The Unremarkable Little Taoist Master - Chapter 152 - Haunted House 2

The old man looked a bit grim as he began to speak.

“Our haunted house in town got its reputation because there have been quite a few deaths within it, so we locals refer to it as a haunted house.

I hadn’t thought much about this place until another person died in it during the New Year, which brought the stories about the house back to light. Since you asked, I’ll share a bit about it with you.”

When people think of a haunted house, they often imagine an ancient mansion or a place that has been abandoned for years. However, our town’s haunted house is actually a relatively new building that was constructed just a few years ago. It has only been standing for a few years.

Despite its youth, there have already been seventeen deaths in that house, averaging a new homeowner’s tragic demise each year.

As a result, the villagers usually avoid that house and rarely mention the haunted property.

Originally, the area wasn’t residential but a piece of empty land on the outskirts of town. Then a man named Dou Jianguo arrived from another county, opened a restaurant in town, and purchased the land to build three large tiled houses.

At first, the townspeople were somewhat envious of him, thinking he was making a good living. But it wasn’t long before Dou Jianguo’s life took a tragic turn. One day, just six months after moving into his new home, he discovered his wife was having an affair with the restaurant’s chef. So, he invited the chef to his house for dinner, got him drunk, and then killed him with an axe before taking his own life.

Just a few days after Dou Jianguo and the chef died, his wife sold the restaurant and the house, leaving town with the money.

Even though the house had just been built six months prior, due to the recent tragedy, it didn’t sell for much.

Fortunately, a local cattle farmer was looking to hire a few workers, and seeing the house’s low price, he purchased it at a very cheap rate.

The day after Dou Jianguo’s wife moved out, four workers moved into the house. Although someone had just died there, these young men were not superstitious and were quite comfortable living in the new tiled house.

Unfortunately, their good fortune didn’t last long. Just a month after moving in, a tragedy struck.

One day, one of the workers took a day off and went hiking in the hills behind the house. He collected a good amount of mushrooms and returned home to cook stir-fried mushrooms with pork, sharing it with his companions.

To their shock, the mushrooms turned out to be poisonous, and all four workers ended up being poisoned. Since they were not locals and no one visited their place, they were not discovered until it was too late-they had already been dead for some time.

The next day, when the four workers didn’t show up for work, the owner of the cattle farm assumed they had all been out drinking the night before. When he went to check on them, he found four cold corpses.

In less than two months, six people had died in that house. Many townspeople began to whisper that the place was haunted, but the cattle farm owner didn’t mind; after all, the deaths had reasonable explanations. He went on to hire three new workers and arranged for them to stay in the same house. These three workers knew about the four previous deaths, and although they felt uneasy, they rationalized it: the earlier workers had died from poisoning after consuming wild mushrooms, which didn’t qualify as an accident in their minds.

Since the cattle farm was a distance from the town, the three workers walked to work every day and returned home together after their shifts. They lived there without any incidents, and the gossip about the house being haunted faded away.

When the New Year came, the cattle farm required someone to stay behind to care for the animals, so the three workers from town volunteered to remain, hoping to earn some extra pay.

To reward them, the owner of the cattle farm took the three workers into town after work for a celebratory meal at a restaurant, treating them to a festive New Year’s dinner.

However, on their way back to the town, an accident occurred. In the northern countryside, nobody clears the snow from the roads, and the paths can be very slippery. That day, as they were returning, it was dark and the roads were slick, and since everyone had been drinking, they crashed into a tree less than two miles from the town.

After the car accident, the three workers and the owner of the cattle farm were trapped in the mangled vehicle and unable to move. With their senses dulled from drinking, it wasn’t until the next day that a villager passing by discovered the accident and called for an ambulance. Unfortunately, it was too late. Although they had sustained injuries in the crash, the cause of death was determined to be hypothermia; the four men had essentially frozen to death.

In just six months, ten people associated with that house had died. The town became wary of the house, treating it as a taboo; no one wanted to bring it up.

The cattle farm owner’s family wanted to sell the property, but there were no buyers. They tried to rent it out, but everyone in town knew the story of the ten deaths in six months, and no one dared to live there. In fact, even offering it for free wouldn’t entice anyone to stay, leaving the house vacant.

The house sat empty for two years. During that time, many outsiders came to the town, and as the years passed, the stories of the house’s misfortune faded. It was uncertain whether the owner’s family was short on funds or just observed the influx of newcomers, but they decided to try selling the house again.

This time, luck was on their side; they managed to sell the property fairly quickly and even got a good price for it.

The new buyers consisted of four people: a newlywed couple and the bride’s parents, who all moved into the house together.

Despite being warned by locals who were familiar with the place-not to buy it because it was haunted and had witnessed ten deaths-the family seemed determined. No matter how their friends pleaded with them, they remained resolute in their decision.

After living there for a while, the anticipated accidents didn’t happen, and the family lived peacefully in the house without incident.

A few years later, the couple had a child. While the young couple worked odd jobs in the town, the bride’s parents stayed home to take care of the baby.