I took the airplane alone when I flew back to my home country, but in the big city, I was joined by my extended family and my now partner-in-crime, Raf. We did all sorts of goofy and foolish stuff you’d expect from two teenage boys.
But I’ll tell you this, when my family’s car passed by the bridge that leads into the valley, and I saw the village I grew up in again. All the memories filled themselves into my brain yet again: the joy, the adventure, but also, the horrors.
I stayed only about two months in the village, five days a week, but since it’s only been six years since then, I remember most experiences. And I think, from everything that happened in those months, I wasn’t the only one excited to relight old memories.
The first thing that happened was about three days in. We stayed at the family home, which I kinda forgot to mention was a massive house, the biggest in the village.
There was heavy rain that night, as the region always does. My family was just watching TV at the time.
But it was during the hard rain that the banging began to sound.
We were on the second floor, and I heard directly above us that something was banging on the roof. Uncle Moy and his daughter told me and Raf.
“Ah, that's just the rats in the attic, no need to get so scared.” I don't know if Uncle Moy just wanted to reassure us or was just making a joke.
The ceiling of the second floor is wood. But the roof itself was metal. The banging we heard was metal, and not only that, no rats, I mean no rats, can produce such strong bangs.
Whatever was outside sounded furious. And remember how I said our house was the biggest house? No coconut tree was above it, and the banging was consistent enough to exclude coconuts or branches from the mountains.
The banging lasted for about ten minutes, before stopping; the entire time, Raf and I were just fixated on it. That was my first experience of something unnatural in many years.
The next thing that happened was a week later, my family was taking part in the village party, where I did a lot of embarrassing stuff. But as my grandmother forgot something at the family home, I was sent to get it. Raf came with me, and thank God he did.
Since this was an entire village party, barely anyone was in the streets or in their home. And I’ll tell you this, the night roads of the village were incredibly eerie; it felt wrong in a way. In the day, many people would be working, playing, chatting; at night, older people would be chatting, people would be drinking, just life overall.
But seeing nothing there, just a desolate village road, it was wrong.
And what made it more wrong, was the white figure on top of one of the roofs.
Raf and I noticed it as we came closer to the family home. It looked like a white sheet on top of one of the houses near the mountain. Instantly, I thought that someone might’ve just left their laundry out, but as Raf and I were inside the family home searching for what we needed, my mind began to wander.
“No shot they’d hang their clothes on the roof, right?” I asked myself, but the more I thought of it, the more I got terrified. And I know it wasn’t only me as well, as instead of talking about random ass stuff, Raf was also silent.
I didn’t want to bring it up, but I thought that if I just saw it again, then it meant it was just hanging clothes right?
Raf found the item we needed somewhere that would’ve taken me ages to actually find. So we got out of the house way faster than if I were alone. Though fear was still there, so we barely made a sound as we left.
It was still on a roof.
Our family house’s roof.
I cannot describe to you the fear we felt at that moment. Like, it was beyond bone-chilling; it felt primal even. But worse yet, it moved.
No, it hovered, right into one of the open windows of the family home. Raf and I quietly made our way back to the party; it felt like we were crawling because of how our feet were basically paralyzed.
When we finally got there, the two of us instantly told one of our family members what happened. I saw my aunt’s face slightly react before returning to normal.
“Maybe you were just seeing something, don’t worry about it,” she told us. But as we tried to insist it was true, she closed her eyes and tilted her head slightly, and repeated in a slower, more direct tone, “Maybe you were just seeing something, don’t, worry, about, it.”
My aunt was a kind and warm person; she can be a bit grumpy, but rarely is. But her aura at that moment felt… off, in a way. It’s extremely hard to pinpoint it, but when you’ve lived under the same roof with a person for many years, you’d know when something is off with them or not.
She told us to enjoy the party and play with the other teenagers, but even as we separated, I never took my eyes from her. When she thought we weren’t watching, I saw her whisper something to our grandmother’s ear.
