My experience working in an organization dealing with paranormal phenomena

I am 29 years old, a Chinese man, and I work for China’s official supernatural response agency, where I serve as an investigator.

Let me first introduce this agency; in Chinese, it is written as the “超自然控制局”. It is an organization subordinate to the Ministry of State Security, with branches distributed all across China. I work at the Harbin Branch. Its predecessor was an organization that already existed back in the 1930s. The war caused countless people to lose their homes and lives, which led to a massive surge in supernatural events—hauntings, disappearances, and anomalies that defied common sense (I once heard of a village where time stood still at dusk). However, there were extraordinary people among the common folk who established an organization specifically to deal with these events. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, this organization was incorporated by the government.

The vast majority of people are unaware of our existence. All of our facilities are located in the suburbs, and we do not blatantly tell the public that a site is the Supernatural Control Bureau.

Our agency generally consists of several departments: Investigation, Cleanup, Medical, Archives, Containment, and Dispatch. Dispatch, as the name suggests, is responsible for receiving reports. Investigation is my department; we are responsible for the preliminary investigation of cases to determine if they are supernatural in nature. If they are, we contact the Cleanup Department. The Cleanup team consists entirely of warriors who dress like SWAT officers. They even have specialized shotguns designed to fire fulu (talisman papers). The Medical Department is essentially a small hospital where we are treated if we are injured. Archives is like a library, recording known supernatural phenomena or entities. Containment is quite interesting; it houses civilians affected by supernatural events. We aren’t afraid of them talking about the agency, because if they do, they’ll be detained—and they know that even if they spoke, no one would believe them.

Next, I’ll tell you about a mission I carried out shortly after joining.

It was 2019, and I was only 22 then. Don’t ask me why I didn’t go to university; I never liked school anyway. It was an afternoon in late August, around the 23rd. It was cloudy but not completely overcast, and the wind was a bit strong. I remember it clearly: I was sitting on my dorm bed, maintaining my pistol. We investigators use the Chinese Type 92 pistol with specialized bullets that have a strange odor—it smells like a bowl of spoiled chicken blood left in a public restroom. Right then, I received a mission to investigate an abandoned residential building. The building was constructed in the ’80s, a standard five-story Khrushchev-style apartment block. No one had lived there for a long time, but it had never been demolished. As for the reason, I heard that whenever they tried to tear it down, either the machinery would fail or the workers would fall ill. So, the higher-ups sent us to investigate.

Counting myself, five people went on the mission—three men and two women. To protect their privacy, I’ll only give you their surnames. Chen, a man in his forties and the most senior, was the team leader. Fang, a man around thirty. Qian, a 25-year-old woman. Liu, a 28-year-old woman. Yes, they were all older than me.

The building faced the street, where there were pedestrians and cars, but as soon as we entered, we could hardly hear the noise from outside. Naturally, the temperature inside was lower, though it wasn’t exactly “eerie”—mostly just because of the lack of sunlight and the long-term vacancy. Each floor had about three rooms, and every room had a different layout. We patrolled three floors in a row, and everything looked perfectly normal. I was starting to relax. However, the mission truly began the moment we reached Room 402.

The door to Room 402 was unlocked. Entering led first to a small, rectangular living room. The lower half of the walls were painted green, and some of the cabinets were pale green, which felt unsettling to look at. Moreover, there was a strange smell—a mix of mold and rot—the moment we stepped inside. To the right of the living room, against the wall, was a dark brown wooden low cabinet, likely for a TV. In front of the cabinet, in the middle of the room, sat a worn-out leather sofa. There was about a meter of space for passage between the sofa and the left wall.

In front of us was a half-open sliding door leading to the kitchen. While Chen, Qian, and Liu were still checking the living room, Fang and I opened the sliding door. It was very heavy. I pushed the middle of the frame while Fang crouched to push the bottom before we finally got it open. Inside the kitchen, the stench was even stronger. Instinctively, I opened the cupboard, and there were actually two dead black cats inside! The smell was coming from their carcasses. One black cat’s face was turned toward me, its eyes not fully closed and its tongue sticking out; it looked as if it died in state of great shock or terror. The other cat was deep in the cupboard with its back to me. More strangely, the bodies hadn’t significantly decomposed, so they clearly hadn’t been dead for years.

The smell was so foul that I slammed the cupboard shut immediately. Even now, thinking about it makes me feel nauseous.

At that moment, Chen handed out surgical masks. He frowned and said something. I can’t remember the exact words, but the gist was: “Black cats are supposed to ward off evil, yet here they are dead. Whatever is here won’t be easy to handle.”

There was another door in the kitchen leading to two bedrooms and a bathroom. We all drew our guns, preparing to investigate separately. Liu said, “The place isn’t big; searching separately should be safe.” Fang added, “Yeah, it’s not like a horror movie where someone gets isolated and we die one by one.” For some reason, we all laughed. But Chen glared at Fang, warning him not to use the word “die.” At the time, I thought Chen was being too conservative. But as it turned out, one really shouldn’t talk recklessly, because there weren’t just the five of us in that room.

