Work Text:
The Ghost Writer’s Guide for Ghosts
A Chicago Typewriter Fanfiction
Excerpt # 1:
Dedication: To my friend Bang Jin, for her invaluable research assistance—and, as always, to Se Joo and Seol. You make my afterlife worth living.
“The Ghost Writer’s Guide for Ghosts?” echoed Gal Ji Seok, looking dubious. “Shouldn’t that be ‘The Ghostwriter’s Guide to Ghosts?’”
“No, Ji Seok, you still don’t get it,” Han Se Joo told his publisher. “I’ve explained this to you before. It’s not a guide for humans about ghosts. It’s a guidebook for ghosts about how they can better exist in the human world.”
“Unh-hunh,” said Ji Seok, his dubiousness increasing. “And what about this thing of ‘Ghost Writer’ being two separate words? I think I’ve usually seen it as one word …”
“That’s when it’s referring to someone who writes secretly under another author’s name,” Se Joo said. He couldn’t resist adding, “Like that jerk you tried to hire for me last year. That’s not the case, here; he’s simply a ghost who’s a writer. Or a writer who’s a ghost.”
The long-suffering publisher heaved a monumental sigh. “Ye-e-es. And that’s another thing: about the author’s name. Are you sure you won’t let us list you as the author? Your name recognition would add a lot to the sales prospects …”
Se Joo couldn’t help grinning at his poor publisher’s troubles. “Yes, I’m sure, because I’m not the author! Look, I’ll write a foreword, if you like. Makes sense, for me to do the foreword for a book by my long-time friend. As for the author’s name, if you don’t want to just leave it as ‘the Ghost Writer,’ there’s only one name that can be there. Yoo Jin Oh. He is the one who’s writing it.”
Poor Ji Seok looked absolutely martyred. “Yoo Jin Oh,” he repeated. “Your friend the ghost. The ghost who lives in your house.”
“That’s right,” Han Se Joo smirked. His thoughts added, And the ghost who’s my boyfriend. Who’s in an absolutely wonderful threesome with me and our perfect, adorable girlfriend. But he didn’t add that information to the many topics Ji Seok had to freak out about. He hadn’t shared with Ji Seok or with the members of his staff the more personal aspects of his and Seol’s relationship with Jin Oh.
The publisher pursed his lips in massive disapproval. “And about the author’s payment and the royalties? I suppose you don’t want them to go to you, and I don’t think it’s possible to pay a ghost …”
“I’ll talk with him about that,” Se Joo promised. “I’m sure we can find some charity he’ll want the money to go to. One for the upkeep of underprivileged cemeteries, maybe. Or perhaps there’s some scholarship fund for the descendants of Korean Independence Movement fighters.”
Ji Seok began in a hopeless tone, “I don’t suppose you want to …”
“No, Ji Seok,” grinned Se Joo. “I don’t want to talk to a psychiatrist. Everything’s fine. In fact, it’s wonderful. I’m sharing my house with my best friend who’s a ghost. What could be better?”
Excerpt #2:
Foreword
As a writer, perhaps I should never be in the position of admitting myself at a loss for words. But the fact remains that I’m happier than words can fully express at being able to write this foreword for a book by my friend Yoo Jin Oh.
When we first met, in our past life, both of us were young, hopeful would-be authors. Our shared passion for writing was the early basis of our friendship.
As happens to so many writers, collisions with the real world caused train-wrecks for our dreams. Being the idealists that we were, we didn’t feel able to ignore the political turmoil in our country, and we became members of Korea’s Independence Movement.
I was fortunate. Throughout our political involvement, I was able to keep on writing. I channeled my frustrations, my despair and my dreams for our country into a slightly fictionalized depiction of our movement’s struggles—finding hope in the dream that the words I wrote might someday help to build a brighter future for our country.
Yoo Jin Oh wasn’t so lucky. He made a different choice than I did, putting aside his dreams of a writer’s career in order to work the job which provided cover for our revolutionary activities. My friend who had longed, with me, to be a writer, became, instead, the owner-manager of a nightclub, and one of the leaders of our movement.
For the sake of our country, Yoo Jin Oh gave up his personal dreams. The knowledge of that fact is why I find it impossible to fully express how glad I am that he has returned to a writer’s career now.
Rediscovering my friendship with Jin Oh has taught me that no dream needs to stay lost forever. If we love deeply enough, we can find the people we thought lost to us, and regain the dreams that we believed would never come true.
On that day when Jin Oh smiled and told me, “I’m not an author. I’m a nightclub owner, now,” neither of us imagined that this day would ever come. But it has come, and I’m proud and happy to write this foreword for a work by Yoo Jin Oh: author and friend.
Han Se Joo
Seoul
Chuseok, 2018
Han Se Joo had given all the members of his staff sizeable bonuses recently. They definitely deserved it, for their patience in putting up with their boss’ insistence that he now shared his home with a ghost—or, for those who didn’t persist in denying what was totally obvious, for their flexibility in adapting to the fact that they worked in a haunted house.
Se Joo and Jeon Seol had introduced their ghost friend to the staff on the first morning after he’d come back to them. The staff would have known something was different about them that morning, even without the ghostly introduction. For one thing, it was far from usual (or it had been far from usual, up until that point) for Seol to be at the house for breakfast. For another, it was pretty danged obvious that both Se Joo and Seol were glowing with the unmistakable vibe of “we just had sex together for the first time and we’re completely over-the-moon about it.” What the staff couldn’t see, of course, since Yoo Jin Oh was invisible to them, was that their ghost had that radiant, blissfully contented vibe about him, too.
That morning before breakfast, Se Joo asked his staff members to join them in the living room. There he had addressed the assembled staff of Secretary Kang, Ms. Jo the cook, the two Ms. Kims, the maids, and Mr. Choi and Mr. Lee, the groundskeepers. He had told them, “I have something to share with all of you. It’s going to sound strange, and it will make you worried about me, but I’m asking you, please, don’t be worried. I’m not actually crazy—and if I were, it would be a positive kind of craziness. It’s not going to do any harm to me or to anybody else.
“What Ms. Jeon and I have to tell you,” he continued, putting an arm around Seol’s waist and then turning to smile at Jin Oh, who was standing at his other side, “is that from now on, a ghost will be living in the house with us. His name is Yoo Jin Oh. He’s our best friend, and Seol and I delighted to welcome him to live with us. Jin Oh, is there anything you’d like to say to the staff?”
Their friend the ghost smiled and bowed to the people who couldn’t see him. “It’s a pleasure to meet all of you,” he said. “Thank you for your work, and I promise to do my best not to cause extra trouble for you.”
Se Joo repeated the ghost’s words for his startled and worried-looking staff members. “He’ll be sharing meals with me,” Se Joo went on, “like he did for a few months last year when he was living here before. So that’s why whenever I’m eating at the house, I’ll ask you to set a second place setting. The food can go to Gyun Woo after Mr. Yoo’s done with it, whenever it’s dog-safe. You’ll find that after a ghost has eaten a food’s spiritual essence, its taste gets blander. That’s why it won’t be that satisfying for humans to eat Mr. Yoo’s leftovers. But if you want to try it, at least that may give you some confirmation that Mr. Yoo really is here.
“Another thing on that note: since you all know he’s here, there’s not any reason for him to try and hide his presence. So you’re likely to see plates and glasses moving on their own, chopsticks floating in the air, flying beer cans … Try not to be too startled when it happens, and maybe when you’ve seen enough of that, you’ll believe that we’re not crazy, after all.
“Mr. Yoo will be picking out a bedroom for himself, but I doubt that will add much to your workload; he’s very tidy. Oh, and Ms. Jeon will be picking out a room, too. She’s likely to be staying over much more frequently in the future.” He and Seol shared a smile at that.
“I think that pretty much takes care of it. Oh, and if you see the antique typewriter typing on its own, that will be Mr. Yoo, too. You see, he’s also a writer. Thank you for your patience and understanding, and again, please try not to worry about me. I promise you, I’m not insane—and if I am, it’s not the kind of insanity that’s going to hurt anyone.”
