#81. 괴담 -- Just how real is the tiger-demon of Korea? (Shamanism 6)

I'll admit it, I slept with the lights on after I wrote the tiger-demon article from last week. Something about the Korean horror stories (especially if they're claimed to be true) freaks me out; maybe it's because there's traces of shamanism in my upbringing (and as a consequence, a small part of me believes these stories); or maybe it's just the sheer number of these stories, and how they all seem to match up. There were so many stories that some media outlets even wrote articles about them!

These kinds of news articles actually appeared in media.

Tiger-demon aside, there are actually a surprising number of these stories in the Korean society. These "scary urban legends" are often called "괴담."

The letter "괴" is Chinese meaning "strange" or "scary." For example, "괴물" is a "monster" in Korean, aliens are sometimes called "괴생명체 (strange life-forms)" and demons are called "요괴 (magical and strange beings)."

The letter "담" means "story" and it is used widely. If you want to read about someone's experience, search for "경험담 (experience story)." If you want to hear about the time when your friend saw something happening, ask about their "목격담 (witnessed story)."

So "괴담" means "strange story" and you will find so many "장산범 괴담" on the internet.

Anyway, here is the story that really scared me, with some edits to make the story clearer. As before, if you'd like to read the story in Korean, you can find it here.

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 My grandmother is 93 years old. Yep, she is pretty old. But she is still full of life. She can still walk well, and she can down an entire bottle of soju if there is a family gathering. She likes to sing, and her memory is top-notch. She remembers even the smallest events in my family from many years ago.

Anyway, this is a story that my grandmother often told me when I was in elementary school and middle school. It's the story of a 범. Every time she told this story, she always looked tense and shivered.

Whenever she sees a tiger ("호랑이" in Korean) on TV, she always says that this is not a 범 (while it is another word for a tiger in Korean, it seems that at least some people distinguish them, at least in these stories!) She says that 범s have magical powers, and that they are snow-white.

When she was in her 20s, my grandmother lived in the 황해 province, which is now in North Korea. One day, she went into a nearby mountain to pick some wild fiddleheads with three friends. While they did this often, that particular day, they decided to go a little deeper into the woods in hopes that there will be more fiddleheads.

Indeed there were a lot of fiddleheads and other wild edible plants, and they filled up their baskets with them. My grandmother remembers that on that day, they ate lunch of barley rice (보리밥), soybean paste (된장), and cucumber kimchi (by the way, this is a totally standard meal in the 1920-30s of Korea). Then they decided to leave the mountain early because it looked like they could be trapped in a storm if they stayed too late.

Unfortunately, they didn't bring enough water. As they finished lunch and started to come down from the mountain, one of their friends was whining about how thirsty she was. But as they were near the summit, they couldn't find any water.

All of a sudden, they heard the sound of a stream, where the water seemed to be flowing (in Korean onomatopoeia, it is described as "졸졸졸 시냇물 흐르는 소리 -- the sound of flowing stream.") All four of them heard it.

The friend who was whining didn't want to get separated from the group, so all four of them set out to search for the stream so she could drink some water. Although they followed the sound for some time, they couldn't locate the stream. Sometimes they could hear the sound, and sometimes they couldn't. They were so tired so they gave up on the search for the stream and turned back to get back on the mountain trail.

Then they saw the thing on their way back up. Two lights not unlike the headlights of a car shining down at them. My grandmother described it as a thing covered in white fur. Very fine, very soft, and long. While it was clearly not human, it felt human. It was standing there, between them and the trail, looking down at them, and making the sound of the flowing stream from its mouth. It wasn't growling or roaring.

The four women screamed and ran down the side of the mountain, already having dropped all of their baskets full of fiddleheads, and even losing some shoes in their panic. And behind them they could still hear the sound of the stream following them.

About halfway down, they saw a little hut, probably used by those who look for medicinal herbs in the mountain. They ran inside the hut, locked the door, and cried in their panic. Then the sound of the stream stopped.

They could hear something coming up to the door. It circled the hut, then called out the name of the friend who was whining earlier of thirst. The voice was so full of warmth, and so soft. The friend recognized it as her mother's voice. No one dared to answer, and it started to rain. So instead of trying to get back to their village, they all fell asleep in the little hut together.

In the dawn of the next day, when the woke up, the friend who was complaining of thirst was gone. The three remaining women searched for her frantically but could not find her. Their return to the village of course put everyone in panic, and the Japanese police force with their long swords (this would have been in the Japanese occupation era) searched the village and the surrounding areas. But no one ever saw the friend again, and they never found her body either.
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I'm still not sure why I am so fascinated by these stories, but all of these shamanism theories aside, it's good fun to read scary stories once in a while and get some organic goosebumps in the heat of the summer, no?