Bongcheon Dong and Ok-Su Station Ghost Stories A.K.A. The 2011 Mystery Shorts

I hope you don’t plan on going to sleep anytime soon.  That is my job after all; to frighten you all into the piss puddle induced state of a creepy wo/man baby.  But tonight’s horror doesn’t come from yours truly.  Actually, this frightmare of a double feature is a series of pieces made by an artist from the Orient.

The Bongcheon-Dong and Ok-Su Station Ghost Stories are original comic strips written and animated by Studio Horang, a Korean writer/director/blogger who has managed to keep a pretty low profile on the internet circuit in the English speaking countries of the world.  Very little is known about the artist.  Many fellow internet creepers (like myself) have stated the artist’s name is Jong-Ho Choi, but they are all citing the blogger named Robot 6 as their main source (you can check out his stuff here).  As I write this, there is currently only one video on Horang’s youtube page, and it is a 46 second music video for the Korean band C-Kret (the opening of an anime maybe?  I don’t know.  I don’t watch a lot of that stuff...here is the link anyway http://www.youtube.com/user/StudioHORANG/videos).  Much like Horang, I was unable to find very much about C-Kret (however, you can find the vocalist, Gaya’s website at http://www.aragaya.net/ check it out.  That is, if you happen to know how to read Kanji).  Despite Horang’s incredible obscurity, he has made a huge splash in the digital cesspool that is the internet with his incredibly short and sweet horror series, the 2011 Mystery Shorts, consisting of the two horrifying ghost stories I am sharing with you tonight. 

These two horror stories, short as they are, are jam packed with Lovecraftian elements.  Specifically, they instigate the fear of a supernatural influence over an urban setting.  Bongcheon Dong is a housing division in Seul, South Korea and Oksu Station is an actual train line in the same city as Bongcheon Dong (probably the home town of Horang himself).  Not only that, but they introduce characters that are completely out of control of their current ghostly situation and unable to comprehend the horrors that await them until it is too late.  

As I stated before, I hope you were not planning on getting much sleep, because I guarantee that at least one of these two horrifying web comics will keep your eye lids glued to the tip of your scalp.  I am reluctant to give away too much information on these pieces other than they are very eerie and claim to be based on “true events”.  Horang manages to put the reader directly into the setting of the pieces within their first panels, as well as develop a very frightening mood, seemingly without an ounce of effort.

I mean, look at this.  Even out of context, this image is bound to haunt anyone’s nightmares. 

I fear that any more commentary I may be able to add would only detract from the experience of these nightmare inducing stories.  So without further ado, I present to you Studio Horang’s 2011 Mystery Shorts.  Read them and judge for yourselves just what makes these damn things so haunting.  I recommend beginning with the Bongcheon-Dong Ghost Story first.  Normally, I’d say save the best for last, but the Bongcheon-Dong Ghost Story really enhances the reading experience of the Ok-Su Station Ghost Story; forcing you to wonder what is going to happen in each on coming panel. 

You can read the Bongcheon-Dong Ghost Story with an english translation here:

http://comic.naver.com/webtoon/detail.nhn?titleId=350217&no=31&weekday=tue

And, of course, the Ok-Su Station Ghost Story with an english translation here:

http://comic.naver.com/webtoon/detail.nhn?titleId=350217&no=30&weekday=tue

I for one hope to see more from Horang, and anxiously look forward to the opportunity of sharing many more narcoleptic nights with his horrifying work.  I hope you feel the same as I do about these creepy fucking stories.  And as a very sexy woman once said while waving goodbye on the show Movie Macabre, until next time, "unpleasant dreams".