Korean horror story: the abandoned house on Ganghwa Island

I wasn't going to post this but it's been sitting in my drafts and I need people to know about it.

So there's this Korean horror story about a YouTuber named Jaemin who ran one of those abandoned-house exploration channels. You know the type. Dude thrived on creepy. The more unsettling the vibe, the more he loved it.

He'd heard about this derelict house on the outskirts of Ganghwa Island¹ that had a reputation. Like, a REPUTATION. Whole family died there under terrible circumstances years ago and the place had been rotting ever since. Locals called it a흉가 (cursed house, basically). Even in broad daylight people said you could feel something wrong about it.

Jaemin went at night. Obviously.

He set up his tripod, clicked record, and walked in alone. The whole place was exactly what you'd expect. Dust, cobwebs, mold smell so thick it hits you in the face. He moved through the first floor, went upstairs. Three rooms on the second floor. First one had wallpaper ripped off in chunks. Second one was just old furniture piled up like someone panicked and left mid-move.

Third room.

He opened the door and stopped.

All four walls. Every single inch. Covered floor to ceiling in red writing. Not spray paint tagging. Not graffiti art. Just... words. Symbols. Scrawled like someone was losing their mind while they wrote it, scratching and scratching and scratching until the whole room was red.

Jaemin felt it. That cold wrongness. But honestly? He was excited too. This was CONTENT.

He started filming. Some of the writing was legible. "Get out." "You'll die if you stay." "Don't look." He figured it was just some edgelord who'd broken in before him. Prank stuff. Whatever.

Then he noticed a gap.

A small section of wall between all the writing where the red just... stopped. Like something had been painted over. Or erased. A patch of white showing through.

He pointed his flashlight at it.

His heart stopped.

Not erased writing. Not a blank patch. Handprints. Red handprints. So many of them, overlapping, trailing across the wall like someone had been crawling. Pressing their hands against the wall trying to drag themselves along it. One after another after another after—

He dropped the flashlight.

Dark.

Just his heartbeat, loud as hell in that room.

And then, right behind him, a voice. Cold and close.

"Don't leave..."

Jaemin SCREAMED. Grabbed his camera. Ran. Didn't look back, didn't stop, just ran through the house and out the door and all the way to his car and sat there hyperventilating in the driver's seat.

Nothing behind him. Nobody.

Okay. Fine. Probably his imagination. He drove home.

When he sat down to edit the footage... there was something in the audio that wasn't there when he filmed it. Under his voice, the whole time. A child crying.

And in the footage from that third room? The handprints on the wall. They were moving.

He deleted everything. Tried to forget it.

But after that night, he'd wake up in his own room and see "GET OUT" written on his wall in red. And then it would be gone. Every night. Just for a second.

He quit the channel. Quit the whole thing.

Last thing he ever said about it: "The curse doesn't start when you enter. It starts the moment you walk out. Do not go there."

(spoiler: he still sees the writing at night)