Most of the staff murmured worried-sounding agreements and filed away, but Secretary Kang remained behind. She waited until the others were gone, then she burst out, “Writer-nim—I know you say not to worry about you, but how can I help it?” Ms. Kang looked like she was working determinedly not to cry. “I’ve worked for you a long time, and I … well, I feel about you almost like an older sister. I can’t just not worry about you. We know you’ve been under a lot of pressure, with the deadline for your new novel … All I want to say is, if there’s anything we can do to help you …”
He crossed to her and took her hands in his. “Thank you, Ms. Kang,” he told her. “I mean it. I appreciate it. And I’m sorry to worry you. But all I can do is say you don’t need to be worried. I’m okay. Ms. Jeon and I are both okay, and Yoo Jin Oh is okay, too. We’re all happy to be together again. And if Ms. Jeon and I are crazy, if we’re insane to imagine that our friend is here with us, then how does it damage anyone? What harm does insanity do, if it makes people happy?”
“I … yes, writer-nim,” she forced out, and she hurriedly left, probably to avoid him seeing her break down in tears.
“I’m sorry about that,” Yoo Jin Oh said. “I hate to worry her.”
“I know,” Se Joo sighed. “She puts up with a hell of a lot from me.”
“Maybe you should write her a ghostly message,” Seol suggested. “Wait till some time when she’s in the writing room, then start typing a ‘Sorry to worry you, I really am here’ message for her on the typewriter. If she sees it typing on its own, won’t she have to believe in you, then?”
“I don’t know,” Jin Oh teased, “humans can be awfully stubborn about not believing in things. You didn’t believe in me until you saw me.”
“I did so! I was talking to you—or trying to, even though I was looking at the wrong bit of air when I talked. You’ve just been a ghost for so long, you don’t have enough faith in humans …”
Han Se Joo grinned in delight as he listened to his two friends and lovers good-naturedly bicker on their way in to breakfast.
It took a bit of effort for Ma Bang Jin to forgive Yoo Jin Oh for being not only taken, but doubly taken.
A couple of days after his return, he worked up the courage to ask Seol to phone Bang Jin for him and set up a meeting between them. The young woman seemed predictably thrilled to hear from him. That just added to Jin Oh’s feelings of guilt, since what he had to tell her boiled down to, “I’m back from the Great Beyond, but I’m still not going to date you.”
They found a relatively secluded spot for themselves on a park bench overlooking the Cheonggye Stream. Bang Jin had her phone out and her earbuds in, in case anyone noticed her apparently talking to herself, but nothing was going to make them look inconspicuous if somebody noticed a big coffee drink floating around through the air. Jin Oh had followed Bang Jin’s lead and asked her to order him the same drink as she was having, which meant he ended up with a huge, frothy, sugary thing which in his opinion bore only a minimal resemblance to coffee. He wondered if it was possible for a ghost to overdose on sugar, and what would happen to said ghost if he did.
“I know that look on your face,” Bang Jin said mournfully, between sips through her straw. “You’re going to tell me you’re dating somebody else.”
“Um, well, yes, actually,” Jin Oh answered, glad that at least that part was out of the way. “Two somebodies. Jeon Seol and Han Se Joo and I are … all together.”
Bang Jin’s eyes went wide and her cheeks blushed a very cute shade of pink. “All three of you?” she exclaimed. “You’re all together? I … oh, wow. That’s really hot. It’s like a web novel.”
“Um, thank you, I think,” said the ghost, uncomfortably aware that he was now blushing, also.
“But it’s not fair!” Bang Jin burst out now. “What has Seol got that I don’t have? How does she get so lucky? Her favorite author becomes her boyfriend, and now she’s got you, too? How does she rate two boyfriends and I don’t have even one?”
“You will,” Jin Oh tried to reassure her. “I’m sure of it. You’re a beautiful, kind, sensitive girl, and you’re still young—you don’t need to feel like you’re on the shelf. After all, look at Won Dae Han. I’m sure none of us ever expected him to find a girlfriend, and now he and that Isabella lady are as cute together as bugs in rugs.”
“Bugs in rugs?” Bang Jin asked him. “Bugs in rugs are cute?”
“Old expression,” he explained. “I think it was ‘as snug as a bug in a rug,’ actually. Anyway … Doesn’t Dae Han’s example make you feel hopeful? And I’m sorry for everything you’ve had to go through, because of me. I’m sorry that you think I’m … the bee’s knees. Or the cat’s pajamas.”
Very obviously struggling not to smile, Bang Jin accused the ghost, “You’re making these things up.”
“I’m not, I swear it!” he protested. “Those sayings were all the rage, back in my day. The hottest new examples of American slang.”
“The cat’s pajamas? Why are the cat’s pajamas a good thing?”
“Well, if you saw a cat wearing pajamas, wouldn’t it be impressive?”
She lost her battle not to smile. “Okay, fine,” she said, heaving a big sigh. “I guess I have to forgive you. Since I do think you’re the cat’s pajamas. And since that’s just the kind of noble, self-sacrificing person I am.”
“Thank you, Ma Bang Jin,” he told her, giving her hand a quick squeeze. “But don’t be too noble and self-sacrificing. I’ve done a lot of that, and it hasn’t ended up too well. Things are much better now … now that I’ve accepted being happy.”
“Well, I’d like to be happy,” Bang Jin grumbled, “if the cutest guy I’ve ever seen wasn’t dating my best friend and her boyfriend.”
Ouch, thought Yoo Jin Oh. Meanwhile, Bang Jin was going on, “I still don’t know how Seol got so lucky as to snap up both of you.”
Jin Oh said, “She went through a lot of … very dark things in our past life. Perhaps the way the things are now is in order to make up for that.”
“Dang,” said Bang Jin, “then I must have been amazingly happy in my past life. I wish I could remember it.”
“You’ll be happy again, soon, I’m sure of it,” the ghost told her. “I was in love with Seol for over 80 years before we got together. You’re, what, 24 years old? You’ve got plenty of time.”
“Oh, great! So as long as I get a boyfriend before I’m 80 years old, I can count myself lucky?”
“I didn’t mean that! You’ll have a boyfriend long before then. After all,” he continued, determined to make her smile again, “you’re a doll. And a dish. And a real Sheba. And you’re hotsy-totsy. And you’re a radiator. And you know your onions. And …”
The week after Han Se Joo submitted his new book to the publisher, Yoo Jin Oh had the idea of writing a book himself.
For the two months after Jin Oh came back, he and Se Joo worked together every day on Se Joo’s novel. Seol helped when she could, but she had her work at the animal hospital as well as her training sessions with the mountain rescue team. Thus most days the writing and editing team consisted of Se Joo and the ghost.
Jin Oh filled up the margins of Se Joo’s printouts with copious editing suggestions, most of which Se Joo eventually decided were worth accepting. They read the dialogue sequences out loud to each other, to try out the sound of them and make sure they had the smoothest and most naturalistic flow possible. They looked particularly closely at the sequences involving the novel’s hero and the hero’s best friend, on the quest to make certain that their voices didn’t sound too similar to those of Seo Hwi Young and Shin Yul in Chicago Typewriter.
When Se Joo submitted his draft of Sayaga’s Answer to the almost pathetically delighted Gal Ji Seok, the threesome of Se Joo, Jin Oh and Seol partied late into the night and slept (and partook of other bed-related activities) far into the next day. There were also another couple of days in that week which Se Joo and Jin Oh spent primarily in bed. But, once they’d indulged their initial celebratory instincts, both men’s thoughts began turning to possible new projects.
“I think I’ll start writing again,” Jin Oh said one day while he and Se Joo were eating lunch. “Now that I don’t have a nightclub to run, or the Joseon Youth Alliance to worry about, or Hwi Young’s novel to finish … I think it’s time I started writing again, for myself.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Se Joo. “What sort of thing do you think you’ll write? Another novel?”
“Eventually, probably. But not yet. I think what I want to start with is a … practical guide for ghosts. Something using my experiences to possibly help others like me. You know, when I was here with you last year, I tried using the internet to look up things I was wondering about, about how to exist as a ghost. I found nothing helpful at all.”
