That hole in the ceiling would plague me for the next few weeks
Ask anybody who’s done military service before, and they’ll have their fair share of stories to tell. In Korea, ghost stories are probably the most prominent, with each division having their own unique stories passed down throughout the years. Most are made-up, told by seniors to spook the new recruits and to pass the time during night shifts. Some are shared by those more susceptible to having such experiences, surprised by the experience no doubt, but nonetheless used to seeing ghosts on a regular basis. However, once in a while, such an experience comes out of the blue to those who are least expecting it, making them question what they just saw. This is my own personal experience.
Being stationed on the front lines absolutely sucks: less access to the convenience store, no weekend outings, 24 hour stand-by status etc. On the plus side, the commanders know this too and usually let us grunt do whatever we like during our free time, whether it be watching movies late at night, playing sports during the day when it’s not our shift and so on.
One summer afternoon, me and a few squad mates were playing soccer inside the barracks when one guy accidentally kicked the ball too hard, breaking off a piece of the ceiling tile near the entrance of our room. These barracks were built after the Korean War, so they’re decades old and some segments are more fragile than a tiktoker’s ego. We actually had a guy nearly get a concussion when a chunk of a windowsill suddenly broke off above his head. Anyway, rather than get reprimanded for acting like dumbasses, we just swept away the tile pieces and acted like nothing happened.
Bad decision by us. Although I had no way of knowing at that time, that hole in the ceiling would plague me for the next few weeks before culminating in an unforgettable experience.
As we were assigned shifts that would rotate every 3 weeks, we would just bring our sleeping bags and sleep in any bed that was available. Before the accident, I had no trouble sleeping. However, ever since we made that hole in the ceiling, I would have trouble sleeping properly and would wake up tired as hell. Strangely enough, I slept in the bottom bunk, I would sleep like a baby. But it was always the top bunks that would give me trouble, no matter which of the eight bunk beds I would sleep on. What made it worse was that I would always wake up facing towards that hole. Not just head turned in its direction; the first thing I would see when I wake up is the black gaping maw that seemed to drag me in. Something beckoned me, I just didn’t know what.
About 1.5 months later, after a particularly grueling night shift, my shift members and I returned to the barracks at around 3AM. Now, our squad had two rooms assigned to us. We decided to use one room as a storage/locker room and the other for sleeping and activities. As I’m changing into my PJs by myself in the locker room, I suddenly get intense chills. Yeah, it’s the middle of the night and the room is only lit up by a single blue lamp, but I can hear the faint music from the TV in the neighboring room, so it’s not like I’m the only one awake. However, despite the weather being 20+ degrees (Celsius), I suddenly started shivering as if I were in the middle of a blizzard. Not only that, but an overwhelming feeling of paranoia gripped me, and I found my eyes constantly darting around the room, looking for some unseen danger. I quickly wrapped up and ran to the next room.
Assured by the numerous people watching TV and half of the lights on, I decided to sleep in the top bunk of the bed closest to the room entrance. Foolish of me to assume that I was safe. Later in my dream, I could see that I was lying down on the bed. However, I am unable to move my body; I’m stuck in sleep paralysis.
Above the entrance door was a glass window that led to the hallway and about a meter away from the window was the hole. As I glance around the room, I see that the window is covered by the faces of multiple children. Aside from the obvious fact that these can't be real children considering that the window is 4~5 meters from the floor, but each face looked like someone peeled them off from a child and plastered them on the window. And not too far away, sticking out of that damn hole is a long, emaciated arm.
As my brain is trying to process what I'm seeing, as if it realized that I noticed it, the arm starts flapping up and down. It seemed like it was telling the 'children' to duck and hide as they all started sliding down the window, each one disappearing with an audible pop. I can't believe what I'm seeing so I look to my right to see if any of the others are able to see this happening.
Next to each bed was a row of lockers as tall as the top bunk and longer than the beds themselves. These acted like partitions between the beds. The TV is located at the other end of the room. It was a common practice for those sleeping on the top bunk to lay facing towards the middle of the room to watch TV. I could see an arm sticking out around the corner of the nearby locker, so I was relieved to see that at least somebody else was there with me. Relief turned to terror when I realized something: the first finger facing me was the pinky. This meant that the arm was bending outwards, not inwards. I nearly sh*t myself when the arm snapped outwards again around the corner of the locker and the hand rapidly crawled along the locker towards me.
I quickly closed my eyes and felt something crawling inside my sleeping bag, moving upwards along my body. Suddenly, I felt something grab my lower jaw and pull downwards, as if it was trying to force my mouth open. I struggled for what seemed like forever until I could hear a junior calling my name to go have breakfast. As I slowly woke up for real, maybe because of my ordeal, I think I saw something quickly crawl back into the hole.
Needless to say, I never slept in the top bunk after that until I finished my service. From what I heard a few years ago, they eventually patched up that ceiling due to unrelated complaints regarding the hole (mice I think).
Sometimes I wonder what that dream could have meant, and what would have happened if I lost in that final struggle. Does anybody have any similar experiences or relevant explanations for this experience?
Submitted by Redditor u/Fresh_Avocadues
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