Haunted Houses’ Chronicles – Vol.1, Chapter 9

It was a suffocating feeling. I wanted to speak but I must keep my voice down, and this made me swallow even harder. After a while, the shepherd dog who was sleeping soundly abruptly stood up, tilted his head and looked at something. All of a sudden, a knocking sound could be heard. 

Even though I was mentally prepared, this still had me shaken.

Qin Yiheng remained very calm and drew a ‘hush’ gesture with his hand. The knock on the door was not as loud as I expected. It knocked very gently, and the knocker oddly seemed very polite. I stared intensely at the shepherd dog but he didn’t make a single sound. Even Qin Yiheng was stunned in confusion. 

I quickly looked down and was scared stiff. Unbeknownst to us as we weren’t paying attention just now, Qin Yiheng’s phone had disconnected.

The dog opened his mouth suddenly, and I broke into a cold sweat as soon as I heard it. Because the dog was only half-sized and hadn’t yet reached his mature stage, the barking sounded weak.

But what was most frightening was that the dog wasn’t barking at the front door. He was facing the bedroom where the owner hanged himself.

Qin Yiheng slapped his thigh, “Crap!”

“We guessed it wrong. F**k! He knocks on the door every night not because he wants to come in. He wants someone to open the door and let him out!”

”The door most likely has two layers. Something isn’t right!” he continued.

“Stop shouting! Hurry up and say what we should do. It’s a mess now!” I yelled back at him.

Hearing that, Qin Yiheng took out a handful of soybeans from the bag.

“Clench these in your left hand. If you feel cold suddenly and want to fight against that ‘presence’, throw one grain at a time,” he told me. “We are already here anyway, might as well see for ourselves.”

Being tossed around like this had me completely confused. However, since Qin Yiheng said that we shouldn’t run, I could only stand strong. The shepherd dog was still barking. I wonder why the neighbors around here had not come to scold us to not disturb them. Could it be that they just assumed the haunting of this house had gotten worse?

I honestly felt cold inside out as my brain started imagining things. I didn’t know if it was just a psychological effect, but with Qin Yiheng beside me, I was hyper-aware of the whole situation and immediately put out some soybeans. I actually only wanted to throw one, but I was so nervous I couldn’t control the force in my hand.

The feeling of something approaching me disappeared after the bean was thrown out. It came again a few more times and I repeated the same method to counter it. There were not many soybeans left in my hand now. As I was thinking of keeping some in case Qin Yiheng needed them, the shepherd dog suddenly stopped barking.

Qin Yiheng and I both stood still for a while before we dared to move again.

I asked, “Why didn’t you figure that ‘the thing’ was trying to get out of this house?”

“I don’t know. It probably has something to do with the layout of this house,” he said. “To understand this, we need to break open all the decorations of this house. That’s probably the way to find the answer.”

We took some time to calm down, then Qin Yiheng made the first move and went into the bedroom to look around. I followed inside yet couldn’t find any change in the place. My phone stayed in its original position but it had been turned off. I turned on the phone again to see that there was still a lot of power. There had been countless horror movies in which ‘unclean things’ could affect electronic devices, but I personally never encountered such a thing in my life. So, I wouldn’t insist that this was caused by ‘that thing’, because what if the phone just happened to malfunction?

After I took back the phone, nothing else happened that night. The moment the dog stopped barking, the knocking sound stopped abruptly.

Qin Yiheng and I waited until dawn before we returned to the hotel. On the way, we talked about the incident and came up with theories. Actually, it was him who came up with one theory after another while I just went along with whatever he said.

Qin Yiheng roughly guessed that the house had been ‘touched’ by a master, so the owner was trapped in the room after death and could not get out. He couldn’t move on to his next life and was stuck in a time loop of the moment he died. This kind of thing likely wouldn’t harm people, but the owner would always feel as though he was oppressed. If someone moved into the house, the person would get sick over time. As for why the owner hanged himself, we probably would never know.

This wasn’t the most important thing for us, because after all, we came for the value of the house. Qin Yiheng said that looking at our current situation, we definitely wouldn’t be able to solve the problem. Unless we bought the house and removed all the wallpaper and decorations, we wouldn’t find the answer. 

I was actually very interested in buying this house but now it indeed seemed that there was a certain risk. Even if I bought the house, I wouldn’t be certain that the problem could be solved. Despite all that, I ended up agreeing with Qin Yiheng’s proposal because after all, I was immensely curious. 

The two of us came to a conclusion, convinced that we could negotiate a bit more with the owner’s wife. If the price was right, we would buy it.

After a strenuous night, we slept all the way till the afternoon. We went to find the wife again and I spent a bit more effort talking her down, finally reaching an ideal price. After signing the contract, Qin Yiheng and I went back to the hotel to rest and decided to hire a group of workers to fix the house the coming day.