“I’m not surprised,” Se Joo answered, working hard to control his face and not look like he was laughing at his friend. “Probably only a very small portion of the internet’s content is written by ghosts.”
Gal Ji Seok was less than ecstatic when Se Joo proposed The Ghost Writer’s Guide for Ghosts as a smaller side-project for Golden Bear Publishing, to be slotted in alongside the higher-profile novels.
“Who’s going to buy it?” Ji Seok demanded. “I know you say it’s for ghosts. Last time I checked, ghosts don’t have much purchasing power.”
“That’s true, it is a small niche market,” Se Joo admitted. “The ghosts will probably be reading library copies, or the copies in bookstores after the stores are closed, or copies that happen to be in houses they’re haunting. As for living people … some people will buy it because they’re interested in ghosts; some people will probably buy it as a joke gift. And some will probably buy it for its tangential connection with Chicago Typewriter, since there was all that publicity about how I was dedicating the novel to my friend the ghost.”
“Yeah,” said Ji Seok, looking seriously under-impressed.
“Do this as a favor for me, Ji Seok,” Se Joo said, going for the combined guilt-trip and hard-sell techniques. “A favor for a friend. Think of all the times when my novels were the only products keeping Golden Bear Publishing afloat …”
“I’ll have a look at it when you submit it to me,” was Ji Seok’s non-committal reply. “Or, I mean, when the ghost submits it to me.”
“Thanks, buddy,” Se Joo answered, enjoying the heck out of the sour expression on his poor old publisher’s face. “You never know: this could be the beginning of a whole new publishing line for Golden Bear. You can be the first publisher ever to specialize in self-help manuals for the dead.”
Excerpt #3:
Preface
Why am I writing this book?
In spring of 2017, I became, for the first time in my existence, a ghost with freedom of movement and free will. For nearly 80 years before that, I had been linked to an object: the typewriter on which I was typing at the moment when I died.
As any ghost who’s spent time inside an object can tell you, it’s a vastly different experience from being a ghost without such a link. Inside your host object, your options and opportunities are limited. There are still rewards and satisfactions in such an existence, and goals toward which you can work. You can use your time to build up your strength and your skills, and perhaps learn to manipulate the object in which you find yourself. Perhaps you can eventually make the object move. If you’re fortunate enough to be linked to an object like a typewriter, perhaps you can even use it to communicate with the living.
If you’ve built up your strength sufficiently, someday you may be able to leave that object. You may find yourself existing on your own again, with the freedom of choice available to you—almost as though you were alive.
It’s an exhilarating experience, but it can also be a frightening one. I know I found it at least as frightening as it was delightful, when I became a ghost who could choose for myself where to go, and what to do.
And although I’ve not had that experience myself, I’m sure there must be just as much uncertainty for ghosts who begin their hauntings without the intervening step of being bound to some object. For all of us, there must be doubts and questions on how we can best exist in the living world.
Observing how living people seek information these days, I did the same as they do, and I took my questions to the internet. I’m a little embarrassed, now, to admit to the naïve questions I was asking back then: things like “How does one get rid of an exorcist?” and “How can ghosts make themselves visible to humans?”
The questions I was asking changed, but as I continued haunting here I realized that I still had questions. I also realized that a book like this one would have been of great help to me—perhaps, most of all, because it would have comforted me to learn that someone else has the same sort of questions as I do.
I ’m not an expert. I don’t have all the answers. I’m just a ghost, like you. But if you have the same sorts of questions as I do, I hope I can be of help to you in finding some of your answers.
“Why didn’t my mother ever tell me I could see ghosts?” Bang Jin asked in gloomy tones.
She had phoned Jeon Seol earlier that day, saying there was something she needed to talk about with Jin Oh. Se Joo and Seol were now out at a movie, but Jin Oh had stayed home to drink beer with Bang Jin and provide a sympathetic ear.
“I think she was trying to protect you. She wanted you to have a normal life. You should talk with her about it, of course—to get the real answers from her. But the impression I’ve got … I don’t think she feels that she’s led a very happy life. I think she feels lonely. Maybe she believes that her work as a shaman is the reason there hasn’t been a steady father-figure in your life; maybe she thinks that men are turned off by her supernatural activities. She’s probably been trying to protect you from going down that same road yourself.”
“But that’s crazy!” Bang Jin protested. “There isn’t any normal life! I may not be the smartest person in the world, but I know that. Nobody ought to worry about living a normal life; we ought to just live.”
“It sounds like good advice to me,” he truthfully said.
Bang Jin sighed. “I know you’re right. I know she thought she was acting for the best, but it’s really screwed me up! Since I never knew I was seeing ghosts, now I don’t know how to tell the difference! I can’t tell when a person I’m talking with is living and when they’re not. And now—now that I know that, I don’t know how to deal with anyone! I can’t just start every new conversation with ‘Excuse me, do you happen to be a ghost?’”
Jin Oh smiled fondly at her. “In general, if someone looks surprised that you’re talking with them and amazed that you can see them, they’re likely to be a ghost. But, really … I think you should just interact with everyone the same way you did before you knew you were seeing ghosts. It’ll make a lot of ghosts happy. We appreciate being treated like normal people.”
For a while they both turned their attention to their beers. Then Yoo Jin Oh asked tentatively, “Bang Jin … I know it would upset your mother, and you don’t want to do that. But … do you think you would ever consider working with ghosts, professionally?”
She blinked at him in surprise. “Working with ghosts how?”
“The fact that you can both see and hear us is a really rare gift. I was thinking, possibly you could advertise that you’re available to listen to ghosts’ problems, and give advice when you can. You could go by some title like ‘spirit consultant.’ Of course,” he added, “it could only ever be a sideline to your actual jobs, I suppose, since most ghosts wouldn’t be able to pay you.”
Bang Jin lifted her beer can up high and gazed at it like it was some kind of oracle. “I don’t know,” she said. “My mom would be really pissed at me. But I would like to do something that helps people … something more meaningful than retail and food-service. And it does seem like a lot of ghosts really need someone to talk to …”
“Yes,” her ghost-friend answered fervently. “Often, that’s what a ghost needs most of all.”
Excerpt # 4:
On Selecting a Shaman
As a ghost, one of the most momentous decisions you can make is, “Do I want to communicate with the living? And if so, how?”
You may decide, if you do choose to communicate, that you’ll seek out a shaman to help you. If you do decide that, my first and most important piece of advice for you is: take your time. Don’t let yourself feel pressured into making this decision quickly. Something this important to you is a choice which you should make carefully, and with all the information you can gather.
It may seem obvious to say this, but it was something I didn’t realize when I first began haunting: no two shamans are alike. Like every other human, they’re all individuals, and each of them will have become a shaman for their own, individual reasons. Take your time to find a shaman whose goals and priorities seem to be compatible with yours, before you attempt to contact them.
Some shamans go into their field to help the living, not to help ghosts. I’m not saying that choice is wrong of them, but it’s something of which all of us should be aware. Their focus is on helping humans see more clearly the influences that are working on their lives, not on aiding ghosts in finding ways to communicate. Some shamans, in fact, don’t want to hear from ghosts at all.
Take your time to observe the place where a shaman works. Do they have a dog? If so, it’s possible the dog is there in the specific hope of that it will scare spirits away. (I should say, at this point, that as a ghost I’ve interacted closely with one particular Sapsali, and I’ve never seen any indication of him living up to his breed’s traditional role as protectors against ghosts. All the same, if the shaman you’re observing has a Sapsali in their home, there’s a chance they chose that breed because of the ghost-discouraging tradition.)
Find out if other ghosts are in the neighborhood of the shaman’s establishment. If there are ghosts in the neighborhood, it’s worth asking their opinion of the shaman. Do your fellow ghosts feel welcome there? Do any of them have experience of communicating with this shaman? Which do they think is more likely: that your attempts at contact will be welcomed with openness, or with a barrage of red beans? (On another parenthetical side-note: as someone who’s had red beans thrown at him, I haven’t found that the beans themselves are anything to be afraid of. I’ve picked some up after they were thrown, and suffered no ill effects. But the psychological danger of the hostility with which the beans were thrown, is something else again. We don’t need to be afraid of any beans, but it does make sense to try and avoid the negative impact of a human’s hostility. Most of us have enough of our own problems to work through, without adding to them with someone else’s negative feelings toward us.)
