Post: Ryang Jeongsin Byeong-won (Ryang Psychiatric Hospital)
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Hi, everyone! This is Oscar, temporarily taking over Kat’s blog. She’s fine, she’s just taking a break from the Internet for a while.
For the season finale of P2P, we’re in Seoul investigating the Ryang Psychiatric Hospital. It’s been abandoned, but very recently, so it probably won’t look quite as creepy as Daems Prison or the catacombs in Buenos Aires. The patients and staff were all moved to a new, better facility in another neighborhood, and this hospital was purchased by a production company based here in Seoul. They want to use the building as a setting for a movie about a haunted asylum, and since this place is rumored to be haunted, they thought it would make the film more authentic if they filmed here.
Supposedly, the hospital has its very own poltergeist. A really angry, really noisy one. There’s a rumor that back when the hospital opened decades ago, some nurse accidentally opened a portal and let in the poltergeist . . . which means it was never human.
So what IS it? Stay tuned to watch us try to find out!
OSCAR might have had potential as an actor, but I was giving him a run for his money. The second I joined the rest of the crew in the hotel lobby, I started putting on the performance of a lifetime.
I apologized to Dad and everyone for the Save Yourself post. Yes, I knew I was supposed to get all posts approved. No, of course I didn’t actually think my doppelganger had written it. Yes, I knew the video didn’t show anything remotely paranormal—it was supposed to be a joke! Just trying to lighten things up after my whole “will I die in the season finale” mistake, bad judgment on my part, ha-ha, won’t happen again.
No one bought the act at first, especially not Dad or Grandma. But I stuck to it, smiling and calmly eating my pastry, until finally Lidia changed the subject and started talking about our itinerary for the day. We were going to spend the morning filming in the neighborhood where the psychiatric hospital was located. The people from the production company who had bought the facility were going to meet us, and Grandma would be conducting most of the interviews. Then we’d return to the hotel for dinner, pack up, and head back out to spend the night in the hospital.
Oscar caught on to what I was doing right away. The trip across town took about half an hour, and we spent the whole time joking around in the back of the van, ignoring the occasional concerned glances from the adults.
When we pulled up to Ryang Psychiatric Hospital, a group of people was standing outside of the entrance, all smiling eagerly. I felt a brief wave of déjà vu, remembering the fans who had found us at the Montgomery. Lidia was the first out of the van, and a guy with longish graying hair pulled into a ponytail stepped forward.
“Ms. Bettencourt!” he exclaimed, his words carrying the slightest hint of an accent. “We spoke on the phone earlier. I’m Jae-Hwa.”
“So nice to finally meet you in person!” Lidia shook his hand, then turned to Dad and Jess, who were right behind her. “Park Jae-Hwa. He’s the founder of Talchul Films.”
A blur of introductions followed, during which Oscar and I hung back. Jae-Hwa’s whole staff—five people, including him—all seemed excited to meet the crew, and really excited to meet Grandma. They weren’t so interested in Oscar and me, which was a relief—and, well, maybe a little bit of a surprise, too. After my unfortunate blog post, P2P fans had been arguing nonstop in the forums about whether or not we were just faking the whole doppelganger thing. But maybe in real life, no one cared whether my double would try to attack me during the finale. Not even the people who owned the place we’d be investigating.
After several minutes of chatting, we all trooped inside the hospital. I blinked in surprise, nudging Oscar.
“You weren’t kidding about this place,” I told him. “It’s not creepy at all.”
The lobby was still furnished with a few sofas and chairs. A flat-screen TV hung on the wall, although I could see the cables dangling from the back. A few filing cabinets sat against the wall behind the receptionist’s desk, and there were even a few magazines still stacked neatly on a little table in the corner.
“Did they leave all the furniture?” Roland asked, glancing down the hall to the left. “Beds, all that stuff in the rooms?”
Jae-Hwa nodded. “The hospital’s new facility included an upgrade in equipment. When we bought this building, we asked that the owners include all of the furnishings they no longer needed in the price. For us, it was a ready-made set for our first film.”
“Nice,” Grandma murmured thoughtfully as she gazed around. I could practically see the wheels turning in her head, probably thinking about her own production company and whatever its first movie would be. I breathed a small sigh of relief; for a few hours, at least, she and Dad would be focused on something aside from their concern that I was losing my mind.
