Summer Horror Special - A Strange Night in a Thai Country House
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This story includes smoking-related descriptions for narrative purposes.
This piece is a summer horror special retelling of something I experienced in a quiet rural house in Thailand.
There were quite a few houses gathered around that rural village in Thailand. One of them was the house where I stayed for several months while going back and forth to Korea. My family in Thailand also lives there.
That day, a power cut had left the entire village in a blackout.
The air conditioner and the fan were both dead. The heavy humidity clung unpleasantly to my body, and the air seemed to sink heavily around the house.
In the end, I went downstairs to check the generator, but I had no idea how to use it.
Ah... damn.
I smoked one of the rolling tobaccos I had made by hand and looked up at the sky. It was around one in the morning, but the clouds were still clearly visible, as if they had soaked up the darkness itself.
I closed my eyes for a moment while the rolling tobacco burned, listening to the insects ringing through the space around me.
Toads, katydids, crickets, and geckos calling in the dark. Among them, one especially sharp sound was hard to identify. It almost sounded like metal being sharpened.
Maybe countless insect calls had gathered into something like a resonance. When I listened closely, it was genuinely eerie.
But I liked those sounds.
“Damn... this is what it means to be alive.”
Muttering to myself, I brushed the ash from the finished rolling tobacco into a small ashtray case. Then I opened the sliding door, stepped inside, and closed it behind me.
After that, I placed the hand-rolled tobacco on the wooden table.
That was when it happened.
A sudden hissing sound cut through the room, and a chill ran down my spine.
For a moment, I could not even hear the insects. A cold sensation climbed up through my body.
“...Damn.”
I let out a small sound and slowly turned around.
The sliding door was open.
I had no idea what had happened. I picked up another rolling tobacco, went back outside, and smoked one more.
In front of me was a huge katydid. It was impressive to look at, honestly.
It was a cool-looking creature, but I had no intention of touching it. Its jaws looked seriously sharp. The nearest emergency room was far away, and I did not want to take any unnecessary risks in a rural village in Thailand.
That is one of my rules.
“Damn... that thing is huge.”
I said that, tapped the ash from the finished rolling tobacco, and put it back into the small ashtray case.
But something felt wrong.
The cigarette butt I was sure I had put into the ashtray earlier was gone.
If my memory was correct, there should have been one burned-out rolling tobacco butt inside it.
I stared at the ashtray case with a puzzled look. Cold sweat ran down the bridge of my nose.
I slowly opened the sliding door, closed it again, and went back inside.
But then a strange feeling came over me. Thinking back carefully, I had never closed the door in the first place.
I was sure I had muttered “damn” and gone straight back outside to smoke the rolling tobacco.
Well, it was probably just a coincidence. It was late, everyone was asleep, and I was alone. Everything would be fine.
I went upstairs toward the main bedroom.
I locked the door and lay down on the enormous bed. The moment I did, the air conditioner came back on.
“Oh-ho.”
I let out a small cheer and pulled the blanket over myself. Wrapped in the blanket, I made a strange little satisfied sound and turned on my smartphone.
Then I heard footsteps coming up the stairs from somewhere.
Huh? There should not be anyone coming upstairs at this hour.
Before that thought even finished,
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The sound came again.
Brave as I am, I threw off the blanket and shouted, “Who is it?” Then another chill climbed up my spine.
I am not afraid of ghosts. Everything has a cause and an effect.
There are no ghosts in this world. I can guarantee that.
Thinking that, I started recording a video.
Breathing hard, I opened the door just a little.
There was no one there.
But I had clearly heard something.
Since readers might not quite understand it, let me give an example.
Have you ever seen a horror movie where everything goes silent, and then suddenly something moves in a wooden attic? For example, the kind of attic sound that appears all the time in Japanese and American horror films.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Sssrrrk. Thump. Knock.
That was exactly what it sounded like.
If readers came here and spent just one night in that house, I would bet they would get scared, book a ticket in a hurry, and leave. Damn!
While I was living in Thailand, the sounds continued after that. They were irregular.
To be honest, I did eventually find the cause.
The culprits were house geckos.
When they clung to the walls and moved around in clusters, almost like they were doing a full-body twist dance, they made that sound. It was silly, but also strangely cute.
Even if something frightening, like a ghostly event, were to happen in real life, my thought would not change much. Maybe it is no longer simply something scary, but the faint afterimage of someone we have to carry with us, or a trace of the collective unconscious.
Maybe it is the memory of a place shaped by long years and history, and what we experience is only a small indirect glimpse of that afterimage while our consciousness is awake.
After several months, I arrived back in Korea and went straight to the airport smoking room in a limbo-like posture.
And after reaching the smoking room, I took out a hand-rolled tobacco, lit it, and thought.
Wait... then why had that cigarette butt disappeared that day? And what was it with the door opening or closing by itself?
That sound was just the geckos, wasn’t it..
Just as I thought that,
at that exact moment, the fingertips holding the cigarette trembled slightly. Huh?.. With a quiet little sound,
when I looked up, the people in the smoking room were staring at me.
An American standing next to a long-haired Asian woman was wearing a shirt that looked like something you would see in Hawaii.
Huh?..
Years later, I heard that other people who stayed in that house for a while had also seen strange people or heard strange sounds that would not stop.
Hello. I wanted to turn this chilling real experience into a minimal web novel. My writing may not be excellent, but thank you for reading it with interest.
In deep memory of Father, who passed away in Thailand on June 27, 2026. I send my heartfelt condolences to the family left behind in Thailand, and may he rest in peace.
© 2026 FR badagga / 고독한바닥가. All rights reserved.
