Well, it is that time again – time for the annual Korean ghost stories. I must admit, however, that this is no where as scary as the earlier post by Eglin’s and PZ Meyer’s “Golden Calf” – that is scary!
“An elderly Korean taxi driver when asked if he believed in ghost explained that a long time ago, meaning when he was young, there were many ghosts in Seoul, but as time passed the ghost stories became fewer. Modernization was to blame he insisted. Yet, there are still areas in Seoul that are claimed to be haunted….where are they? You will have to read the rest of the article here.
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
I knew you were going to post something about Halloween and you did.
I wonder if modern living leaves no room for the ghosts that want a sensitive moment so as to be seen, either that or they really hate cellphones.
Christians, who actually know the religion well, explain that there are ghosts.
Holy ones and evil ones.
the evil ones are demons. They can be found in places like sanshin shrines. Ask your local moodang, who is unable to stop being a moodang. Even plebian Koreans know not to marry a moodang.
trees with the tassles and the ones people do jaesa to.
worshipping of trees and rocks is also described in the Christian book. The Christian God hates this.
of course there are “haunted” houses.
of course there are “demon possessed” or “holy spirit filled” people.
but none of this is scientific and you can brush it off. None will ever be proven scientifically, except for some video recording for entertainment purposes. Fact is, even if you caught something interesting on tape, it is very unlikely it will change the way you live life, so this is all for fun and games for non-believers.
however, the point is there is a soul and an after life, and you will be sorely regretting if you assume there isn’t an afterlife. One place is significantly more miserable, for eternity.
if you’re interested in proving yourself out, go buy/rent a house where 5 people were murdered in, or some dreadful guy committed suicide in.
it will be up for cheaps in the real estate market.
not recommended.
Our local sanshin said “screwed you”, “wjk”.
P.S. you’re cursed as well but then most of us here already knew that.
oh, fuck you, Elgin. All Korean Christians know sanshins are gwieshins.
For some reason, you guys like to bestow on them some “beauty”, but it’s just a stone age religion that demands lot of $ as offerings to avoid calamity. That’s all.
wj “Pharisee” k:
oh, fuck you, Elgin.
God told me to tell you to stop using the F word.
If you’re an idiot ghosts exists. If you’re a smart ass they don’t exist. I think being a smart ass fits me well.
Has anyone seen a catalog of all the Korean ghosts? I can’t keep track… 마귀..귀신… plus all the chinese and japanese ghosts they believe in… that would be a really neat list.
#7,
Agreed, but you do a fair job, too.
wjk talks like he belongs to some enlightened religion… a true church and not one of those Catholic or Protestant rip-offs. A nice modern cult, since he wouldn’t belong to some stone-age belief system…
I’d hazard a guess like the Moonies or those Hana-nim fuckers.
#7, So if you one day see something materialize in front of you among the banks of the Han without being drunk or high that is unexplainable would you then consider yourself an idiot for having witnessed it? BTW Does anyone have a link to this music video where the dead girl is supposedly seen in the cabin?
how about the most ubiquitous denomination in the Korean church, due to American missionaries who chose to go to Korea…
Presbyterians.
Presbyterian Church USA is actually in rapid decline.
as of 2008, they passed a resolution allowing homosexual clergy to serve openly.
If you read St. Paul, it is blatantly clear that such an allowance is not even fathomable.
I’m not a Catholic, but the Catholics are actually more to the origin versus the Protestants.
Catholic higher ed institutions like Loyola and Notre Dame aren’t afraid to show case Jesus all over the campus.
Originally Protestant schools like Harvard? You would have never known it was a Jesus school.
Catholic Priests can only be men, like St. Paul wanted it to be.
The Protestants have been allowing women to be Pastors for quite a while now. And now, they’re moving on to homosexual clergy. Say what you want, but there is no official homosexual Priest in the Catholic church. There are illegal ones. Big difference.
Netherlands used to be a fervent Protestant nation.
Now, it’s the country you go to for legal drugs and legal prostitution.
Netherlands versus Italy.
enough said.
#10
Here’s how I see it. If you believe in ghosts, only then are you able to see them. But when you are a believer, and you see something that seems unexplainable or beyond the natural world. Even if it does have a scientific explanation it won’t matter, because you’ll have already believed you’ve seen a ghost.
On the other hand, if you are a non believer. And you run into some misty form that appears to be a ghost, you will not perceive it as a ghost. You’ll brush it off thinking that there is an obvious explanation or it is something science has not been able to explain yet but someday will.
