Written by Emilia Chung
May 14, 1964, Taipei
When policemen turned up at Chairman Guo’s home after a panicked call from a neighbour, they were greeted with a most horrific sight right in the living room. The wife and eldest daughter of the esteemed chairman, as it seemed, had brutally murdered the twin boys that were barely over six years old before committing suicide. Guo Ming Ning, 15, had hung herself in the living room, while her mother had drowned herself in the bathtub of their first floor bathroom.
The neighbour had witnessed Ming Ning’s body in the living room around midnight, when he came downstairs for a drink of water, and had promptly called the police.
Chairman Guo, who holds a high position in mega-construction company Guo Construction, has diverted all the resources he could spare into launching an investigation into the deaths. Many people have also begun to speculate on whether the murder-suicide has anything to do with the strange, unexplainable incidents reported on the site of Guo Construction’s newest project in the mountainous regions of Tainan, where there have been multiple reports of strange and unexplainable incidents, as well as several fatal accidents on the site itself. These events have caused a stir amongst workers, as well as locals living in the area to suspect the location is haunted, or perhaps cursed.
In lieu of these incidents, workers have been leaving the site in droves, and turnover is particularly high, which concerns shareholders at Guo Constructions, who believe that the project might have been ill-advised in hindsight— especially now that the chairman himself has been severely affected.
The investigation has revealed nothing thus far of what could have motivated Guo Ming Ning and her mother to commit the horrifying acts they did. There has been no history of metal illness with either, and while Chairman Guo’s marriage had been testy and Ming Ning herself had been under stress due to upcoming exams, there was no real connection to be found. With nowhere to turn to, Chairman Guo decided to consult a shaman on the matter.
“This is very clearly the work of a malicious fox demon.” The shaman explained. “It possessed the wife and daughter, forced them to kill the boys, and then kill themselves.”
This is surprisingly quite consistent with some of the reports of paranormal activity on the site, which describes a massive, fox-like creature with blood-red fur, three eyes and nine long tails. This along with the unsettling accounts of the creature keeping the workers awake at night with its howls, as well as incessant tapping on doors and windows while the workers slept.
“It was like the scream of a woman in pain. The first night I heard it, I knew I had to get out of there as soon as possible.” Said one worker, who requested to be kept anonymous.
“Whatever it was, it seemed determined to not let us sleep even a wink.” Said another.
One glance at the local folklore, and you might see some resemblance to the phenomenon that has been haunting our collective dreams. One folktale in particular tells of a fox who fell in love with a human man, and marries him, only to have her entire family and husband-to-be slaughtered before her eyes by his perspective in-laws, whose daughter he had been betrothed to. In her rage, she massacres the envoy, and puts a devastating curse on the family to all die painful deaths, as well as pass on the curse to anyone who associates with them, and their families.
While highly dramatised, the folktale does have some basis in historical fact. The disgraced Jin family was driven out by villagers some 200 years ago and was forced to change their surname to the more common Xu for reasons that have since been lost to us in the present day. Whether this anything to do with the reports in the present day is still a matter of debate.
Note: This is a purely fictional news article that is not meant to bear any resemblance to real-life events. Any resemblances of which are completely coincidental.