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Chapter One Do You Believe in Ghosts?

Was there a ghost in this world?

Michael Morgan, a third-year middle school student, opened a super popular post and the opening line was,

[I’m a doctor and I gotta tell you something. Recently, some seriously freaky stuff went down at my hospital, and now I’m too scared to go to work.]

[Here’s the deal. Last week, I was on the night shift. Around midnight, an ambulance brought in this old man. The EMTs said he fell from the fifth floor. My colleague had an emergency, so it was just me handling the diagnosis. I’m 100% sure the old guy had no signs of life and was already dead.]

[Plus, from the state of his body and the temperature of his chest, I could tell he didn’t die from falling that night.]

[Anyone with basic knowledge knows that within ten hours after death, in a normal temp environment, body temp drops about 33.8 degrees Fahrenheit per hour. After 24 hours, the body temp will be close to the environment. But this old guy’s body temp was at least 120 degrees Fahrenheit below normal, maybe even more, while the temp that night was 72 degrees.]

[I immediately figured the old guy had been dead for more than a day.]

[With my experience, I could tell right away that the old guy didn’t die from an accidental fall but was probably murdered. The body must’ve been stored in a freezer. I decided to call the cops and reported it.]

[But what I wanna talk about today isn’t that, but what happened afterward.]

The post paused and the update time was two hours later.

[Sorry, someone just knocked on the door to ask about that incident. But it wasn’t the police, nor did they look like reporters, though they had work IDs. Never mind, forget it.]

[It was probably the next morning.]

[I hadn’t gone to work yet, but my colleague said that the old guy’s body, which was brought in the previous night, mysteriously vanished from the morgue. The cops were investigating thoroughly, suspecting the murderer had stolen it. The movement was huge, and they checked all the hospital’s surveillance, but they still couldn’t find the missing old guy’s body or the murderer.]

[I was on duty again that night.]

[But what happened during the day made me a bit uneasy. A patient in the hospital said he saw the old guy’s body, but it wasn’t carried out by someone, it walked out on its own. The patient even accurately pointed out the route the old guy took, which indeed came from the direction of the morgue.]

[I was a bit freaked out after hearing this, but luckily, I’m an atheist and didn’t fully buy what the patient said.]

[Later, I heard from the head nurse that the neurologist was planning to up the meds for that psychiatric patient, which made me feel a bit relieved.]

[Sure enough, it was right not to believe that patient.]

[But what I wanna talk about isn’t that, but something that happened during my night shift.]

[It should’ve been around 2 a.m. I was playing a game when suddenly, I felt a chill, exactly like the feeling in the morgue. I was super scared at that moment.]

[Guess what happened next?]

[The old guy who disappeared from the morgue yesterday somehow showed up outside the emergency room. He wasn’t dead but was walking very slowly out of the hospital.]

[Oh my God, this is nuts. I saw with my own eyes that the old man was dead, and he had been dead for more than a day. How the heck could he come back to life?]

[At that moment, a million thoughts raced through my mind, but maybe because I’m used to dealing with corpses, I wasn’t that freaked out. I just whipped out my phone and snapped a pic, planning to post it on Facebook.]

[Here’s the photo, definitely not fake.]

Michael Morgan scrolled down, and a photo popped up on his screen.

The photo wasn’t blurry. In fact, it was crystal clear. Through the glass window of the emergency room, an old man was walking outside.

The old man was super thin, with brown, spotty skin. From the angle of the photo, you could see one of his eyes. It was hollow, lifeless, totally not like a living person.

The photo wasn’t bloody or gory, but the vibe the old man gave off was straight-up terrifying.

Michael Morgan, remembering the doctor’s clear statement that the old man had been a cold corpse, felt a shiver run down his spine.

The more Michael Morgan stared at the photo, the more freaked out he got.

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

There were tons of comments below:

Unknown: [Why are there so many spots on the old man’s hand? I have trypophobia.]

Unknown: [Those are livor mortis spots, which means the old man was already a corpse.]

The post continued:

[The picture is real, I took it myself. Later, the old man just walked out of the hospital. I don’t know where he went, but if anyone lives in the same city as me, be careful. Although I’m an atheist, there are some things you just have to believe.]

[Wait, someone’s knocking on the door again. I guess it’s the police coming to take my statement. I’ll be back in a bit to talk about what happened next.]

But less than a minute later, the doctor posted again: [Damn it, it’s that old man who ran out of the hospital. He’s standing at my door knocking. I can see it clearly. What should I do now? I feel like I’ve messed with something I shouldn’t have.]

Then the doctor posted again: [I called the police, but what should I do now? That old man is still knocking on the door. It looks like he doesn’t plan to leave. Oh no, just now, the light in my living room suddenly went out. Now I’m too scared to go to the living room.]

[I closed my bedroom door and turned on all the lights I could, but the old man is still knocking on the door.]

At this point, the doctor’s posts were super urgent, with each message less than thirty seconds apart and some words were misspelled.

From this, it was clear that the doctor was really scared and panicked.

Michael Morgan also felt a chill all over. Even though he knew the story might be fake, thinking about the old man in the photo standing outside the door knocking made him feel a bit scared.

An old man who had already died came back to life and appeared at your door knocking. Anyone would be terrified by this.

But the post continued: [No, this is bad. I heard footsteps in my living room. Oh my God, I’m the only one at home. Now I suspect that the old man who was knocking on the door has come in. He must have walked into the living room. What is going on? I didn’t even hear the door open. How did he get in?]

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