Three days later, Bang Jin phoned Han Se Joo and buoyantly asked to talk with Yoo Jin Oh.
Her conversation with her mother had gone much better than she’d expected. There’d been some shouting and a lot of crying, followed by a more-or-less night-long mother-and-daughter drinking session, followed in turn by swigging hangover remedies and nursing each other through their hangovers. The end result of it all was that Wang Bang Wol had promised not to stand in the way if her daughter wanted to explore her ghost-seeing abilities.
“She said it’s okay!” Bang Jin joyously told Jin Oh. “I mean, she still doesn’t like it, but she’s not going to object or try to stop me. But there is one thing … and I swear I’m not just saying this because I want you to spend time with me …”
She heard amusement in Jin Oh’s voice over the phone. “What is it?”
“She said she wants you to act as chaperone, if I go out to meet ghosts. In case I meet some dangerous ghosts … she wants you to be along as back-up. She says it’s your fault, anyway, that I learned I can see ghosts, so now keeping an eye on me is your responsibility. I’m sorry, I know it’s really annoying …”
“It isn’t annoying at all. It’s a nice change from your mother wanting to exorcise me. Of course, now there’s the unspoken threat that if anything bad does happen to you while you’re out meeting ghosts, she really will try to exorcise me …”
“Nothing bad is going to happen,” said Bang Jin, with perhaps a little bit more confidence than she felt. “But I’m sorry you have to babysit me.”
“I’m not thinking about it like that,” he assured her. “In fact, now that you have your mother’s blessing, there’s a project I’m working on that I’d like to talk with you about. I’ve just recently started writing a book: a sort of guide-book for ghosts. Something that can help answer the sort of questions I had when I was first haunting here. I’ve decided I really ought to meet a lot of the other ghosts around the city: find out what sort of questions they’d like answered in a book like that; learn where the popular ghostly hangout spots are; that sort of thing. So it’s occurred to me that if you accompany me on those research trips, it’ll give you the chance to start meeting ghosts—chaperoned, the way your mother wants.”
“That sounds great!” Bang Jin said, feeling only slightly scared. “So where are we going first?”
Where they were going first, it turned out, was an outing two days later to the Yongin Folk Village south of the city. They sat together on one of the back seats of the bus. Bang Jin spread out to take up as much space on the seat as she could manage, to hide from fellow passengers the fact that an invisible person sitting next to her was busily taking notes with a fully visible notebook and pen. Jin Oh’s current note-taking was about the bus route to reach the village, for inclusion in the planned “How to Get There” appendix of his book.
According to Jin Oh’s initial internet-based research, Yongin Village was a favorite haunt for cheonyeogwishin and chonggakgwishin, the virgin ghosts of legend. Bang Jin had worked hard not to shiver when he told her that.
“Really?” she’d asked. “The whole village is full of them? Do they look like they do in the movies, with their hair all crazy?”
“I don’t think so,” Jin Oh had answered, with a laugh. “I don’t know how many are really likely to be there; it’s only the internet that says they hang out there, and you know how much reliance one can place on things one reads on the internet. And, no, I’m sure they don’t look like in the movies. After all, if their goal is to get married, it wouldn’t make any sense for them to go around looking messy. They’ll be sure to wear their best clothes and look as good as they can.”
All the same, it was a significant relief to her when she’d paid her entrance fee at the village and didn’t find herself surrounded by hordes of young women with messed-up hair and horrible, pallid faces.
It being the height of summer, the folk village was crammed with people—but, as usual, Bang Jin couldn’t tell who was alive and who wasn’t. “How can you tell who’s a ghost?” she asked Jin Oh, in a whisper. “Is there any way to tell just by looking at people?”
“Not usually,” her ghostly friend answered. “Not unless they’re the type of ghost who typically show how they died. If you see someone walking around all blood-drenched, or constantly dripping water, it’s a good bet they’re not alive. But, with most of us, I usually can’t tell until they’re close enough to feel if they give off heat like a living person, or not.”
“Give off heat?”
“Yes; you all do. You all feel warm, like you’re … like you’re living electric heaters. It feels nice,” he hurried on to assure her. “It’s not that we feel cold, being ghosts; we just don’t have any temperature at all. So, being around humans feels … cozy.”
Bang Jin worried, “But what about when the weather’s hot already, and you’re surrounded by people, like this?” She gestured around them at their fellow tourists. “Doesn’t that make it too hot for you? Should we have brought a fan for you? Should I get you some ice?”
“No, no, don’t worry,” he told her, grinning. “Ghosts don’t feel temperature the same way humans do. We don’t get too hot, even in hot weather. It just feels … pleasant, having humans around.”
“If you say so,” she said, still feeling like she should buy Jin Oh a snow cone to stop him from overheating. “Okay, so,” she went on, forcing herself to change the subject, “do you think any of these people are ghosts?”
“Hard to tell, ’till they get close enough,” he reiterated. “I’d say most of the people in hanbok probably aren’t … they’re either costumed interpreters, or they’ve rented the outfits for this visit. Although … I suppose if one was here trying to find a spouse, one might dress in hanbok, to put one’s best foot forward. So, never mind, the hanbok isn’t much of a clue. Except for that guy dressed up like a king,” he added, pointing to a teenager whose bright red Joseon king costume was just a little bit too big for him. “I’m willing to bet he’s not a ghost. If we do have the ghost of a king who’s looking to meet that special someone, I’ll bet he has more high-brow means of doing so than going to Yongin Folk Village!”
“You never know,” Bang Jin grinned back at him. “Maybe he’s watched Dong Yi and he wants to find himself a nice commoner girlfriend.”
Jin Oh was continuing his analysis, “If they’ve got phones or cameras, they’re almost certainly not ghosts. And if they’re buying refreshments, they’re probably not ghosts, either—unless they’ve got a living friend like you to buy something for them.”
“Is that a hint?” she asked him.
“No, I promise! We only just got here. Maybe later in the day, I’ll take you up on the offer.”
Bang Jin suddenly noticed that a woman who looked about the same age as her mother was walking straight toward them. This woman wore high heels, a tight-fitting knee-length gray dress and a tasteful little pearl necklace, and she looked to Bang Jin like she had stepped out of a vintage advertisement. In fact, Bang Jin thought as the woman got closer, with the shape of her dress, the style of her makeup, and her up-do hairstyle that looked like it had to be held in place with an entire bottle of hairspray, what she really resembled most closely was a 1960s Barbie doll.
As the woman stopped near to them, she suddenly looked startled and cast a confused glance at Bang Jin. It seemed like she was about to ask a question. Then she decided against it and turned her attention to Yoo Jin Oh, instead.
“Welcome,” the woman said to him, with a beaming smile, “have you come here hoping to meet someone?”
“Thank you, actually, no, I haven’t,” he said quickly, holding up his left hand to show her the ring he wore which Se Joo and Seol had given him. It was identical to rings they wore, and Bang Jin thought those three matching rings were the most romantic things she had ever seen in her life. They were made of three braided strands, two of them regular gold and the middle one made of white gold. But Jin Oh was still talking to the woman, and Bang Jin dragged her attention back from feeling jealous about the three of them and their wildly romantic rings.
“My name is Yoo Jin Oh,” he said. “I’m a writer. I’m working on a book that I think I’ll be able to get published with the help of a living friend. It’s intended as a self-help manual, to help ghosts answer questions we might have about how to live our best after-lives, and how to interact with humans. I’m hoping to learn about what this village offers to ghosts, so I can include an entry on it in my book.”
“Really?” the woman asked, looking at first surprised and then genuinely enthusiastic. “That would be wonderful! All of the information about us has spread by word of mouth, up to now. Coverage in a book would be splendid.” She continued, “I’m Lee Seo Yun; my husband and I were the first ghosts who married after meeting here. It was our idea to promote this village as a place for ghosts to go when they’re hoping to meet the right person for them.”
