What Scared Me as a Little Boy in 1980s Rural Korea
I lived with my grandmother in the Korean countryside until I was about five years old.
My grandmother ran a tiny grocery store at the entrance to the village. Ours was the first house you came to, and the rest of the village stretched out behind it.
At that age, there really wasn’t much for me to do except run around and play.
But I was never bored.
There were three other children around my age in the village. Two of them were brothers, and then there was the kid who lived behind my house and me.
For the four of us, any open space between houses could become a playground. So could the narrow alleys and the paths leading toward the mountains.
During the day, there wasn’t much to be afraid of.
The problem began when the sun went down.
When Night Fell, It Became a Different Village
Don’t imagine the Korean countryside today, where you can still find lights here and there after dark.
The village I remember became truly dark at night.
There was one small streetlight in the middle of the village, and that single light seemed to serve the entire place.
Of the four children, I was probably the most easily frightened.
At night, I was convinced that ghosts might appear.
Even when I slept tightly pressed against my grandmother, I was scared. I can still remember trembling under the blankets before finally falling asleep.
Strangely, some of my strongest memories from that time aren’t things I saw. They’re things I felt.
The smell of my grandmother’s house.
The sticky humidity of a Korean summer night.
And the cool breeze coming down from the mountains and wrapping around my sweaty body.
More than forty years later, I’ve forgotten countless things.
But somehow, I still remember those.
And in those peaceful summer nights, there was one place that terrified me more than anywhere else.
The toilet.
The Place I Could Never Visit Alone at Night
Have you ever seen an old-fashioned Korean pit toilet?
The toilet at my grandmother’s house wasn’t inside the house.
You had to go outside.
There was a deep pit in the ground, with places on either side where you could put your feet.
And underneath you was, of course, everything that had been left there by the people who used it before you.
The smell was unforgettable.
It wasn’t exactly a welcoming place for a five-year-old even during the day.
At night, it became something else entirely.
Who knew what might be hiding inside that deep, dark hole?
Of course, as an adult, I know the answer.
Nothing.
But adults back then seemed to enjoy frightening children for fun.
“If you fall in there, you’ll never get out.”
“If you fall in, you’ll be covered in poop and turn into a poop ghost.”
Things like that.
The adults laughed.
We didn’t.
We believed them.
Today, the idea of a “poop ghost” makes me laugh too.
But imagine being five years old.
It’s the middle of the night. Your entire village is almost completely dark. There is only one streetlight somewhere in the distance, and in front of you is a deep, black hole filled with a smell you can barely stand.
Suddenly, the poop ghost doesn’t sound quite so funny.
The worst moments were when I woke up in the middle of the night needing to pee.
There was no chance I was going outside alone.
So I woke my grandmother.
And I don’t mean gently.
I was frightened, so I would cry and call out until she woke up.
My grandmother actually had quite a fiery temper.
But strangely, she was always gentle with me.
She never got angry at her grandson for waking her in the middle of the night.
Instead, she would get up and come outside with me, standing nearby while I peed by the little stream in front of the house.
As far as I remember, something like this happened about once a week.
Was I afraid of the toilet?
The darkness?
Or did I really believe that a poop ghost was waiting for me?
Probably all three.
But there was another place near our village that frightened us even more than the toilet.
If You Go Near the Water, the Water Ghost Will Take You
Near the village where I lived was one of Korea’s major rivers.
Children are naturally fascinated by water.
And when adults tell you not to go somewhere, somehow that makes you want to see it even more.
We weren’t necessarily brave enough to jump into the river.
But we wanted to go near it. We wanted to look at the water.
Of course, four very young children wandering around a large river without adults was dangerous.
The grown-ups knew that.
But did they really need to explain drowning, water depth, or currents to a group of five-year-olds?
They had a much more effective method.
The mulgwisin.
A mulgwisin is what Koreans call a water ghost.
The adults warned us:
“If you go near the water, the water ghost will appear.”
“If it finds a child, it’ll drag you into the water.”
It worked remarkably well.
We believed them.
Even when we occasionally wandered toward the river, we usually stayed back and watched the water from a distance.
Going into it?
Absolutely not.
Then one day, while we were playing as usual, we somehow ended up near the river again.
One of the kids suddenly said,
“There’s something floating in the water.”
All four of us stared at the river.
And then someone figured out what it was.
A knife.
More specifically, we thought we could see the handle of a kitchen knife floating down the river.
At least, that’s what all four of us believed we saw.
Looking back now, it doesn’t make much sense.
Even as an adult, it takes me about ten minutes to walk from the village to the river.
Could a group of five-year-olds really identify the handle of a small kitchen knife floating far away in the water?
Probably not.
Maybe it was a branch.
Maybe it was some trash.
Maybe it was just some unidentifiable object floating downstream.
But there is one thing I remember clearly.
All four of us believed it was a knife.
And it isn’t difficult to imagine what immediately entered our minds.
The water ghost.
We screamed and ran.
I don’t remember how fast we ran.
I don’t even remember whether I looked behind me.
I just remember running toward home as fast as my little legs could carry me.
Looking Back, There Was Nothing There
More than forty years later, I can look back and laugh.
There was no poop ghost hiding beneath the toilet.
There probably wasn’t a water ghost living in the river.
And I still don’t know whether the thing we saw floating in the water was actually a knife.
But to the five-year-old version of me, all of it was real.
The adults told us ghost stories to keep us away from dangerous places, and we believed every word.
Maybe those stories actually did keep us safe.
Today, it all sounds funny.
But something about those memories is strange.
I don’t remember what any of those ghosts were supposed to look like.
Yet I still remember the smell of my grandmother’s house.
The humidity of those summer nights.
The cool breeze coming down from the mountains.
The village disappearing into darkness.
That one lonely streetlight in the distance.
And my grandmother quietly getting out of bed to stand beside a frightened little boy who was too scared to go outside alone.
What frightened you when you were five years old?
Is there something that seems silly now, but felt absolutely real and terrifying to you back then?