So in my conclusion, whether ghosts exists or not really depends on whether you believe in them or not. You’ve probably guessed by now reading this that I am a believer of science. This smart ass comment about their existence probably tipped you off. So it is up to you, whether you believe or not. I personally prefer to be a smart assed scientific thinker, than an idiot who sees a ghost in every smoky corner.
“jewook”, have you ever had an experience involving someone you knew that had died, by some chance?
I have but instead of thinking of ghosts, it made me wonder about time and reality, as per the consensus we seem to know about.
I have had two experiences that could be described as ghostly, and both of them happened in Korea.
When I was in the navy stationed near Pyeongtaek, I had a room to myself in the barracks because my roommate had a “yobo” down in the ville. When the heavy curtains were drawn closed and the door was shut, my room was almost pitch dark, even in the daytime. The only light that could get in was the light from the hallway, which came in through the narrow space between the door and the floor. It was so dark that you could wake up from a nap and not know if it was day or night.
One day I was called to the commander’s office and told that my maternal grandfather had died. Even though I had been very close to my grandfather, my mother suggested that instead of coming back there for the funeral that I just wait to pay my respects when I returned home later that year.
Three or four nights after my grandfather’s death, I suddenly woke up wide-awake. I assumed that it was the middle of the night because I could not any noise from the hallway, so I just lay in my bed wondering how I was ever going to get back to sleep. It was then that I suddenly noticed a shadow standing inside my room in front of my locked door. The light coming from under the door was enough to cast the shadow, which had a head, a body, two arms, and two legs. I could not see any facial features, but I knew that it was staring at me.
I lay still with my eyes closed except for narrow slits that I used to keep an eye on the shadow while feigning sleep. The shadow did not move, but knew it was still looking at me. As I lay there, I started thinking about what I could do to protect myself. Under my bed, I had a very heavy spring taped at both ends that I used for arm exercises. I thought I could use it as a weapon. Just as I was getting ready to throw back the covers and grab for my weapon, it suddenly came into my head that the shadow was friendly. In fact, something was telling me that the shadow was my grandfather, which caused me to relax and open my eyes.
After a couple of seconds of just lying there looking at the shadow that I believed to be my grandfather, it slowly started to raise its right arm until the palm of its hand was facing me in a gesture of farewell. It then started to fade away until there was no longer any shadow.
I lay there for about thirty seconds trying to understand what had just happened. Then I got out of bed, turned on the light, and opened my locked door to the hallway. I looked up and down the hallway, but did not see anyone. However, I saw a light coming from a room at the end of the hall, so I walked down to the room. There was a guy there nicknamed “Snake,” who was straightening up his closet. I asked him if he had seen or heard anyone in the hallway, and he said, “No.” I then asked him what time it was, and I think he said it was two thirty in the morning.
I went back to my room, sat on my bed, and started rethinking what had just happened. Could it have been a dream? If it was, I hadn’t woken up, yet. Anyway, a little later, I turned off the light and then lay in bed just watching the door until I fell asleep.
The next day I woke up and wondered if it had all been a dream, so I went looking for Snake. When I found him, I asked him if I had come to his room the night before and asked about someone being in the hallway. He looked at me kind of strangely and said I had.
I never saw the shadow again, and assume that it was just my grandfather coming to say one last goodbye.
I had another ghostly experience that happened while I was jogging on a mountain trail in Jinju at about 10 p.m. I may tell that story later.
#14 R. Elgin
I haven’t had such an experience, not even when my Grandfather died ten years ago. Of course my lack of an supernatural experience might be a reason I don’t believe. And even if I should run into something unexplainable, I would probably end up rationalizing that there was an reasonable explanation.
All very interesting. Bevers – I remember hearing about (and experienced) strange things at DLI’s Korean Language Army barracks – I think we were A. Co., but I don’t remember. You ever hear of any of those stories?
Robert Neff (#17),
A lot of strange things happened in the navy barracks back at DLI, but nothing ghostly, and I do not remember hearing about anything happening in any of the other barracks.
What I remember most about DLI were the poker games we played in the barracks, the club at the bottom of the hill, and the hill, itself, which was murder walking back up after at night at the club. Sometimes I felt like I was in a twilight zone when walking that hill because it often felt like I would never get back up to the barracks.
Maybe in 1983 I was staying in a residence club in San Francisco. On quite a few occasions I woke up to become aware of a ghostly apparition standing by my bed, a man. If I looked too directly he disappeared, but if I just used my peripheral vision he was there, and would gradually just dissolve/dematerialize.
My elderly mother firmly believed that when she heard three knocks in the night, someone close to her had died, and she swore that the next day she would learn that they had. She said they used to come to say goodbye to her, to let her know they had passed over.
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