“It’s good to meet you,” Jin Oh said. Gesturing to Bang Jin, he introduced her, “This is my friend Ma Bang Jin; she’s helping me with my research.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Bang Jin put in quickly, trying not to be tongue-tied at the fact that she was actually addressing a ghost who wasn’t Yoo Jin Oh. Of course, she had come here on purpose with the goal of meeting ghosts. But it was one thing to know that fact intellectually, and another to accept that she was now having an ordinary conversation with a ghost she’d just met.
Lee Seo Yun turned toward Bang Jin with another delighted smile. “Then you can see and hear us! I thought you could at first, but I wasn’t certain. I apologize for ignoring you earlier.”
“Oh, you don’t need to apologize,” was Bang Jin’s hasty reply. She decided that she liked Lee Seo Yun, never mind that she found the woman’s personal style a bit on the intimidating side. “I’m just starting my training for maybe someday working as a shaman. I haven’t worked with ghosts much at all yet—but I’m glad to have the chance to meet you and learn about what you do here.”
“Why don’t you come through into the village proper,” Lee Seo Yun suggested, gesturing beyond the food court. “My husband and I will be happy to give you a tour and tell you what the village offers.”
They followed their host through a gate and onto a meandering dirt street that Bang Jin felt sure she recognized from about a hundred sageuk dramas. As they strolled past some straw-roofed commoners’ houses, Bang Jin started noticing a few people who she thought might be some of the ghosts she’d come here expecting to see.
Three young women were standing on a bridge together, two of them dressed in hanbok and the third either wearing retro style or clothes from the 1980s. Bang Jin felt sure she’d seen hairdos like that girl’s big, feathered style in ’80s movies. The three were talking and laughing together and occasionally pointing to passersby … and there wasn’t a phone in sight among the three of them. Then there was a young couple standing by the side of the path, holding hands and talking earnestly together. They also didn’t have a phone, and they weren’t taking selfies like just about every other young couple Bang Jin had seen along this walk. The young woman’s clothing looked modern, but the young man was wearing a uniform that Bang Jin thought might date from the war, back in the ’50s.
“Why don’t you two wait here, in this pavilion,” offered Lee Seo Yun, pointing out a small, decorative building by the roadside which was probably sometimes used as a performance space. “I’ll go find my husband, and we’ll tell you more about the village.”
In a very few minutes their hostess returned, bringing with her a friendly-looking man whose appearance seemed to bear out the truth of the saying that opposites attract. Bang Jin had expected Lee Seo Yun’s husband to have a pristine, nicely-turned-out appearance matching her own. Instead, this man seemed to have a perpetually rumpled look to him, with hair that seemed wind-blown even when there was no wind at all, and more-or-less modern clothing which looked like it had never encountered an iron.
Lee Seo Yun’s husband was named Park In Su. The usual introductions were exchanged, and Jin Oh again explained the idea behind his book. When they were all seated together on the floor of the pavilion, he asked the ghostly couple, “So it was the two of you who had the idea to promote this village as a meeting-place for ghosts?”
“That’s right,” answered Park In Su, taking his wife’s hand and sharing an adoring smile with her. “We both happened to be haunting here, and after we married, it occurred to us that what had worked for us could work for other people, too. It’s such a romantic, relaxing setting … a lot of people feel at home here, so they also feel more comfortable with taking their time and really getting to know someone who might be right for them. So we asked other ghosts to start spreading the word that this is a good place to come to if you’re looking for the right person. We really never expected it to take off the way it has. Most years, at least a hundred ghosts come here for that reason, and it’s usually a lot more than that. I think last year, it was a bit over three hundred …?”
Lee Seo Yun nodded. “That’s right. Last year was one of the busiest we’ve had yet.”
Bang Jin asked, trying not to sound too timid about it, “And do the ghosts all stay here until they meet the right person?”
“Many do,” said Lee Seo Yun. “Like my husband said, it’s a setting where many people feel comfortable. No matter how long ago one was alive, a place like this can easily feel like home. And, often, particularly the young women, they like the fact that there are many others here of their same basic age group and interests.”
“But it’s not right for everyone,” Park In Su added. “Many ghosts have work they need to do; other places they need to be; or they simply don’t enjoy the feeling that they’re just hanging around here, waiting. So we’ve set up a service for them in which they write a description of themself, with the information about how they can be contacted, and leave that for other ghosts who visit here to read.”
“Just like a modern dating app!” Bang Jin exclaimed. “Except, I guess you can’t include photos with the listings, because it isn’t possible to take photographs of ghosts …?”
“Ah,” said Lee Seo Yun, smiling, “but there are ways around every problem. We have an artist who lives here in the village. He’s one of our residents who lived the longest time ago … in fact, I think he may be the oldest ghost here. He draws portraits of the ghosts who want to leave a listing with us, and the portrait becomes part of their file. Would you like to meet him?”
“Very much,” agreed Yoo Jin Oh.
Bang Jin suddenly had a great idea. “Jin Oh,” she said excitedly, “maybe he would draw a portrait of you, that you can use in your ‘About the Author’ section.” She added for their hosts, “We were just recently talking about what a shame it is there can’t be a photo of him in the ‘About the Author’ part of his book.”
Park In Su nodded. “I think Kim Su Man would happily draw your portrait.”
Thus, a few minutes later, Jin Oh and Bang Jin were standing by one of the noblemen’s houses in the village, watching as the artist Kim Su Man sat on the porch and drew the portrait of a ghost whose looks made Bang Jin’s heart do a few impressed little flips.
“You’re kidding,” she whispered to Jin Oh, “that guy hasn’t found the perfect person for him yet? What’s up with that? He looks like he could play the hero of just about every sageuk ever.”
“I know,” Jin Oh whispered back, “that’s what I was thinking, too. He must either be terribly picky or he’s got a really prickly personality. From the way he looks, he can’t ever suffer a shortage of people wanting to meet him.”
The ghost in question was a young man with strong and yet elegant features, wearing the uniform of some kind of royal guard of the Joseon era—big, feathered hat and all. Bang Jin told herself firmly, Jin Oh’s right, he’s probably got an awful personality. And, anyway, he’s here because he wants to meet the right ghost for him, not the right living person. So, down, girl! You’re here so you can start to get used to talking with ghosts—not to make a fool of yourself trying to get a date with Mr. Insanely Hot Joseon Guardsman!
When the guardsman’s portrait was completed, he walked over to consult with Park In Su, while Lee Seo Yun performed the introductions for the visitors and artist Kim Su Man. Bang Jin thought that in his own way, the artist’s appearance was just as striking as that of the Joseon guardsman. A middle-aged man with a sharp, intense bearded face, it seemed to Bang Jin that he had to have a more complicated history than simply being an artist. He, too, looked like somebody out of a sageuk—which made sense, if he was really the oldest ghost in the village. He wore his hair in the classic topknot and manggeon headband, and his brown and gray hanbok, though subdued in color, had a look of understated richness. Bang Jin wondered what on earth the artist’s stories were, but she also was pretty darned sure it wasn’t her place to ask about them.
When Kim Su Man heard Jin Oh’s description of his book, he gave an approving smile and a brisk nod. “It sounds a worthy project,” he declared, “and one with which I will be glad to assist.”
As the artist directed Jin Oh to sit in front of him and readied a new sheet of paper, Jin Oh said suddenly, “Oh, my hat. I probably should wear it for the portrait; I’ll look more ‘me’ with it on.” Bang Jin tried not to look too bug-eyed with surprise as her ghostly friend’s fedora materialized on his head, making him look more than ever like a model advertising the latest men’s fashions of 1930.
She watched Jin Oh’s image swiftly appear on the paper, and she tried to hold back a sigh. Kim Su Man was definitely a skilled artist. There on the paper was Jin Oh himself, with his gorgeous face and his wistful little smile.
She realized she hadn’t ever really been in danger of falling for the hot Joseon guardsman. She couldn’t have done it, because Yoo Jin Oh still occupied far too big a place in her heart.
It’s no good, she thought. I still think he’s the bee’s knees—and the cat’s pajamas, and all the darned rest of it.
Excerpt # 5:
Yongin Folk Village
If you feel that you have unfinished business, you’re not alone. Most of us who become ghosts have unfinished business of one kind or another.