My grandmother was currently the official matriarch of our family; she and my late grandfather were very respected in the village. So as my aunt whispered something to her, I saw her ask a boy near, something, then about half a minute later, Uncle Moy showed up.
She told him something that caused him to react a little. She then stood up as Uncle Moy rounded up a group of men, and the group of about six discreetly left the party. When the celebration was over, it was very late at night.
My family began to walk home, but as Raf and I started to walk closer to our family home, we became a lot more tense. But as the front door opened, it all suddenly changed.
Four men were in our kitchen laughing and drinking, like they were partying in our family home. I was surprised by how casual they were. But as one of them told us to get some sleep, my aunt instantly agreed as she led me, Raf, and his sister to the second floor to go to bed.
Yet as she was preparing the mattress we were supposed to sleep on, I thought of something. The four men in our living room looked like they were blocking that space rather than staying in it.
So I thought that they were guarding the way to our back area. The back could be seen from our second balcony.
I made the excuse of wanting to pee in order to sneak into the second balcony.
Our back area is separated into an area where we do cooking, cleaning, laundry, whatever. And further is a small area of jungle.
And it was in that area of jungle where I saw Uncle Moy digging a hole, with my grandmother standing next to him.
Holding a white sheet.
Whatever they were doing, I didn’t want to know at the time, so I instantly returned to my aunt.
That singular night freaked me out; it reminded me of how insanely eerie this whole village was sometimes.
The next strange occurrence happened just a little over a week later. Due to the last happening, Raf and I would get tensed up if we were the only two at our family home. So even with the burning sun of noon, the two of us would still go around the village.
Barely anyone would be out at this time due to the sun, so it would just be the two of us. It was in these moments that I started to re-ignite my old hobbies, such as spider catching.
As a kid, I only really caught spiders in the village, never outside. But now, as I am a bit older, I have begun to wander around the outskirts of the area, and we went all over the place, with the sole exception of the mountain near the family home. One area really became our hunting grounds, the mountain near uncle Moy’s home.
It was highly forested, giving us a natural roof to protect us from the sun’s rays, and due to it being highly forested, there were hundreds of spiders chilling around, big, small, common, and rare.
Though we were enjoying it, I still kept an eye out for things. I have heard plenty of tales of the happenings around this specific mountain, tales I would’ve quickly dismissed if not for that night with the white sheet.
And it seemed I wasn’t the only one keeping an eye on things.
It was an extremely hot day for the village, so a lot of people stayed indoors. But my family decided to talk to Uncle Moy about something, leaving only the two of us in the home yet again.
We decided to bear with the heat and go out on a spider-catching trip. But during our hike, we really didn’t find any. So we went deeper into the forest, the deepest we ever went.
We were probably about twenty minutes away from the village before we started to find spiders in the dozens around us. We initially enjoyed things, but as the afternoon came by, I experienced one of the most tense moments in my life.
It started with an unreachable spider atop a coconut tree. I was trying to spear it with a bamboo stick, but I kept on missing. About the third time I was aiming, Raf suddenly pulled me hard. I wanted to ask him what his problem was.
“Don’t ask just run,” he whispered to me as he began to run. Instantly I followed him, I trusted him enough to know when he’s joking or not. And it was during the run when I finally realized it; there were zero sounds around us. No birds chirping, cicadas buzzing, not even the wind could be heard. It was just our footsteps.
Raf and I ran our hearts out, but when my body was swallowed by this sudden dread at the same time as my legs began to give out. Raf noticed instantly, and thinking fast, we began to climb a big tree with a lot of foliage.
I don’t know what was with me during that moment, but this feeling of hopelessness quite literally began to swallow me alive. I’m not embarrassed to say I was extremely close to crying.
But what stopped me was the footsteps.
They sounded heavy, like something massive was making its way towards us.