“Kat, check this out.” Oscar waved me over to the hallway, where he stood by the first door. “Looks like a nurses’ lounge or something.” We both glanced at the adults, who were all getting settled on the sofas and chairs in the lobby. Jess and Mi Jin were setting up their cameras, while Dad pinned microphones on Jae-Hwa and Grandma. I caught Dad’s eye and pointed to the lounge. After a second’s hesitation, he nodded, and Oscar and I hurried inside and closed the door.
“Finally,” Oscar said, turning to me expectantly. “Jamie already told me everything, but I want to hear it from you. What happened, exactly?”
So I told him about the soft clicking on the laptop, watching the same two words appear over and over again on the screen, seeing the Thing in the mirror, long braid hanging over its shoulder. I told him how it had stood and walked out of sight, and how I’d sat down to video chat with Jamie and ended up dozing off.
“It’s too bad you didn’t show Jamie the video,” Oscar mused.
I glanced up. “Why?”
“Just, you know . . .” he shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “So another person would’ve seen it.”
“So you’d know whether or not I’m going crazy,” I said flatly.
Oscar sighed. “That’s not what I said.”
I squeezed my hands into fists so hard my knuckles turned white. “So you believe me? You believe it was on my camera?”
Oscar shifted in his chair, opened his mouth, then closed it again. I raised my eyebrows expectantly, and he sighed.
“Okay. Look, Kat, I do believe you. But—”
I groaned, closing my eyes. This was it. The last straw. Even Oscar thought I was losing it.
“No, listen,” he said, leaning forward. “The Thing is real. We all saw it on the bridge, and on video. I don’t know what happened to the video you got last night, but that doesn’t change the fact that literally everyone has seen a ghost that looks exactly like you. That one’s still on video, the one Jess got.”
“But?”
“But . . .” Oscar paused. “When you told me what happened to your dad’s contract, you said you’d had a weird dream the night before about him getting mad at you. And yesterday, when I came up to the suite and woke you up—you don’t even remember that! And you said when you saw the Thing, you’d just woken up from a nap, and then you got really drowsy again. So maybe you’re, like . . . sleepwalking. Or something.”
“You mean sleep blog-posting,” I said dully. “Sleep ripping up contracts. Sleep writing rude comments all over Mi Jin’s script, too?”
Oscar sighed, clearly frustrated. “Look, don’t get all defensive. I already said I know the Thing is real—I don’t think you’re making this stuff up. But maybe some of the stuff that’s happened is . . .”
“Is me,” I finished. “And I only think it’s the Thing. You know, this is a lot like what you said to me about Sonja when we were in Rotterdam. You believed I thought I was telling the truth. But that’s not the same as actually believing me.” I knew I should stop talking, that Oscar was just trying to help. But I was frustrated, too. “And that was before we were even friends. I thought you trusted me, but I guess I was wrong.”
“We are friends,” Oscar snapped. “I’m being honest with you. That’s what actual friends do, not just agree with you even when you might be wrong.”
I crossed my arms and half-shrugged. He was right, which just irritated me even more.
“And besides, think about this,” Oscar went on, his tone slightly softer. “You made the Thing, right? It came from your head. Maybe it can . . . get back in there sometimes. Make you do stuff without you realizing it.”
I sat up straighter. “You mean possess me?”
“Maybe?” Oscar’s brow furrowed. “We thought you were possessed in Buenos Aires. You had all those weird symptoms. And then the Thing . . . came out. Came out of you. So it’s kind of like you were possessed. Maybe it still has a connection with you or something.”
“Huh.”
“And . . .” Oscar tilted his head. “And your camera.”
“My camera?”
“The Thing is still on Jess’s video,” he said. “Taken on Jess’s camera. It’s only your camera it keeps disappearing from.”
We fell silent, listening to the muffled sounds of voices in the lobby. The more I thought about what Oscar had said, the more it made sense. Especially about the Elapse. My love of photography was pretty much the only thing I’d ever had in common with my mom. The Thing was the version of me that had everything in common with my mom. In a twisted way, it made sense that it’d be able to worm its way in and out of my photography, but no one else’s.
For months, I’d been trying to find an explanation for the Thing. An artificial ghost, thoughtography . . . but if there was one thing I’d learned since joining P2P, it was that there was hardly ever a definitive explanation for paranormal activity. Just theories and ideas.
Maybe the Thing was something new entirely.