Maybe there are answers we’re still seeking, and we don’t feel ready to move on to a next life until we find more of those answers. Maybe there are goals we’re still trying to achieve. Maybe we have wishes we still hope to fulfill, before we can let go of who we were in our most recent life and go on to another one.
All of us who are Korean must have heard of the cheonyeogwishin and chonggakgwishin. We’ve probably heard folktales of ghosts who haunted their village or their old home, and who wouldn’t be appeased until a marriage was arranged for them. Maybe we’re familiar with the traditional shamanistic practice of arranging “ghost marriages” between people who died unmarried. In recent times, of course, the tradition took on a more sensationalist aspect, in the form of horror movies. I will probably sound like an old fogey when I say this, but I feel it’s unfortunate that the tradition developed in this way. I can’t help seeing it as a negative development that ghosts who seek marriage, or who hope to find that person who will be special in their existence, are treated in popular culture as objects of fear—rather than as people who are seeking their most fulfilling existence, just like everybody else.
If you are a ghost who is seeking the right person, you have plenty of company. Thousands of others are seeking this fulfillment, just like you are. Fortunately, these days we ghosts have wider options available to us than accepting the arranged marriages that were standard in our culture’s past, for humans as well as for ghosts.
Today, one option available to us is to visit the Yongin Folk Village, just south of Seoul. (See “How to Get There,” Appendix # 1.) For decades, ever since their own romance blossomed here, husband-and-wife team Park In Su and Lee Seo Yun have welcomed ghosts who are seeking their ideal partner, have provided a place to stay for those wishing to do so, and have maintained the equivalent of a modern “dating app:” a register of those who are seeking a partner, including contact information and a portrait by Kim Su Man, the village’s resident artist.
If you’re seeking the person with whom you want to spend your afterlife, a visit to Yongin Village gives you the chance to take action toward that goal.
Bang Jin had been accompanying Yoo Jin Oh on ghost-seeking research expeditions for a couple of weeks, by the evening when they visited the Independence Gate.
Their two visits to the banks of the Han River had been, by far, the gloomiest and most stressful of their outings. As Bang Jin confided to Jin Oh after the first of those, she felt like they ought to have qualifications as social workers before making this kind of visit. The collective wisdom of the internet hadn’t been wrong when it cited the banks of Han as being among the most haunted locations in Seoul. And the fact that the vast majority of the ghosts who haunted the riverbanks had committed suicide in that river, made it feel, she said, like the presence among them of two happy people like Ma Bang Jin and Yoo Jin Oh was an insult to all of the suicidal spirits.
Even so, Jin Oh felt that those visits had been good ones to make. Many of the ghosts there had simply ignored them, but many others seemed glad that someone was bothering to visit them. He tried not to be too aggressive in suggesting that they try a change of scene from their chosen haunting location. Still, he thought that many of those who’d been willing to talk seemed interested in his suggestion that they might enjoy visiting other locations around the city. A few even seemed interested when he talked about the ghostly meeting location at Yongin Folk Village.
He wasn’t certain what to expect at the Independence Gate. The internet claimed it as another of Seoul’s seriously haunted locations, crowded with the ghosts of thousands who had given their lives for the cause of Korean independence. The idea made him nervous, as he wondered if he might even encounter there some of his old comrades from the Joseon Youth Alliance. He wasn’t certain he wanted to do that—and he was far from certain that any of them would want to see him.
After all, he had been the one who betrayed them, at the end. He’d done it for the sake of love—to try and save Ryu Soo Hyun from torture and death—but the fact remained that his will had broken, his courage had failed, and in his weakness he had sent his other comrades to their deaths.
Se Joo and Seol promised him that they’d forgiven him for that failure, and he believed them. But there was a distance from those events as experienced by people who had been reincarnated, and who were looking back at them as moments from another life. The outlook might be very different for ghosts who had not yet gone through reincarnation, who had lost their lives because he’d betrayed them to save the woman he loved.
As it turned out, the graciously landscaped environs of the Independence Gate seemed all-but empty of ghosts. In fact, apart from Yoo Jin Oh himself, there seemed to be only one of them here—at least Jin Oh seriously hoped this person was a ghost. If he wasn’t, they might be about to witness—and hopefully stop—a suicide attempt.
“Who is that up there?” Bang Jin asked, looking startledly at the man perched halfway up one of the legs of the monumental Arc de Triomphe-like structure.
“A ghost, I hope,” Jin Oh said. “If he isn’t, he’s certainly not abiding by any modern workplace health-and-safety rules.”
What it looked like, weird as the concept was, was that the man had climbed up the arch to use a cloth for scrubbing the city’s grime off the stones of the gate. As a nighttime activity without any safety equipment, Yoo Jin Oh sure hoped it wasn’t a concept that a living person had thought was a good idea.
Jin Oh walked around to a spot where the man up there could see him, and called up, “Hello, up there. Are you the guardian of the gate?”
The man glanced down at him, then called back, “Just a minute. I’ll come down and we can talk.”
The gate-cleaner’s next action confirmed that he was, in fact, a ghost. He disappeared, and reappeared an instant later standing in front of Jin Oh and Bang Jin.
“Sorry,” he said then. “What was that?”
“I’m sorry to have interrupted you,” Jin Oh answered. “I was just asking if you’re the ghost of the gate.”
This ghost turned out to be a very young-looking man, dressed in a western-style suit which might have dated to fifty or so years before Jin Oh’s own time. The young man gave a little smile, ran one hand through his hair, and answered, “I suppose it’s fair enough to call me that. I’ve haunted here since the gate was built, and that’s … 120 years or so ago, by now.”
“We should introduce ourselves,” Jin Oh said. “My name’s Yoo Jin Oh; I’m a writer. I’m doing research for a book I plan to write: a guide to Seoul, for ghosts.”
Bang Jin added, “And I’m Ma Bang Jin. I’m training to maybe become a shaman; Jin Oh’s helping me by taking me around the city to meet some of its spirits.”
“That’s marvelous,” the young man said, looking rather as if he thought Bang Jin was an angel who had just flown in from heaven to make a landing in front of him. “I’ve never met a human who wanted to talk with us. Oh—excuse me,” he added, “I haven’t introduced myself yet.” Bowing to them, he said, “My name’s Seo Jae Chang. My elder brother designed the Independence Gate.”
“Your elder brother,” Jin Oh began, “wait a minute—is your elder brother Seo Jae Pil?”
“That’s right,” Seo Jae Chang said, beaming.
“That’s amazing!” Jin Oh exclaimed, reaching out and enthusiastically shaking the young man’s hand. “He’s one of my heroes. I used to have a lot of his writings memorized. We read his newspaper and his essays many times at our meetings …”
“Wait,” young Seo Jae Chang exclaimed in his turn, “I think I remember you. You were in the Joseon Youth Alliance, weren’t you?”
“Yes, I was,” said Jin Oh, blinking his surprise. “How did you—”
“I used to sit in on some of your meetings at Carpe Diem. No one saw me there, of course, what with me being a ghost. But I loved going to them and listening to all of you. I was really sorry about what happened to your group, when Carpe Diem was shut down …”
“Yes. Thank you,” Jin Oh answered. As he spoke, the memories which went along with those words sliced at his metaphorical heart.
“Weren’t you Carpe Diem’s owner?” Jae Chang asked, to which Jin Oh could only nod in surprise. “But your name wasn’t Yoo Jin Oh, then, it was …”
“Shin Yul.”
“Yes, that’s right!” the young man grinned.
“Yoo Jin Oh is my pen name,” Jin Oh said in partial explanation—an explanation which was simpler and more sensible-sounding than the truth.
“What happened to your friend; the one who was the leader of your group? Is he a ghost, now, too?”
“No, he’s been reincarnated, but we’re still friends. In fact, these days I’m haunting his house. I’ll bring him around to meet you some time, now that we know you’re here. Him and … do you remember our group’s sniper?”