My jaw was clenched as tight as I could, so tight I feared I might’ve broken my teeth. Raf had his hand on his mouth, and I saw his eyes look panicked; mine probably were as well.
And then we heard it first.
Directly below the tree.
A loud hissing, like a snake. But as we looked down, we saw the complete opposite.
It was completely black, but due to the sun from above, we got to see some details of its dark body. We saw it was on all fours, with hair on some parts of its back. It had black tusks on its face, and its eyes were a bright red. It looked to have been a boar, a massive one at that.
It was sniffing and looking around, hissing as it walked. The two of us were in complete shock and terror. My mind was swirling with emotions, and I felt like I could pass out at any time. I was tired, consumed by dread, hopelessness, and fear. I felt like I could pass out at any second. Talking to Raf about this years later, he told me he only felt fear a normal human would feel in that situation, but he told me my face was beyond any terror he had seen from a person.
But I was determined not to be seen. I even bit the inside of my mouth to stay awake; the shock of pain and the disgust of blood going down my throat kept my mind from falling asleep.
But after what felt like hours, the beast finally left. Raf and I spent a pretty long time making sure it was gone. When the sounds started to return to the forest, and a feeling of reassurance came over me, we knew it was gone.
When we finally got down, I got to see the size of this beast. I saw its highest point, reached a branch in the middle of the tree. The branch was about a foot taller than me. I am about five feet three.
The two of us jogged our way back to the village. Even when my legs were starting to ache, I felt as if I ever stopped, I would be swallowed by whatever on this side of the forest.
We were so hellbent on returning that even when I tripped and rolled down about three feet while we descended the mountain. I just got up instantly and continued, not even noticing the six-inch gash I got from grazing myself against something sharp.
When my family saw us, they began to get worried. They patched us up and began to tell us off for going too far.
But what freaked Raf and I out was their side comments.
It took Raf and me twenty minutes to reach our location, we stayed there for a shorter time, and ran back in almost half the time we took getting there. At the very most, I think we were only there for fifty minutes.
We heard Uncle Pino tell us off for leaving for three hours.
That singular comment caused the two of us to freeze in fear. I find there to be no way the two of us were there for three hours. Even while we stared at the beast, it only stayed for a bit, a minute AT THE MOST.
It wasn’t even like they were playing a joke on us; it was quite literally evening just an hour later. The two of us stayed silent, as we were really contemplating whether we should tell the family or not.
But as the two of us finished eating dinner, our grandmother called us to the second floor.
“Don’t go behind that mountain again, alright?” She told us in a firm but still soft tone, “Especially you, Yen.”
The two of us were stunned, but we guessed our faces made it apparent that something had happened. But I still wonder to this day why she separated me from Raf.
When the weekends came around, I went to my other home, a city big enough to be called a city, but small enough to consider calling it a town. Here, my mom’s side of the family resides. I typically went back and forth when I was younger, as my parents really wanted me to know both sides of my family.
My home here is less well-off than mine at the village, but not less with care and joy. And I’ll tell you this, in the days I spent there, both as a teenager and as a kid. There were zero supernatural occurrences, no rumors, no tales.
It was a very weird contrast, as the two looked similar with their forests, beautiful, full of life, and vibrant. But one of them, I sometimes feel like something’s just around the trees. It's like two identical paintings, but as you look closely at one and see a hand hidden behind one of the trees, even if you don’t see it far back, you know something's there.
And I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
My grandmother on my mother’s side, a kind and caring Japanese woman, whose way of speaking and mannerisms show how she’d adapted to life in these lands over three decades, I sometimes even forget she’s Japanese.
When I told her just a little bit about the happenings I experienced, I was shocked to hear she had a few of her own.
When my mother and father were getting married, it was her first time in the village, and she told me that she felt unwelcomed, not by the people; they treated her with kindness and hospitality.
“When I stepped in, I felt like the wood and leaves sprouted eyes and were staring at me with hatred,” she told me. “Especially the mountain near your family home, I felt so unwelcomed there, I almost threw up, I couldn’t even stay at your family home in those days.”
