My House of Horrors

The video was still playing in the camcorder. It was unclear whether it was lighting or something else, but the image quality started to get blurrier like it was covered in fog. The man’s statement in the video aroused the other people’s attention. With them pressing, the man revealed something that had §happened to him in the past.

When he was young, his house had also had an altar. The altar had been placed opposite the living room door, covered with a thick black cloth. Before the man’s grandfather passed away, he had told his family, no matter what happened, to never uncover the altar, and when he was buried, they were to bury the altar right inside his coffin. Due to the issue of inheritance, the family got into a big fight after the grandfather’s death. The fight soon escalated into a physical fight, and during the altercation, someone knocked the altar over. The adults were too focused on the fight to notice the overthrown altar. But the youngest grandson looked inside the altar out of curiosity. Then the grandson did something truly unexpected. He called into the altar, “Grandpa.”

This voice startled the room of adults. They all turned to stare at the young grandson, and the grandson squatted before the altar, his eyes not leaving the altar like his grandfather was really inside. In the countryside, it was well known that children could see ghosts. The adults thought that their fighting had angered the old man, so they quickly replaced the altar and then followed the will, selling the old house and burying the altar alongside the old man’s urn.

Things should have ended there, but the man’s voice changed. On the day of the old man’s burial, the grandson who saw the thing inside the altar mysteriously disappeared. He seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth. No one knew where he had gone, and no one knew what he had truly seen inside the altar. In the video, after hearing the story, none of the partygoers were afraid. In fact, some of them even challenged the owner to open the altar of his own home to take a look.

Under the influence of alcohol and the rowdiness of his friends, they walked down the corridor. Some of them were holding bottles of wine, some were carrying their phones, and one was taping down the whole experience with a camcorder. It was raining heavily outside the old house, and the group stopped noisily next to the altar. The fatty who had passed by the altar earlier stood at the front. He reached for the black cloth and pulled it away. Then a pair of fatty hands grabbed the door of the altar. As the fatty was about to pull the doors open, lightning flashed outside the window, and the lights in the house suddenly went out.

At the same time, just as the few visitors were focused on the video on the camcorder, the lights in the real scenario also went out!

The timing overlapped. Screams came from the recording and the visitors in real life; it was felt a recurring nightmare. In the darkness, there came the sound of the altar doors being opened. Several seconds later, the lights in both the recording and real life came back on. The seven friends gathered in the corridor were shocked to see the altar doors had already been opened. The seven looked at each other before turning to focus on the fatty. The latter was confused. He said that he did not pull, that he had not opened the altar.

At this point, Chen Ge suddenly shouted at the visitors around him, “Move back a bit!”

He looked down the corridor, and sitting in the dark corner, the isolated altar had its doors opened!

“When did it open?”

“I don’t know!” The police officer was helpless. “During my last visit, this did not happen.”

The recording was still playing. The camcorder was placed on top of the suitcase, and the suitcase was stuck between the bed and the cupboard, making it hard to remove. Thus, Chen Ge’s group temporarily ignored the altar and continued watching the video.

Light returned, and the group of friends realized that there was nothing inside the altar. They groaned about the countryside rumors and returned to the living room. They played for a while before the party spirit left them. They cleaned up a bit, pushed the trash and bottles into the corner, and returned to their rooms to sleep. The camcorder was picked up by one of them. He returned to his room, which was the bedroom Chen Ge’s group was in. The man said good night to the camcorder and then switched it off.

The visitors thought that the recording ended there, but after a while, a new recording appeared. The man who had looked calm earlier was now curled inside his bed, holding the camcorder with shaking hands. The visitors had no idea what the man was doing. The man quietly poked the camcorder’s lens out of the bedsheets and aimed it at the cupboard facing the bedroom. There was no light inside the bedroom. In the darkness, the cupboard did not look that scary, but the doors were not closed tightly, and there was a gap that was left open.

The image went still, and at that moment, an eye looked out from inside the cupboard!

The image shook, and it showed how scared the man in the bed was. He was forcing himself not to make any noise. The man was sure that something was hiding inside the cupboard. He aimed the camcorder at the cupboard, but the eye did not reappear. After a while, the camcorder began to run out of battery. The man held the camcorder in one hand, and his other hand reached for something, but at that moment, the camera shook because the man seemed to touch something.

Then the man’s hand that held the camcorder slowly turned to aim the camera at himself. His face appeared on screen, and behind him, curled in the bed with him, was another face!

The man wanted to scream, but strands of dirty hair curled around his neck and stuffed his mouth. The camcorder fell, aimed at the door. Outside the door, the camcorder captured the image of the altar with its doors open perfectly.

After the video ended, all the visitors were drenched in cold sweat. Knowing that their guide was no longer useful, all the visitors turned to Chen Ge. He had become the uncontested center of the group.

“The most dangerous thing in this scenario is the altar. Normally, visitors wouldn’t open it, but in hellish difficulty, someone has helped us open it.” Chen Ge turned around and realized that the group was quietly waiting for him to continue. “I am just a volunteer worker; don’t you guys have anything to share?”

Of the team of seven, six were theme park workers, and the only actual visitor had become the leader of the group. Chen Ge wanted to draw some information from these ‘visitors’, so he kept them around and pretended that he did not notice the small gestures they had been making. “The recording did not tell us what is inside the altar, but the change to this scenario has everything to do with that altar. The way to escape should be related to that altar as well. I remember one of you is the detective and gets a new clue when we enter a new scenario.”

“I am the detective.” The man in glasses looked at his band. “The clue is hidden inside the altar…”

The visitors left the bedroom and walked down the corridor.

The man with the glasses shone the flashlight on his phone into the altar. The group bent to look and realized that inside the walls of the altar, the word ‘death’ was repeated again and again, gouged out with fingernail marks.