Chapter 2

Benjamin Franklin continued posting: Sorry, sorry, I really am not advertising, but something truly bizarre and supernatural happened that night—something you probably could never imagine in your whole life. At exactly 2:15 a.m., while I was playing games in the emergency room, I suddenly felt a chill, exactly like the feeling in the morgue. I got goosebumps all over.

  And guess what happened next?

  The old man who went missing from the morgue yesterday somehow appeared outside the emergency room. He wasn’t dead, but was moving very slowly, step by step, heading out of the hospital.

  Oh my god, this is impossible. I saw with my own eyes that the old man was already dead, and not just for a day. How could he possibly come back to life?

  A prank? A zombie? A medical miracle?

  A lot of thoughts flashed through my mind in that instant, but maybe because I’m used to being around corpses, I wasn’t that scared. The most urgent thing was to grab my phone and take a picture, ready to post it to my Moments.

  Here comes the photo—seeing is believing, absolutely not Photoshopped.

  Brian Cooper scrolled down, and immediately a photo appeared before his eyes.

  The photo wasn’t blurry; on the contrary, it was very clear. Through the glass window of the emergency room, an old man could be seen walking outside.

  The old man was wearing a black one-piece robe, with a bit of a retro vibe. He was thin and shriveled, his skin brown and covered in spots. From the angle of the photo, you could see one of his eyes—what kind of eye was that... ashen, hollow, not a trace of life, filled with a terrifying dead silence.

  There was nothing bloody or gory in the photo, but the feeling this old man gave off made your hair stand on end and your scalp tingle.

  And thinking back to how this doctor named Benjamin Franklin had clearly stated that the old man was once a cold corpse, it made the fear even more intense.

  The more you looked at the photo, the creepier it felt.

  It was like looking at a dead person, or even more... like looking at a ghost.

  “Scared me to death, this photo is so creepy, the more I look at it the more scared I get. Where did the OP find this photo?”

  “Why are there so many spots on the old man’s hand? I have trypophobia.”

  “Those are livor mortis spots, which means this old man was already a corpse.”

  “Begone, demon! I, Lam Ching-ying, am here.” A netizen posted a picture of a Taoist priest.

  “Pfft, you’re Lam Ching-ying? Then I’m a loli-voiced girl.”

  But no matter how the netizens commented, Benjamin Franklin kept posting: The photo is real, I took it myself. Later, the old man just walked out of the hospital like that. I don’t know where he went. If anyone here is in the same city as me, be careful. Even though I’m an atheist, there are some things you just have to believe.

  Wait, it seems like someone’s knocking on the door again. Probably someone coming to take my statement. I’ll be right back and update you on what happens next.

  But less than a minute later, Benjamin Franklin posted again: Damn it, damn it, it’s that old man who ran out of the hospital. That thing is standing at my door knocking. I can see it clearly through the peephole. What should I do now? I feel like I’ve messed with something I shouldn’t have.

  “OP, are you having fun trolling us?”

  “Holy crap, is this real? No way it’s this creepy.”

  “Call the police, quick, call 110.”

  “OP, stop pretending. If this isn’t fake, I’ll eat shit and double it.”

  “It’s you again, the eat-shit boy. You still haven’t paid up from last time.”

  But then Benjamin Franklin posted again: I called the police, but what now? That thing is still knocking on the door, and it doesn’t look like it’s leaving. Oh no, just now the light in my living room suddenly went out. Now I’m too scared to go into the living room.

  I closed my bedroom door and turned on every light I could, but the old man is still knocking on the door.

  At this point, the posts from this user named Benjamin Franklin were coming in very quickly, less than thirty seconds apart, and some of the words were even misspelled.

  From this, you could tell that the doctor posting was extremely frightened and panicked.

  Brian Cooper also felt a chill run through his body. Even though he knew the story might be fake, just thinking about that old man in the photo standing outside the door knocking made him feel a bit creeped out.

  An old man who had already died came back to life and was now knocking at your own door—anyone would be terrified if that happened to them.

  But the posts didn’t stop, they kept coming: No, this is bad, I just heard footsteps in my living room. Oh god, I’m the only one at home. Now I suspect that the old man who was knocking at the door has come in. He must have walked into the living room. How is this possible? I didn’t even hear the door open. How did he get in?

  The footsteps stopped outside my bedroom door.

  That thing is knocking on the door again. I have a really bad feeling. I’m recording the sound now as evidence, and leaving my phone number. If you can’t reach me, something must have happened to me. Please, someone call the police: 138......

  “Dong, dong dong, dong, dong dong......”