She told me how my grandmother told her and my mother to never separate, and they always either had Uncle Moy, my father, or my Grandfather on my father’s side with them.
When I asked her if she had ever had any experiences with something there, she told me how she had. My mother just asked her not to tell me. But she did tell me something.
There is a reason why my mother and I barely left the family house alone until I was five.
There is a reason why men and women around the village always have their eyes peeled on me growing up.
There is a reason why I constantly went back and forth on which home I stayed in.
There is a reason for everything.
When she said that, I quite literally got chills. She then pulled me close and hugged me. She whispered in my ear an apology; she told me that maybe if I had another grandmother, I would’ve lived a normal life in that village. I had to assure her that I wouldn’t want any other grandmother than her.
But as she finished hugging me, she held my shoulders and told me something. In the mountain near my family home, lies... a wooden shack. She told me in a serious tone to never go near it. Ever since I was a little boy, I had always felt like something was wrong with that shack, and her saying something about it terrified me.
But not as much as the last experience I had in the village.
This was during my last week in the village when I was fourteen, and my only experience when I visited again at sixteen.
They are extremely similar, so I will put them together.
My family’s house had two floors. The first had tiles that barely made a sound, and the second, along with the stairs, was made out of wood, with the sound being very distinct.
It was one forty AM when I heard someone was going up the stairs. The only problem was that all my family was already asleep. Instead of sleeping in separate rooms, we slept in the second-floor living room, which had a massive mattress to fit all of us.
My grandma, Raf, and his family were already sleeping. My uncles and aunties, along with their families, were at their houses, and it was one forty AM. No one would be entering.
But in case it was Uncle Moy who needed something, I went to the stairs.
The footsteps sounded, as I saw nothing there.
Not all the rooms on the second floor have wooden floors, but in those that have, I could see them.
Not a single soul was present.
I rushed to the mattress as fast as I could, hid behind the blankets, and started praying. But after a few steps, it suddenly stopped. That was the first experience with whatever this was.
The second was when I was sixteen. Raf was not with me; I was sleeping with my father and Uncle Moy, as my sister and his daughters were sleeping in their own separate room.
I had forgotten the steps until they sounded again, same time, one forty AM. I instantly remembered my experience with it and began to pray while hiding behind the blankets.
It began to sound a few more times before it stopped. I turned to the stairs, only to find no one there.
But the more horrific, but also strangely comforting part is that it wasn’t only me. While I was watching TV, I heard two family friends talking about the footsteps on the stairs. They remarked how it always stops at the fourteenth step, the last step before the second floor.
But, when I returned to the bigger city, and met up with my family living there, I brought this up to one of my cousins one night, let’s call him Jo. When he heard of my experiences, he got a certain look in his eye, and went to lock the door.
My sister and I were pretty weirded out, then he began to talk about the things the adults told each other in hushed voices. History that sounded forbidden, like even hearing it sounded wrong.
He is the second son of Uncle Moy, and from what he’s told us, he’s seen a lot. He hypothesized that the reason why the village is what it is, can be explained by its bloody history.
The ransacking and killing by the Japanese in World War II, left the streets bloody and hundreds dead. The murders that happened in a span of a decade, with bodies being thrown in the river occuring every few months. And the cannibal cults that used to wander around the perimeter, causing the people of the village to fear the forest and live in fear.
It was only due to the actions of the leader before Uncle Moy that the cults were dealt with; they were hunted like animals, killed in the woods, and burnt to a crisp, bodies looking more like charcoal than skin, their blades discarded around the mountains, as many thought they were cursed. The introduction of yearly village parties caused less tension in the area, and overall made everyone closer to each other. Uncle Moy doubled down on his predecessors’ changes, and the village, he said, is in a very safe period.
