Oh no! What have you done? Now I'm compelled to read through every single one of these horror stories, watch every single video and look at every single picture. You, ShaolinsKunk, are hereby responsible for my future psychiatric fees... I love horror, but horror does not love me *sobs quietly in the corner and rocks back and forth*.
Already, I can feel the shadow people watching me from the corners of my vision o_0.
I have a few stories of my own to tell.
Back when I lived in Shanghai, China, I went to a Christian school which is credited as being the oldest international school in Shanghai. It was located in a newly built district called Gubei, which had been recently developed as an expatriate community. It was full of brand new compounds, apartment buildings, shopping malls, international schools etc.
The school itself was large, and maze like. It contained a section that was below ground, a sort of basement area, with a few classrooms and bathrooms. It wasn't used a lot, but the students would occasionally go down there to visit the toilet since it was the closest one to the school cafeteria.
Interestingly, the bathroom, and the basement itself, became a sort of urban myth among the students. It was widely believed to be haunted. Many of the Chinese teachers refused to go down there altogether. I had one Chinese teacher who actually warned us during class to avoid visiting the basement bathroom. She seemed absolutely convinced, and terrified. Of course, we students laughed it off, and joked about the "haunted basement" frequently.
Occasionally, a few students would come back with stories about how they heard the toilets flushing by themselves, or how a trashbin had moved across the floor on its own, and in one case, a group of students had been skipping class down there when suddenly the lights went out. There had been three of them in the room. One of them was my sister. The sudden powercut lasted for only a few seconds, but during that time, the following happened. They all heard sudden splashing footsteps. One of them screamed. Then the lights slowly flickered back on. The one who had screamed claimed that she had been punched on the shoulder. They weren't standing in close proximity to one another, and obviously, neither of them had touched her. Also, the mirrors had fogged up, and there was clay stuck to one of the mirrors. It hadn't been there before. It was a strange, indecipherable symbol. It might have been a clumsy attempt at a Chinese character. No one had any idea how the clay got there... and where the clay would have come from in the first place.
After that fateful day, my sister and her two friends refused to go down there and were convinced that it truly was haunted.
Another friend of a friend had been down there, once again skipping class. She was putting on make-up, and staring into the mirror. The lights had a habit of flickering erratically... perhaps they hadn't been fixed in a long time. They started flickering again. Suddenly she saw a girl standing behind her. Again, it only lasted for a few seconds. She described the girl to me as being Asian, fairly young, and wearing a traditional Chinese red qipao (a sort of pyjama). She also had inhumanly large, dark eyes and long black hair that looked as if it was dripping wet. She looked right at my friend with an expression of deep sorrow for a few seconds, rushed towards her, then disappeared.
After this incident, all of us avoided going down into the basement for a long period of time. We would continue hearing urban myths, and jokes about the haunted basement, but would remain silent. One night, after an evening of drinking at a house party nearby... we had a foolish idea.
Me, my sister, and the friend who saw the girl in the mirror (I'll call her Sheryl), would break into the school and perform a spell in the bathroom that would reveal a spirit if there was one. I was heavily interested in the occult at the time, and I had found a suitable spell in a book. I had been mulling over the idea in my head for some time, but had lacked the courage until the power of alcohol gifted it to me. Therefore, I had everything prepared, from the candles, the salt, the Tarot card deck and the spell itself.
Breaking into a private Christian school which is guarded by high walls, barbed wire, cameras and armed security-men at 3am in the night was an adventure of its own, but I shall leave that story for another time. Nonetheless, we had been in the school for over seven years, and knew exactly the route to go whilst remaining undetected. Years of skipping classes had taught us where the cameras were situated in the hallways.
I had a weak flashlight as we descended into the basement, drunk, giddy, stumbling and giggling.
I think it must have been the darkness, but as soon as we entered the bathroom, we sobered up and went silent. I set up the candles, and began casting the circle, using the salt as a barrier. I can't remember exactly how the spell went, but the idea was that I would first protect us by casting a circle, then call out to any nearby spirits to reveal themselves, open a small door in the circle, step out, close the door, then use a specific Tarot card from the major arcana to guide me to the spirit (if indeed there was one). As you can imagine, this was both juvenile and foolish, as I would be exiting the protective circle... even if I could cast one correctly in my drunken state.
Fumbling in the darkness, I attempted to light the candles. For some reason, despite there not being a draft, they kept extinguishing. Cursing, I tried again and again. My sister suggested I cast the circle first, and then light the candles. I did so... and this time the candles stayed lit. Sheryl was already very spooked, so what happened next, may have been part imagination. We all began chanting the spell. It echoed eerily in the silent bathroom. There was a distant dripping sound as well. I held up my Tarot card, and cut a "door" in the circle. I stepped out. I forgot to close the door. With my eyes shut, I held the card ahead of me, and let it guide me. I felt a pull, tugging at me, and followed it. I opened my eyes every few seconds to make sure I wasn't crashing into a wall. I walked past the mirrors. I walked past the cubicles. At the last cubicle, I suddenly felt a "tug". It's difficult to describe this... it was a compulsion to stop and turn. I had my eyes closed, and I swore that within my head, I saw a huge white shape... I would describe it as a hulking bear shape, except humanoid. I heard a slam, and then a sudden yelp. The shape rushed at me. In panic, I opened my eyes. I was standing at the last cubicle, and the door, which had been closed, was now open. The candles had blown out, and Sheryl was crying.
Without waiting to gather our stuff, we fled.
Once we were out of the school, Sheryl told us what she saw right before the candles blew out. In the mirrors that surrounded the circle, she saw the girl again, reflected over and over into infinity. She also felt an inner pain that went beyond depression, beyond despair. She felt suicidal. It took her a long time to recover from that experience.
A few weeks after that incident, the bathroom and the basement were closed off permanently. Perhaps the candles, and occult supplies that the ayis (maids) had found left behind had finally scared people for good. The reason they gave us in a newsletter was that the basement was in need of a "renovation" and was "unfit" for classes and students. They never did renovate it during the two more years I stayed at that school.
I was telling this story to a few Chinese classmates one day, and they didn't seem shocked or surprised. One of them casually remarked that Gubei was known to have the highest suicide rate in the Puxi area. Apparently the people who lived in the apartments right opposite the school had a habit of jumping to their deaths. They also told me some of the history attached to that area. They believed that the girl Sheryl had witnessed may have been a war casualty, or a suicide from a long, long time ago. Perhaps she wasn't a single entity at all, but rather a representation of all the pain and suffering people had experienced in Shanghai during the four month war in 1937.
It may have explained what the unformed, white shape I witnessed was. It may explain the suicide rate, and the depression that Sheryl felt.
This is an entirely true story, and one of many that I have experienced in my travels throughout Asia (Thailand is especially haunted).
Perhaps someday I will tell you more.
