and devour you. It would be harder to find a student who hadn’t heard stories like those.
The most common one was about statues moving.
At the elementary school I attended, there was a bull statue near the playground. Every year, until you reached the upper grades, at least one or two people would claim they had seen it move.
“Dowon High School? That place is abandoned.”
“Exactly. That’s why we should go. Don’t you know ghost story channels are blowing up on YouTube these days?”
“YouTube? Don’t tell me you’re skipping class again to do something stupid.”
“It’s not something stupid. Call it a legitimate content creation activity.”
“Legitimate, my ass.”
“I’m working toward becoming the top success story of the philosophy department.”
Even after all this time, school ghost stories were still a steady seller.
Paradoxically, people tend to feel fear more easily in everyday places—like subways, apartment buildings, or supermarkets.
I wasn’t as obsessed as the guy in front of me who kept talking about becoming the department’s greatest success story, but I had some interest in that kind of thing too. Nietzsche said God is dead, but he never said ghosts were.
My parents, who were devout Christians, would probably be horrified if they knew, but this country has a long tradition of folk beliefs. Plenty of people enjoy checking their fortunes and looking up ghost stories online. I was one of them.
Recently, one paranormal YouTube channel had actually succeeded in capturing an anomaly on camera, and ever since then, channels focused on ghost stories and the supernatural had been popping up everywhere.
Whenever I didn’t feel like listening to a lecture, I’d watch videos claiming to have captured anomalies. I watched one during class with the sound muted, but even so, what was shown on screen clearly didn’t look like something from reality.
[Huh? What is that?]
A female YouTuber known by the channel name “Ghost Riya” stood frozen in front of a brightly lit amusement park, lights flashing all around her. Just moments ago, she had been exploring an abandoned amusement park near Incheon, when suddenly the background changed.
Since it was being streamed live, it was hard to believe it was edited or staged.
Riya—short for Ghost Riya—looked around at the abruptly changed surroundings with her cameraman, then soon started running from something dressed as a clown.
It was a good thing I was watching on mute. Otherwise, her screams would’ve blown my ears out. The auto-generated captions showed screams mixed with incomprehensible words.
Aaaah! What is that? What is that?! Why is it chasing us?!
Run! Run!
■■■■ □■—
Aaaah!
At that point, the cameraman must have given up filming and started running too, because the screen began to shake violently. Even through the chaos, the brightly glowing amusement park lights looked unmistakably grotesque.
The clown chasing Riya stood out even among all that.
Its mouth was split wide to its ears, making it impossible to tell whether it was smiling or crying. In its hand, it held something that looked like a human head, swollen like a balloon.
The video was quickly taken down for violating platform policy. The mere image of the swollen human head was enough to count as excessive violence, but things got worse when the cameraman—who was slower than Riya—was caught.
The camera he was holding fell to the ground, so the moment his body and head were separated wasn’t captured.
But his headless body hitting the ground with a wet thud was clearly shown on screen.
After that live broadcast, Riya also went missing.
Her channel’s subscriber count doubled almost immediately. Before it was taken down, the video trended not just domestically, but internationally as well.
Comments
└ What is this nerd even talking about??
└ Comment deleted by user.
└ Yeah right, writing a whole novel for attention lol
└ I’m serious
└ The fact you remember something from when you were eight already makes it fake
Even after Riya disappeared, her channel and videos were flooded with comments. At first, most people thought it was staged, but when she didn’t return after a week, interest in this “anomaly” only grew.
People claiming to have experienced similar things started to appear, along with so-called experts who spoke as if they already knew everything about it.
Whether it was fortunate or not, her channel was eventually shut down. Riya was still missing. There were reports that the cameraman’s family had filed a report against her, but after that, everything went quiet.
The anomaly followed the same pattern.
People treated it as just another ghost story. An abandoned amusement park suddenly lighting up, a clown chasing people while holding a human head instead of a balloon… it wasn’t exactly something you’d expect to see in real life.
There were occasional posts online about anomalies, but most of them were clearly made up by people trying to ride the trend. A few felt realistic—but even those couldn’t be verified. If anomalies were real, it wouldn’t make sense for there to be so many survivors posting about them.
After a few months, Riya was completely forgotten.
She was still missing, apparently, but there were plenty of others ready to take her place.
Even so, interest in paranormal YouTube content kept skyrocketing.
From people visiting abandoned schools or hospitals hoping to encounter an anomaly, to creators collecting reports of experiences similar to Riya’s—there were so many trying to cash in that most “haunted locations” had practically turned into meetup spots for content creators.
“I’ve been thinking. The philosophy department has no future.”
“You’re just realizing that now?”
“There’s romance in philosophy. They say you need the humanities to live like a proper human being. But do you know what’s actually the most important thing for that?”
“Money.”
“Correct. As expected of Kang Iru. Very wise.”
“So you’re going to make money through YouTube?”
“I already bought the equipment. And I made a channel.”
“I’ll give you this—you act fast.”
My classmate, Kim Jihoon, was such an idiot it was hard to believe he had even gotten into this university.
Even if philosophy had lower competition compared to other majors, the school still had a reputation. It didn’t make sense that someone like him could get in… but he somehow did, purely through exam scores.
And people say the entrance exam has no discrimination power—this is exactly why.
I looked at him with disbelief as he talked about throwing himself into the paranormal YouTube trend because philosophy had no future.
“Instead of failing classes and retaking them in summer sessions, how about you just show up to lectures?”
“I don’t want to hear that from someone who already failed after skipping class to drink.”
“Jihoon, I failed because I partied too hard. You’re about to fail because you’re wasting money and time on something ridiculous.”
“That’s harsh.”
“If you’re going to talk about having no future after graduation, at least graduate first.”
I tried to persuade him as nicely as I could, but he didn’t even blink. Instead, he suddenly grabbed my hand and said,
“I need you for my YouTube shoot.”
“Why?”
“You’re good-looking.”
“That’s true.”
“And people say your energy is so strong you can drive out evil just by existing.”
“That’s a rumor.”
“Someone from your high school already told me everything. When you went on that retreat, your group was the only one that didn’t get sleep paralysis. And that guy who acted possessed? He snapped back to normal whenever he was near you.”
“Do you seriously believe that? How did you even get into this university?”
“Just come with me once. Honestly, I’m too scared to go alone.”
“….”
“I’ll give you Professor Choi’s past exam materials. You need at least a B+ in summer session, right?”
“…Hmm.”
I ran the numbers in my head.
Go with Kim Jihoon to a haunted location once and get the materials… or take the summer class and still fail to fix my grades.
Between the two, the first option was clearly better.
“Just once.”
“Yes!”
At the time, I didn’t know.
That this would become the worst decision of my life.