But Jo did agree with us that something is still wrong with the village. It was stained with so much blood from its past that no matter how many times it is wiped away, there will always be something left. Whatever the bodies lured, they are still there; whatever the cults contacted, they are still there.
And then Jo told my sister and I that he had heard the fifteenth step of the stairs.
During his college years, Jo would stay at the family home as someone needed to take care of it while everyone was away. He was typically alone most of the time, and because of that, he began to hear, see, and feel horrific things.
The loud flaps of something outside the home at night. A knocker, whom he had seen one day as a dark shape holding a machete. A tugger, who pulled at his clothes every once in a while.
He told us that he was so used to it, that he began to feel desensitized to it. It even felt weird for him every time someone would stay for a bit, as the experiences drastically went down. Even at the steps on the stairs, it didn’t scare him anymore.
Until, he heard the fifteenth.
He was sleeping in the room right next to the stairs, and as he heard it, he thought it was the normal nightly routine. Until he counted the fifteenth.
Just a bit of context with the family, my late grandfather, who died when I was eight, had parkinson’s disease. And he had a very recognizable shuffle to his steps, especially on the wooden floor.
My cousin heard the same shuffling.
And it was the first time in months he was utterly terrified; he couldn’t sleep that night at all.
When I first heard of this, I felt a little bittersweet. My grandfather always loved his grandkids, and this sounded like he wanted to visit one of us.
But about a year later, I had a very important teaching with my Pastor. He shared with me that he believes that there are no ghosts; spirits do not go to the human realm when they die.
If something looks like a ghost... even typing this out gives me chills. If something looks like a ghost, it is most likely a demon. My Pastor remarked how they only want to lure humans to interact with them.
I do not fully believe in ghosts, but demons and angels, I fully do, and the thought that something like that has been around me, it horrifies me, to the very bone.
But.
There has been one thing in this village that has been like a magnet to me, one that is a core memory each time I remember my village. It has been there since I was a baby, since I was four, since I was seven, since I was eight, since I was fourteen, since I was sixteen.
And it appeared again, for the first time in a long time, probably because I haven’t returned home for a long time.
It is the dream that made me write all of this, to share all of this.
The shack in the mountains right next to my family house. Ever since I was a little boy, I have constantly wondered what it was. I asked, no clear response. I tried to go to it, someone stopped me. It was constantly unreachable, until a few days ago.
I had a dream, where I scaled the mountain, and went face-to-face with the shack, its decaying wood filled with termites, its run-down roof made out of straw, clearly weathered down by the storms and rains. The machete at the front door, I saw it clearly; there was no haziness to it. Even now, thinking back, I can still see all the details of that dream, to the very color of each termite, the smell of that distinct part of the village, the lack of any sound around me besides my steps. I remember it all
The door was closed, and I had the urge to open it. And when my hand touched the bamboo door to open it.
I awoke.
Something’s behind that door, something hypnotizing, something dangerous. I know I should not even think of coming close to it; my grandmother was right, my uncle was right, everyone who ever warned and stopped me was right.
But the urge is too strong. My mind is being pulled, why’d I even think about it, why’d I even remember it.
Shit.
It’s like a termite; no matter how much I try to tear it down, it always builds itself back in my mind.
I know I need to suppress it.
I NEED TO GET RID OF IT VERY VERY SOON
My body’s shaking, I regret writing this, it's making me remember it all back.
But, I know full well why I’m writing this, why I NEED to write this.
I don’t know if I believe in any ghosts or mythical creatures. I don’t know if you also do, whoever reads this.
But know this.
There is something out there.
In a valley, with a mountain at the top, and a river at the bottom, lay a village. In it, are people, each with their own individual stories, some meant to teach, some meant to scare, others meant to just be heard. I have told you mine for you to remember, its meaning for you to decide, I’m really not picky.
I just want the fact that I was, someone, to be out there.
As I’m afraid when I enter that village again.
I may be one of the tales told in hushed voices.
May God protect my soul.