Dark Side of Seoul

25/10/2026

Every October we sit down and scare each other, and this year we went across five centuries to do it.

Shawn opens with a story from 1525 about a ghost living in a noble family’s roof beams that tells fortunes, finds lost things, and has absolutely no problem embarrassing an aristocrat in front of her servant. It was never meant to frighten anyone about the afterlife. It was meant to frighten the people who could read it.

Then come two modern stories pulled from Korean horror message boards: a girl standing outside a farmhouse window at one in the morning in the dead of winter, and a perfectly nice woman leaning around a funeral hall door asking a child to come with her. And Shawn closes with an alleged true haunting from a crowded inn in Gangwon-do, where one stormy night in the wrong room followed a man home for almost a year.

Korean Ghost Stories 2026 is out now. Turn the lights off. Or don’t.
https://darksideofseoul.com/korean-ghost-stories-joseon-to-message-boards/

19/10/2026

Twelve people on a Seoul ghost walk, single file on a narrow slab at Gyeonghuigung Palace, 2018. Everyone stopped at the same second. The air smelled like burning hair and flesh. No smoke, no fire, no wind, and then nothing at all.
Shawn has a theory, and it isn’t the one you’d expect. Stone tape theory suggests some ghosts aren’t the dead at all, but moments of intense emotion recorded into a place and played back. This week he explains how it works, where it falls apart, and what it might mean for the boy in white hanbok who plays around a nearly 400-year-old zelkova tree on the same palace grounds.
He also went digging into the palace’s fire history to find out what that smell might have been. What he found is in the episode.
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Can a place record a memory? Stone tape theory, a nearly 400-year-old zelkova, and a smell of burning that stopped a ghost tour at Seoul’s Gyeonghuigung Palace.

18/10/2026

Dare to play the urban legend known as the paranormal elevator game. Follow a specific button sequence to access another dimension or encounter spirits. What happens next is up to fate. But remember, if the elevator heads to the 10th floor instead of the 5th, be prepared for a terrifying encounter. Return to your dimension by pressing the first floor button immediately. Would you dare to play?

18/10/2026

A chilling legend from before April 2009 tells of a phone number, 010-4444-4444, that brought fear to all who dared to call. Listeners were met with sinister whispers from beyond the grave, some hearing ghostly birthday wishes, others unending whispers that left them trembling. stories legend

18/10/2026

An old folk tale reveals a chilling belief: unmarried women who died young were buried in hidden graves. The hope was a passing man would answer nature's call, thus freeing their trapped souls. A somber tradition.

18/10/2026

Here's a very insightful and flattering (though correct) write up in The Korea Times by Justin Kyle about the podcast.

Korea has always been conscious of its own image, even as K-content exports and inbound tourism numbers continue to break records. But that global...

18/10/2026

Exploring a historic battlefield, a father and son tried to capture orbs, dismissed as ghosts. Later, near a cemetery, an eerie chill and a growling dog suggested they weren't alone. Casual photos revealed more than they bargained for.

17/10/2026

A young couple buys an old house, only to be captivated by a mysterious portrait of a sad woman. Strange occurrences lead them to uncover a haunting tale and a hidden message from beyond.

17/10/2026

Discover the chilling urban legend of Kim Min-ji, a tale woven into Korean currency. A father's greed led to a tragic act, binding his daughter's spirit to the very coins he printed. What secrets lie within your money?

17/10/2026

Every October we pull out the flashlight and tell Korean ghost stories. This one’s from the archive, and it holds up.

Shawn reads from his collection of first-hand ghost encounters, built from interviews with people who say these things happened to them. One is a father and son who went out at night with a digital camera to hunt orbs on Ganghwa Island, near where Korean and American forces fought in 1871. The hotel dog ignored them on the way out. On the way back it was growling at something behind them. Another is an Argentine student in a Daejeon university dorm, who heard bare footsteps every night between three and four in the morning and found a very specific way to make them stop. There’s also a Myeongdong hotel stay that ended in a one-star TripAdvisor review, for reasons that had nothing to do with the breakfast.

I brought the urban legends. The Kim Minji coin ghost claims a murdered girl’s body is hidden in the designs on Korean bills and coins. The Korean elevator game comes with very specific floor numbers, and the elevator mirror trick scared at least one kid into riding with his face pressed into the corner. Then there’s the Red Room internet curse and a phone number made of fours that we called live on air. I also learned the hard way that a “Korean folk tale” I found online had been lifted almost word for word from a story recorded in 1931. Shawn caught it before I did.

Along the way we get into why Korean hotels keep their ghosts quiet, why the number four means death, and whether internet legends can ever be as scary as an abandoned house.

Grab a blanket, turn off the lights, and maybe take the stairs tonight.

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