Seo Jae Chang grinned. “Of course! The girl who used to dress as a boy? You still know her, too? That’s great!” Perhaps the mention of one girl reminded him of another, because now he looked at Bang Jin and said bashfully, “I’m sorry; we’ve been rather leaving you out of the conversation, haven’t we? Will you come through and have a seat under the gate? I’m afraid I don’t have much hospitality I can offer. Normally I’d invite you into the Independence Hall; it’s where I go when I want to be indoors. But it’s locked up at this time of day, and with you being living, you couldn’t dematerialize to get into it …”
“That’s okay,” Bang Jin said, “sitting under the gate is fine.”
When the three of them were seated on the pavement inside the arch, Yoo Jin Oh noticed that Bang Jin seemed to be staring rather entrancedly at their new acquaintance. The said new acquaintance noticed it, too. “I’m sorry,” Jae Chang said with a worried frown, putting one hand up to his neck. “Is something wrong with my appearance? I was beheaded, so sometimes when I’m not paying attention, I do get some blood appearing on my neck …”
Bang Jin blinked. “No, no, no,” she said hurriedly, “your appearance is fine.” Then her eyes went wide, and she asked, “You were beheaded?”
“Yes; because of the coup attempt my brothers and our friends launched in 1884. We were trying to overthrow the old regime and set up a new system of government for Joseon, based on equality. It only lasted three days; the Qing sent troops to wipe us out. Our eldest brother and I were executed, and Jae Pil had to flee into exile.”
“That’s horrible,” Bang Jin breathed. Then she tilted her head in curiosity and asked, “How old were you?”
“Nineteen,” their new acquaintance answered. He smiled a bit shyly, then continued, “As a ghost, I followed my brother when he went to the United States. Do you know, he was the very first Korean to gain United States citizenship? And the first to earn a medical degree there, too. But he married, and his daughters were born, and I thought he and his wife should really have the chance for some privacy in their family life, without a ghost always hanging around them. Then in the 1890s, when reform groups were in power in Joseon and the survivors of our coup were pardoned, I came back here with them. That was when Jae Pil started his plans for building this gate, to promote the cause of Joseon’s independence from Qing. And that was when I decided that when the gate was complete, I would stay here to guard and take care of it.” He smiled again, and concluded, “I’ve been here ever since.”
Bang Jin was staring at Jae Chang with a look that seemed something like awe. Since she didn’t seem likely to keep the conversation going just now, Jin Oh said, “It’s strange; I guess we’ve found one of those occasions when the internet really can’t be relied on. It says that this is one of Seoul’s most haunted locations; haunted by all sorts of ghosts of independence fighters. But if you’re the only one who’s been staying here …”
Seo Jae Chang grinned. “That’s true. It’s flattering, but I really don’t think my being here makes it count as the most haunted … But there are visiting ghosts from time to time, here; maybe a shaman was here at one of those times, and picked up on their presence then. Lots of ghosts from our movement do come here to visit for Independence Movement Day and National Liberation Day. So maybe someone who can sense ghosts was here on one of those days, one year.”
“Yes,” Jin Oh said a bit absently, nodding. “That would make sense.”
The fact of the matter was that he wasn’t paying a huge amount of attention to this conversation. A more prominent place in his thoughts was being occupied, just at the moment, by the question of why Ma Bang Jin was staring at Seo Jae Chang in that particular way.
And then he thought, Oh, dear. An explanation had just jumped out at him.
Seo Jae Chang was obviously a lot younger, and was also a bit skinnier, than was Yoo Jin Oh. But aside from that, Jin Oh could see that there was a fair amount of resemblance between Seo Jae Chang and himself.
Oh, no, he thought. Has what I think has happened, really happened?
Ma Bang Jin had gotten her enormous, staggering crush on Yoo Jin Oh the very first time she’d seen him. Since he had turned her down on numerous occasions, and since he was very thoroughly spoken for, had her crush now transferred itself to another ghost who looked a lot like him?
The answer to that question seemed immediately forthcoming. Bang Jin hesitated one more moment, then she launched into a seemingly unrelated question: “Has anyone brought you offerings here?”
Seo Jae Chang looked surprised. “No,” he said, “no, that hasn’t happened that I remember. My brother gave offerings for all of us who died in our coup attempt, every Chuseok, but I don’t think I’ve had any offerings since the last time he left Korea …”
“Then you must be so hungry!” Bang Jin exclaimed.
The young man gave a startled laugh. “Well, no, not really … I mean, one does fall out of the habit of eating …”
Not giving herself the chance for further hesitation, Bang Jin asked, “Would you like to go out to a restaurant with me?”
Now Jae Chang looked as though the next puff of breeze might knock him over. Eyes wide with astonishment, he managed to gasp, “With you?”
“Yes,” she hastened on, “I’d be happy to treat you. Whatever you like. We could just go for a coffee, if you want, but if you’re hungry, I know a really good chicken and beer restaurant …”
“Chicken and beer,” Seo Jae Chang whispered, sounding like he was having a religious experience.
“It’s got some nice, secluded booths,” Bang Jin went on hurriedly, “so if we’re careful, nobody ought to notice your food moving around on its own. It’ll be okay, won’t it?” she asked Jin Oh, in a pleading tone. “You won’t need to stay to walk me home …” She looked at young Jae Chang again and asked, “You wouldn’t mind walking me home after we eat, would you?”
“No,” the rather stunned young man managed to tell her. “No, I wouldn’t mind at all …”
“Then it’s settled,” she said, grinning, jumping up, and holding out her hand to the young ghost. As Seo Jae Chang wonderingly took her hand and got to his feet, Bang Jin wheedlingly asked Jin Oh, “You don’t mind if I skip out on our research a little early tonight, do you?”
“No, no, of course not,” he answered as he stood up, feeling nearly as stunned as Jae Chang. “You two have fun. Enjoy your meal.”
When he got home, Se Joo and Seol were in the kitchen fixing dinner. They both looked at him quizzically as he slumped into the nearest chair.
“I’m doomed,” he said. “Wang Bang Wol is going to murder me.”
“Why?” Seol asked in immediate worry. “Bang Jin’s okay, isn’t she?”
“Oh, yes, she’s fine. Maybe she’s a little bit too fine.”
“What?” said Se Joo. He had a weird look on his face, half panic and half suspicion. “You haven’t gotten together with Bang Jin, have you? You wouldn’t do that, would you? I mean … isn’t our threesome exclusive …?”
Jin Oh jumped to his feet. “How could you say a thing like that? No, I haven’t gotten together with Bang Jin! Yes, our threesome is exclusive, you idiot! Where’s something I can throw at you?” He grabbed up a head of lettuce off the kitchen counter.
“No throwing things, boys,” Seol said calmly, taking the lettuce from his hand and plopping it back down on the counter. “So if you haven’t had your wicked way with her daughter, why is Wang Bang Wol going to murder you?”
With a massive sigh, he said, “Because Ma Bang Jin has now found herself an actual ghost boyfriend. Even as we speak, she’s having chicken and beer with the little brother of Seo Jae Pil.”
“Seo Jae Pil …” murmured Se Joo, sounding just as awestruck as Jin Oh had felt at that name.
“And I’m sure he’s a fine, decent, honorable young man,” Jin Oh continued, “but that doesn’t mean her mother is going to think that! If she wanted to exorcise me before, because her daughter fell in love with me, what’s she going to do now I’ve failed to stop Bang Jin from falling in love with another ghost?”
Seol grinned at him, looking thoroughly unsympathetic for his plight. “Don’t worry,” she promised, “Bang Wol’s not going to exorcise you while we’re here to defend you. You’re ours, and nobody messes with you. And now that you’re here, you can help us fix dinner.”
Excerpt # 6:
The Ghosts of the Han
This section of this book has been the most challenging for me to write. I’ve hesitated to write it, because in this of all sections, I don’t want to sound as though I think I have the answers.
Popular wisdom on the internet states that the banks of the Han are among the most haunted portions of Seoul, and that the majority of the ghosts there are people who took their own lives in our city’s river. While I intend no disrespect to ghosts who haunt the Han due to accident or some other cause of death, it seems that this is one of the rare occasions on which popular wisdom on the internet turns out to be true.
No one can ever truly understand another person’s suffering, or know the reasons why they act as they do. If you became a ghost through suicide, at the Han or anywhere else, please believe that I’m not claiming to know what you went through and are still going through.
