An Encounter with a Hobgoblin

The first-person narrator in this telling is Im Bang, recounting a fellow prisoner’s story.

In the year Pyong-sin I got into trouble and was locked up in prison. A military man named Choi Won-so, a captain of the guard, had been caught up in the same affair and was locked up too. We often met in the prison and passed the hours talking. One day the talk turned to goblins.

“When I was young,” said Captain Choi, “I met a hobgoblin, and it came within a hair of costing me my life. A strange business indeed!”

I asked him to tell me about it, and this is what he said.

“At first I had no home in Seoul, but I heard of an empty house in Belt Town, applied for it and got it. We moved in. My father and the rest of the family lived in the inner rooms, and I had the front room.

“One night, very late, when I was half asleep, the door suddenly opened and a woman came in and stood right in front of the lamp. I saw her clearly. I knew she was from the household of a scholar friend of mine. I had seen her before and had been much taken with her beauty, but I had never had a chance to meet her. So when I saw her walk into my room like that, I greeted her gladly. She did not answer.

“I got up to take her hand, and she began to walk backward, so that my hand never reached her. I hurried after her, but she only stepped backward faster and kept out of reach. When we came to the gate, she kicked it open behind her, and I followed her through, until all at once she vanished. I looked everywhere, but there was no sign of her. I thought she had simply hidden. I never imagined anything else.

“The next night she came back and stood in front of the lamp just as before. I got up and tried to catch hold of her, and she began her strange backward walk, out through the gate, and disappeared as she had the night before. I was surprised and disappointed, but it still never crossed my mind that she was a hobgoblin.

“A few nights later I had gone to bed when I heard paper crackling above the ceiling, a grim, creepy sound in the middle of the night. A moment later a curtain dropped down and divided the room in two. Then a great heap of burning coals came down right in front of me, and the room filled with fierce heat. Everything around me seemed to be on fire, and there was no way out. I was terrified for my life and had no idea what to do. At the first crow of the cock in the morning, the noise stopped, the curtain rose and the coals were gone. The room was as clean as if it had been swept with a broom. There was no trace of what had happened.

“The night after that I was alone and had not yet undressed when the door flew open and a big, burly man came in. He wore a soldier’s felt hat and a blue tunic, like the clerks and runners at a government office. He grabbed me and tried to drag me outside. I was young and strong then and had no intention of giving in, so we wrestled. The moon was bright and the night was clear, but I could not hold my own, and he hauled me out into the courtyard. He lifted me up, whirled me round and round, climbed to the highest terrace and hurled me down, so that I lay there stunned. Then he stood over me and kept me his prisoner.

“There was a garden behind the house with a wall around it, and inside the wall I saw a dozen or so people, all dressed in military hats and coats. They kept shouting, ‘Don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt him!’

“‘None of your business, none of your business!’ the man who was handling me answered. But they kept on: ‘Don’t hurt him! He’s a gentleman of the military class. Don’t hurt him!’

“‘Even so, it’s none of your business,’ the fellow said. Then he took me by both hands and flung me up into the air, more than halfway to heaven. As I came down I went shooting past Kyong-keui Province, past Choong-chong Province, and at last fell to the ground in Chulla. As I flew through the sky I could see all the county towns of the three provinces as clear as day.

“In Chulla he tossed me up a second time, and up I shot into the sky and fell northward, until I found myself lying dazed below the veranda terrace at home. I could hear the people in the garden shouting, ‘Don’t hurt him!’ and the man answering, ‘None of your business!’ Then he picked me up and threw me off toward Chulla and back, two or three times in all.

“At last one of the people in the garden came forward, took my tormentor by the hand and led him away. They all gathered for a little while, talking and laughing over the whole affair, and then they scattered and vanished, and nobody saw them after that.

“I lay without moving at the foot of the terrace until morning, when my father found me. He had me carried in and cared for until I came to my senses, and then we all moved out of that haunted house for good.”

A note of my own: there are different reasons why a place may be called haunted. If hobgoblins live in it, it is haunted. But if a good and noble person moves in, the goblins leave, and nobody speaks of it being haunted any more. Choi saw the goblin and was badly hurt.

As I understand it, people are not the only ones who are afraid. The goblins are afraid of people, too, and the saddest thing of all is how few people there are that the goblins fear. Choi was afraid of the goblins, and that is why they tormented him.

About this story

“An Encounter with a Hobgoblin” is chapter XXVIII of James Scarth Gale’s Korean Folk Tales: Imps, Ghosts and Fairies (1913). Im Bang tells it in his own voice, as a story he heard in prison from a fellow prisoner, a captain of the guard. Gale’s biographical note says Im Bang, late in life, was caught up in a quarrel over the choice of the Heir Apparent and was exiled to North Korea, where he died.

Im Bang closes with his own short note on why some houses are haunted: goblins fear a truly good person, and they torment those who fear them.

Read the original: Korean Folk Tales (Project Gutenberg)

Suggested for ages 9–12 with an adult: includes threatening apparitions, violent assault and the soldier being repeatedly thrown through the air.

An event and its explanation are different things

Choi describes injury and fear; Im Bang then explains the haunting through moral character. The account itself does not demonstrate that frightened people deserve harm or that courage makes them invulnerable. The voices asking the attacker to stop and the father’s practical care offer another focus: help comes from intervention and leaving the dangerous house.

Sort the statements

Choose one thing Choi says he experienced, one thing his father does and one conclusion Im Bang adds. Label each as report, action or interpretation. Which part would change if the narrator held a different belief about goblins?

Think about it

• What strange things happened before the big man appeared?
• Who do you think the people in the garden were?
• Do you agree with Im Bang’s idea about why goblins trouble some people?

More stories like this

• Haunted Houses — more of Im Bang’s haunted-house tales
• The Awful Little Goblin — another Korean goblin who will not leave people alone
• A Story of the Fox — a mysterious woman who is not what she seems