I was investigating the master bedroom when I found a photo of a woman in the nightstand. She was beautiful, but she looked fierce—my intuition told me she was a bad person. Just as I put the photo down, I heard Qian urgently calling us from the kitchen. When I rushed in, I saw Liu levitating in the air, her legs kicking wildly and her face turning purple. Her hands kept clawing at her throat as if an invisible rope were hanging her. I was terrified and instinctively grabbed her legs, trying to help her break free from the invisible noose. But Chen immediately fired a shot above Liu’s head, and she suddenly dropped, as if Chen had severed the invisible rope.

You think it ended there? Not yet.

Qian and I immediately caught Liu to keep her from getting hurt, and then we helped her sit on the floor to rest. Fang kept his eyes on the surroundings. None of us noticed that Chen was just standing there—not helping, not speaking. Suddenly, Chen strode over to Fang, shoving me aside as he passed. He slapped Fang hard across the face and roared, “I told you not to talk nonsense!”

That slap stunned not just Fang, but all of us. Chen had never lost his temper like that, and he never hit people. Fang immediately slapped him back, “You f***ing dare hit me?!”

The two of them started fighting. I rushed to pull them apart, pleading with them to stop. Both of them possessed extraordinary strength and nearly pushed me away. Once I finally separated them, Chen suddenly pointed his gun at my head. “Stay out of this, Bai.”

In that moment, I felt like my head was going to explode. I had seen scenes like this countless times in movies and even imagined how I would fight back. But in that instant, my joints felt frozen, and all the blood rushed to my head, causing a throbbing pain. I raised my hands in a gesture of surrender; other than that, my mind was a total blank.

“Put the gun down!” Fang’s gun was now aimed at Chen’s head. “What kind of man bullies a rookie? Fire at me!”

Chen pointed his gun back at Fang. “You think I won’t?”

I was still standing there like an idiot, almost forgetting to breathe. Unbeknownst to me, Qian had stepped behind me and raised her gun too. “Put the gun down!”

Chen sneered, “Hear that, Fang? She’s telling you to put the gun down.”

“I’m telling you to put the gun down!” Qian pressed her gun against Chen’s temple.

Chen swallowed hard. “What are you doing?”

By then, I had recovered enough to think. Before me, the atmosphere between Chen and Fang had reached a breaking point; shots could fire at any second. And Qian was clearly escalating the conflict. Should I… should I kill Qian? She was right next to me; if I fired, she would die.

Wait, kill her? I liked her. No, I’ll kill Chen.

So, I slowly raised my gun. Suddenly, lightning flashed and thunder crashed outside, and it began to pour. The thunder startled me, and it was as if I suddenly woke up; the throbbing in my head vanished. I lowered my gun, and another thought popped into my mind—how could I have wanted to kill them?

The others also put their guns away, and the hatred vanished in an instant. Qian walked over to Liu, knelt down, and asked with concern, “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay, but are you guys okay?” Liu asked. “Why did you stop fighting?”

As Liu spoke, her appearance began to change. The corners of her eyes slanted upward, and wrinkles appeared between her brows, making her look fierce. It was the woman from the photo in the master bedroom—she was inside Liu’s body.

“She’s not Liu!” I raised my gun and aimed at her. “That thing is inside her!”

Liu laughed maniacally, “Hahaha! Go ahead, shoot! Kill your friend! Who told you to break into my home!”

Chen pulled out two pairs of chopsticks. That’s right—he actually pulled out chopsticks. He used them to tightly clamp two of Liu’s middle fingers. Liu let out a blood-curdling scream, her head slumped, and she lost consciousness. Then, I clearly saw a black shadow emerge from her body, flying into the master bedroom with a scream. The door slammed shut with a “bang.”

“Get her out of here! Bai! Contact Cleanup!” Chen said, as he and Qian slung Liu’s arms over their shoulders. Just as we were about to flee, the bedroom door flew open again, and the woman from the photo charged out.

I swear, that was the first time I had ever seen a ghost from such a close distance. Her appearance was so horrifying that I don’t want to describe it. In short, she gave me nightmares for a long time.

Just as she was about to grab me, another black shadow appeared and tackled her to the ground. At that moment, a miserable female voice echoed throughout the room: “Go! Quickly!”

We ran down the stairs and ran straight into the arriving Cleanup team. What followed was much simpler; the ghost was eliminated. Later, I learned the truth of what happened—two women had originally lived in that room. The fierce-looking one was the owner, and the other woman was a tenant—who became that second black shadow. The owner was cruel and often bullied the tenant. One day, there was a gas leak, and both died of carbon monoxide poisoning. But the owner continued to haunt the place after death, bullying the tenant even more severely. Just as we were about to escape, the tenant stopped the owner, allowing us to get away. She didn’t even last until the Cleanup team arrived; she was killed by the owner and vanished completely.