[merylsilverburg]

Oh yes, what an original title, hehe. Well, as you can guess from it, this thread is all about ghost stories...perfect for Halloween. So, if any of you have any ghost stories or supernatural stories you'd like to share, please do so, it'll be great to read some new ones.

I'll start off. The stories I'm about to tell are not my own...I heard them from this Taiwanese ghost show on TV (available on those Asian TV package things) and had my mother and sister translate some of the more difficult ones I couldn't understand. These stories are from Taiwan and I'm going to assume they are real because the show actually allows celebrities, singers, news broadcasters, and more from Taiwan to come and share their stories. Yes, it's possible they sound and may be pretty hokey, but I don't doubt the supernatural in Asian countries for the fact that many of them occur nearly every day and are pretty recent still.

Anyway, this one I'm going to tell really, really scared the bejeesus out of me...I think it's because it reminds me so much like Ringu/"The Ring" and I can't get it out of my head.

This story happened about four or five years ago. A woman freelance insurance agent sold some insurance to this guy for himself and his wife. She had all his data and his wife's data on file on her laptop computer and she uses that computer for all her business needs. A few months after that, the guy calls her up and says he's getting a divorce from his wife and he would like to remove her name from his insurance policy. Being a freelance agent, she is able to go to people's homes. So, she goes to his home where he rapes her, kills her, eats half of her then grinds up the rest of her body really finely and mixes it with some wall paint and uses the paint on his walls, getting rid of the evidence. The woman had brought her laptop computer with her so the maniac decides to give it to a friend of his who is into electronics. Then he puts the house up for rent (it could be an apartment, I forget) and moves away.

Now, another guy (we'll call him X) comes along wanting to buy a laptop computer. The guy who had just gotten the killed woman's laptop tells X he's just got a used computer which is in great condition and he cleaned out the memory and everything. So, X says he'll buy it and takes it home.

A few days later, while X was using it, out of nowwhere, the murdered insurance woman's picture pops up on the screen. The picture is her photo on her insurance card; it appeared on one side and just kinda floated across the screen and disappeared on the other side then the computer shuts down. X is wondering what's going on because he thought all the memory on the hard drive had been cleaned out. He thought nothing of it but over the course of days, the photo kept appearing randomly. He decidest to take it to an electronic store and hage and finally just remained on the screen permanently. He decides to take the computer to an electronic store and have them check it out. They inspect it then returns it to X saying all the memory had been cleaned out, there's nothing wrong the with computer. X then decides to take the computer to the police to see if they can find out who this woman is. The police inspect the computer, runs a few searches, and finds out that the insurance woman had been missing for a few weeks and no one's seen her. Then, unexpectantly, one of the guys retrieves files of the woman's insurance clients...which is scary since the computer had been completely cleaned out. The police had to go through the entire list and find out who she recently met with...and they saw the maniac's name and went to interrogate him and inspect the house/apt. They saw no evidence linking the maniac to the murder, so they let him go but still try to solve the case.

Now, the house/apt has been put up for rent, so the landlord rents it out to people. Because the house is, well, the murder site and is cursed now (obviously), all of the people who moved in have either: killed themselves, killed each other, committed suicide, committed murder and more, along with many car accidents and deaths occurring on the street where the house is located. One story: A married couple moves into the house and everything was fine between them. Suddenly, the guy decides to have an affair with this young woman and they went out for a while. Finally, the guy says he wants to end the affair and wants to return to his wife. The young woman gets pissed and goes to his house one day where she murders him when he gets home. She has gone crazy, basically. She waits for the wife, the wife gets home, the young girl tells her about their affair and then the two woman basically start killing each other with knives or anything and both die. (The newscasters and reporters who were telling this story on the show basically said the entire interior was covered with blood; hack n' slash). So, basically, anyone moving in will die or get killed.

Finally, because the walls were painted with the insurance woman's body, the walls begin to change color and begin to rot and smell. The landlord calls up the police to re-inspect the place and finally, they figured out about the wall paint and went to arrest the maniac (whom, apparently, is a "normal" guy who goes to work, talks with people, has friends, etc.).

Now, X who still has the computer decides to sell the laptop (now the case is solved) because he doesn't want the computer anymore (who would?). He sells the computer to another friend, telling him to clean out the hard-drive and memory. A few days later, he gets into a car accident and dies. A few weeks later, the new owner of the laptop dies and so on...

...Basically, the laptop is now a cursed object because after the case was solved, in Asian belief (and just common sense too!!), you're supposed to "cleanse" the object so the killed person's soul would be at rest. But because X didn't clean the object, it's now cursed with the woman's rage and anyone who owns the computer dies. Apparently...after this incident, the computer was put up for auction in China and so...it's now just floating around somewhere in the world in someone's hands. And I don't think it was cleansed either...

So, that's that. This story made headline news in Taiwan, so I'm thinking it's not made-up. I'll share some more later.