The next day, Qin Yiheng first sold the dog to a pet shop and got back the money, then hired four workers to come over. We straight away went to dismantle the wooden door of the house. With one decisive hit, we made a strange discovery. The door seemed to have been customised, with a layer of something sandwiched between the wooden boards. I touched it and felt that it wasn’t very hard, and there was even a certain texture. 

Qin Yiheng sniffed at it for a while, then took a good look and told me that it was probably a mix of cinnabar, donkey-hide glue¹, wood shavings and some unknown materials. If he guessed it right, these wood shavings must have come from smashing a wooden well pulley that had been rolling for many years. A pulley always turning around a circular orbit coupled with its frequent contact with humans led to the theory that it could guarantee family union². Such a thing could ward off evil spirits, but most importantly, it could keep couples in harmony. Judging by the circumstance, it was likely that either the husband or the wife made changes to the door, but they totally didn’t expect that it would end up with such an adverse effect and trap the owner’s soul in the house.

¹ Donkey-hide glue, also known as donkey-hide gelatin, is a type of gelatin made from donkey skin. It is a specialty of Shandong, China and commonly used as an ingredient in Chinese traditional medicine. 

² To explain a bit more on this: In Chinese belief, a circle often represents the idea of inclusion, union and harmony. A well pulley always turns in a circular orbit and it frequently comes into contact with humans because people need to take water from the well on a daily basis. Combined together, this gives rise to “people/family union”. 

Thereafter, we pulled down the wallpaper and the ceiling one by one but found nothing new. Finally, Qin Yiheng left the doors and windows wide open, saying that we just needed to let fresh air enter the place for a few days, then the owner would leave on his own. Although Qin Yiheng confirmed that everything was okay now, I couldn’t let go of how the owner hanged himself amid such a peaceful life. It was a waste of human life, a mystery that I couldn’t come to understand. 

Qin Yiheng said many things had been predestined. Quite a few people who committed suicide or had been ill for a long time chose to die on New Year’s Eve, and most people would think that it was just a coincidence, but it wasn’t. Your predestined fate and lifespan had something to do with it. A popular saying put this simply: “If the King of Hell wants you to die at the 3rd geng³, you won’t be kept until the 5th geng.” 

³ 更 [geng] refers to each of the twelve 2-hour periods of a day in the ancient Chinese timekeeping system.

Qin Yiheng made another bold guess that if the owner didn’t accidentally push the thief down that night, perhaps the thief would have come into the house to steal and killed the whole family. From the perspective of numerology⁴, there was always a certain reason for everything, every happening, every role. The owner’s death could be his own choice. In other words, people’s psychology could be affected deeply after seeing death, and over time, this manifested into an ugly emotion and caused them to hate their own life. But as to him choosing to die on New Year’s Eve, this was a mistake. On that day, with firecrackers shooing away evil spirits and all families clad in red clothes⁵, if there was no ghost to guide him to Hell, the owner might not find the gate to reincarnation.

⁴ Numerology is the belief in the divine or mystical relationship between numbers and coinciding events. For example, in Chinese belief, the study of your birth numbers (hour, day, month, year) and how they influence your life is numerology. Its Western counterpart is the study of Zodiac signs.

⁵ Chinese people wear red during New Year Holidays because the colour is believed to keep evil energy away and bring good luck.

I didn’t sell this house for profits in the end. After a month, I entrusted an agent to sublet the place to college students who were preparing for the postgraduate entrance examination, giving them a very low price. I told them directly that someone had died in the house but I had asked a master to cleanse the place. Fortunately, these college students were not afraid, instead, they happily moved in.

After this incident, it seemed to me that I came to understand something, but when I thought carefully about it, I still couldn’t quite sum up what I actually understood. In short, this house had come to pass. Afterwards, our business was delayed for a short while as we didn’t receive any house for more than 10 days. This was mainly because Yuan Zhen left the country for some reason, so no new leads came to us . Fortunately, the side business we built together managed to kickstart. When you were busy, you wouldn’t have time to feel so empty. 

When Yuan Zhen came back, we received news of the next house.

_______

Michelle’s elaboration time!

Why was the husband’s soul trapped because of a layer of wood shavings in the door?

As explained, the wood shavings came from a wooden well trolley and represent ‘family/couple harmony and union’. This means that members of the family would always gather together in this house. Because of that ‘union’ effect, the husband’s soul couldn’t leave the house. Thereafter, we learnt that Qin Yiheng took down the door and opened the windows, which effectively deactivated the ‘union’ effect and allowed the husband’s soul to leave.

As for why he committed suicide, we might never be sure. Qin Yiheng presented us two possible lines of thoughts: 1. It was predestined, meaning he simply was meant to die on New Year’s Eve, and 2. It was his ‘role’ to accidentally kill the thief in order to save his family from being killed. But because of the act of killing a man, he was tormented and chose to kill himself; coincidentally it happened to be New Year’s Eve.