The Pale Face in the Hallway: Gichan’s Night of Terror

When Gichan first moved into the old house, he expected creaking floors, occasional drafts, and the kind of eerie silence only age can bring. What he didn’t expect was the moment that would leave him frozen in fear — the moment he looked up and saw a pale face staring down at him from the upstairs hallway.

He blinked, and it was gone. But the pounding in his chest told him it had been real. And against every instinct screaming at him to run, he forced himself to climb the stairs. That was when the nightmare truly began.

A Glimpse Too Real

It started with a sound — the faint shuffle of something moving overhead. Gichan paused, tilting his head. The house was supposed to be empty. Slowly, his eyes rose toward the staircase, and that was when he saw it: a face.

It wasn’t just pale. It was drained of life, hollow-eyed, expressionless yet impossibly intent on him. The stillness of it made it worse, like a photograph hovering in the air. Then, in the blink of an eye, it was gone.

He told himself it was imagination, exhaustion, a trick of the light. But deep down, he knew. He hadn’t imagined the way its gaze had locked onto his.

The Ascent

Every step up the staircase echoed like a drumbeat, slow and deliberate. The air grew colder as he climbed, a chill biting at his skin. He gripped the railing tightly, as though it could protect him.

At the top, the hallway stretched before him, dim and suffocating. The shadows seemed too thick, too deliberate. He whispered into the silence, “Hello?”

No answer. Only a long, hollow stillness that pressed against his ears. He took another step — and the floor creaked, not beneath him, but several feet ahead.

Things Get Worse

He froze. The sound had been clear: weight shifting on the wooden boards. Someone — or something — was standing in the hall. His heart hammered as he squinted into the shadows.

And then, movement. Quick, jerking, disappearing into one of the rooms.

Gichan’s mouth went dry. Against reason, against the ice in his veins, he followed.

Inside the room, nothing waited for him. Just old furniture draped in sheets, dust floating in the air. But on the far wall, something made his breath catch.

A mirror. And in that mirror, he saw it.

The Reflection

The pale face.

But this time it wasn’t just watching. It was smiling. A stretched, unnatural grin that split the silence with invisible malice.

Gichan spun around. The room was empty. He turned back to the mirror. Still smiling. Still there.

He stumbled backward, his body colliding with the doorframe. Panic surged through him, and he slammed the door shut. But even from the hallway, he could feel it — as if the face was pressing against the other side of the wood, waiting for him to look again.

The House’s Dark Secret

Gichan wasn’t the first to see the face. Neighbors whispered about the house, stories passed in half-joking tones but with serious eyes. Decades ago, a young man had died there — found at the bottom of the staircase, his face described in police reports as “drained, distorted, unrecognizable.”

The official verdict was an accident. But locals never believed it. They said his spirit lingered, wandering the upper hallway, waiting to lock eyes with the living.

Now Gichan was part of the story.

The Longest Night

He tried to leave, rushing down the stairs, but every door he touched rattled as if bolted shut from the outside. His phone buzzed, the screen flickering before going black. The house itself seemed determined to trap him.

Hours passed in a blur of shadows moving just beyond his vision, whispers crawling along the walls, and the constant sense of being watched. Whenever he dared glance upstairs, he caught flashes of white — the face, peering around the corner, patient, waiting.

Confrontation

By dawn, exhaustion had pushed him past fear. He stormed upstairs, shouting, demanding the presence reveal itself. “What do you want from me?”

Silence. Then, slowly, the sound of footsteps. Not his. Heavy, deliberate, approaching.

The hallway stretched impossibly long. From the far end, the pale figure emerged, not blurred this time but solid. Its head tilted unnaturally, its eyes black hollows, its grin wide enough to tear the skin.

It raised a hand, pointing straight at him.

The next thing Gichan remembered was waking up on the floor, sunlight streaming through the windows, the house silent again.

Aftermath

When he tried to leave the next morning, the doors opened easily, as if nothing had been wrong. He stumbled out into the daylight, swearing never to return.

But something followed him. In the reflection of shop windows, in the shine of his car mirror, he sometimes sees it again. A pale face, smiling faintly, as though reminding him: escape isn’t possible.

Conclusion

The story of Gichan’s night of terror is one of those tales that blurs the line between urban legend and lived nightmare. Whether it was a haunting, a hallucination, or something darker, one fact remains: once you see the face in the hallway, you never forget it.

And perhaps, just perhaps, it never forgets you either.