There are times when it seems we have no more choice left to us: and sometimes, we truly do not. My dearest friend in our previous life committed suicide, when all other bearable choices were taken from him. In that same life, I came very close to taking my own life, myself. I think the reason I did not was because, at that time, I hated myself too much. I felt that I didn’t deserve the peace that I hoped death would bring me. So I remained alive, reliving the agonizing moments that had led me to the choices I made.
If suicide played a role in making you the ghost you are now, I’m not saying that you made the wrong choice. But I hope you may consider the possibility that now you have further choices available to you; choices which maybe you didn’t have, before.
If you’re even reading this book, then perhaps one particular choice has brought you to give it a try. Perhaps you’ve made the choice that, as a ghost, you want your future to play as important a role in your existence as your past.
I believe each of us has our own reasons for why we became a ghost. We might have rested and then moved straight on to another life, but we didn’t. Why didn’t we?
Perhaps there are experiences you still want to have, or answers you hope to find, before you move on. It may be that you won’t be able to move on until you have those experiences or you find those answers.
I want to encourage you: do all the seeking you need to. As ghosts, we have the chance to fulfill our goals and to find the answers we long for. Take that chance. Do everything you can to find what you are looking for. That may be the only way to gain happiness in this existence, and to create greater peace for ourselves in our lives that will come after.
The party celebrating the launch of The Ghost Writer’s Guide for Ghosts took place at Han Se Joo’s house on the Saturday after Chuseok.
Se Joo had invited all of his staff, with their families or other guests, to attend the party as his guests, rather than as workers. He figured it was the least he could do to thank them for the tolerance and flexibility they showed in working at a haunted house.
The younger Ms. Kim and Ms. Jo the cook both brought their husbands, and the elder Ms. Kim brought her teenaged son. Mr. Choi the groundskeeper brought his nine-year-old daughter. All of the staff’s adult guests seemed nervous at the idea of attending a haunted party, but the teenager and the nine-year-old warmed up to it immediately, helping to break the ice for the adults. All it took was for one of the invisible, ghostly party-goers—Seo Jae Chang, who was there as Bang Jin’s guest—to start up a game of keep-the-balloons-off-the-floor with them for the kids to decide that they loved the idea of attending a party with ghosts.
Publisher Ji Seok and Secretary Kang both looked nervous as hell when the party started, but as the alcohol kept flowing both of them seemed to adjust to the general concepts. Ji Seok even delivered a rambling, drunken speech congratulating Jin Oh for his groundbreaking achievement as the first published ghostly author. There were several humorous incidents involving living party guests who partook of a ghost’s food or drink by mistake, and confronted the reality of how bland things taste after they’ve been eaten or drunk by ghosts.
Lee Seo Yun and Park In Su from Yongin Village attended the party as Jin Oh’s guests, along with Kim Su Man, the artist. Further proof of the literal existence of ghosts was forthcoming for the living partiers, when the invisible Yoo Jin Oh autographed copies of his book for them, and the equally invisible Kim Su Man autographed the page with Jin Oh’s “about the author” portrait. (Which was accompanied by the brief caption, “Yoo Jin Oh is a ghost who has lived in Seoul since 2017. For around 80 years prior to that, his soul was linked to an antique typewriter.”)
The dancing started up around midnight, to the music of the collection of 1920s records that Se Joo and Seol had recently been buying up from antique shops and junk stores. Se Joo, Seol and Jin Oh sang “Ain’t Misbehavin’” together—the two living singers assuring their guests that Jin Oh had the best voice of the three, so those who could see and hear ghosts were having a much better musical experience than the rest of them were—and then the three of them delightedly showed off their prowess in dancing the Black Bottom and the Charleston. That led to wide-spread hilarity when Ji Seok also gave the Charleston a try. Seo Jae Chang taught Ma Bang Jin to waltz—giving the other living guests the interesting experience of seeing her waltzing apparently by herself—and she twisted his arm into trying out modern dancing. Then the couple from Yongin Village had a go at teaching Bang Jin and Jae Chang how to tango. The artist Kim Su Man declined to dance, but he did join in various rounds of the keep-the-balloons-off-the-floor game. Secretary Kang also proved to be a keeping-balloons-off-the-floor expert.
It was three a.m. when most of their guests were straggling away. The groundskeeper Mr. Choi and the younger Ms. Kim had appointed themselves the designated drivers, and somehow managed to shoe-horn all of the people needing rides into their respective cars. Choi’s nine-year-old, having managed to fall asleep on a couch in the midst of all the Charleston-related chaos, had no trouble at all with staying asleep as her dad carried her to the car. The three guests from Yongin Village, being ghosts with no need for sleep, told their hosts they would take a nice, leisurely walk through the city before heading for home.
Seol and Se Joo had fallen asleep sitting on one of the couches together, Seol with her head pillowed on Se Joo’s shoulder, before their ghostly guests departed. Jin Oh was sitting at Seol’s other side, holding her hand. He smiled fondly at the last two guests, Bang Jin and Jae Chang, who seemed as awake as ever and had apparently danced off the effects of any alcohol they’d drunk. They were helping out now by returning various stray bottles to the liquor cabinets.
“You two don’t have to do all of that,” he told them quietly. “I’d help you out with it, but …” He nodded, with a smile, at Seol, who had his hand rather intricately tucked into one of her armpits, and who might be likely to awaken if he attempted to extricate himself.
“Okay,” said Bang Jin, “we’ll leave a little of it for you three to do in the morning. You ready to leave?” she asked her Joseon independence fighter boyfriend. “The Yongin Village folks are right; it’s a beautiful night for a walk.”
Jae Chang looked at her adoringly, and said with perfect earnestness, “Every night with you is a beautiful night for a walk.”
Oh, good lord, thought Yoo Jin Oh. Do I say things that sappy to Se Joo and Seol?
Well, yes, he answered himself, probably I do. I probably say things that sappy to them every single day.
That is part of love, after all.
“Okay, kids,” he told his young friends. “Thanks for your help, and enjoy your walk. Get home safely.”
“Of course,” said Seo Jae Chang, sounding offended that anyone might think he would fail to deliver his beloved safely to her home.
So far, so good, Jin Oh thought, as he distantly heard the young couple close the front door behind them. Bang Wol hasn’t tried to exorcise me or Jae Chang—although he did know, from what Bang Jin had told him, that her mother had subjected the ghostly boyfriend to one seriously long and intimidating lecture.
It looks like love really does conquer all.
Han Se Joo gave a little snore. Jeon Seol snuggled closer to him and simultaneously tucked Jin Oh’s hand more tightly into her armpit.
Yoo Jin Oh kissed Seol’s forehead. He settled down for another happy night of watching over the people he loved.
Excerpt # 7:
Why Are We Ghosts?
I’ve posed that question several other times in this book. The question “Why am I a ghost?” is one which each one of us needs to answer for ourselves.
In writing this book, I’ve tried to put into words several possible answers to the question. I believe if we can put words to our own answers, and can truly express them to ourselves, it can help us understand what kind of ghost we want to be—and how long we want to be here before embarking on the adventures of our next lives.
Are there goals you hope to achieve, or tasks you hope to fulfill? And can you find practical ways for you to achieve or fulfill them?
Are there grudges you need to have resolved? Can you resolve those grudges without doing damage to yourself, and perpetuating that hurt into your next life?
Are there people you love, and your existence can only be fulfilled in combination with theirs?
That last possibility is the answer I have come to, for myself.
In our past life, three friends were torn apart by politics and war. The linked existence that we could not fulfill in that lifetime, we were brought together again to fulfill now—two of us through reincarnation, and one of us as a ghost.
There is a teaching in Buddhism that the state of being human is the best incarnation one can achieve, despite the sorrows of our human existence. They say that through our troubles, our quests, our struggles and our joys, humans have a better chance even than gods to someday gain enlightenment.
And after all, each one of us ghosts has also been human.
Then let us all live our ghostly existences as fully as we can. Let’s pursue our goals, let’s resolve our grudges, and let’s love deeply, with every part of our souls.
And maybe in the process we can come to realize that all of us—humans and ghosts alike—are making this journey together.