Chapter 196: The Haunting Incident at Tian Teng Hospital
After the woman said this, Chen Ge clearly saw goosebumps rise on the back of the corpse actor’s neck.
He had only casually filled in a few words, mimicking the handwriting on the white paper, never expecting such a strong reaction from the haunted house actors.
Squinting his eyes, Chen Ge stood between the tape recorder and the haunted house actors, vaguely sensing that something was indeed off about this haunted house—it was highly possible that a haunting had actually occurred.
Xinhai was a major first-tier city. Tian Teng Hospital had gone to great lengths to set up the scene there, but it seemed they hadn’t been open for long before hastily leaving. After a period of regrouping, they reopened, but this time in Jiujiang City, far from Xinhai.
“If the name Xu Zhenzhen really can summon a ghost, why would they stubbornly keep using those three words in the haunted house?” Chen Ge couldn’t understand the thinking of Tian Teng Hospital’s manager. “Does he think that moving to a different place, far away, can escape a vengeful spirit’s entanglement? Or does Xu Zhenzhen hold some special meaning for the haunted house owner?”
The light inside the haunted house was dim. The corpse actor took the paper and examined it closely: “The ink isn’t dry yet.”
He turned to look at Chen Ge, then quickly averted his gaze, muttering to himself: “Only one visitor came today. Even if he brought a pen into the haunted house and wrote this line, how do you explain the sound from the tape recorder? This scene was newly added—no one outside the design team knew there was a tape recorder in here. No matter how strange a visitor is, they couldn’t have brought a cassette tape with them!”
As the male actor pondered, the tape recorder let out another scream.
The pain in that sound was completely different from what a voice actor would record. Standing a few meters away, it made your scalp tingle and your teeth clench, as if a murder were happening right beside you.
“Brother Lin…” The female actor edged toward the door. “How does the sound in that recorder sound so real?”
“I’m not sure either.” The corpse actor glanced back and noticed Chen Ge was still standing next to the tape recorder.
He hesitated but didn’t bother with Chen Ge. Instead, he quickly walked over to the woman and lowered his voice: “Besides this paper, has anything else appeared in the scene you’re in charge of?”
“No.”
“What about the people in the earlier scenes?”
“They should be coming soon.” The woman’s eyes twitched nervously. “Is that thing showing up again? We just opened for the first day—didn’t the boss say everything was resolved?”
“What are you two talking about? What happened here before?” Chen Ge picked up the tape recorder, planning to persuade the haunted house staff to take it outside.
Seeing Chen Ge approach with the recorder, the two actors’ expressions froze.
“Put that thing down!” The female actor’s voice turned shrill. “The sound in that recorder wasn’t recorded by us!”
Chen Ge knew full well it wasn’t recorded by them, but he couldn’t let on. “In your haunted house, if the sound in the recorder wasn’t recorded by you, was it recorded by a ghost?”
The actors fell silent. After a moment, the woman stepped forward, ignoring the male actor’s attempts to stop her, and blurted out: “Back in Xinhai, a visitor was scared to tears. After coming out, they told us one of our actors performed really well, but the truth is, we didn’t have that actor at all! We asked the visitor to describe the actor’s appearance, and it matched Xu Zhenzhen from the newspaper exactly!”
Chen Ge’s expression turned odd. “Was that visitor maybe trying to prank you? Joking around?”
“It wasn’t just one case. Starting one day, more and more visitors saw Xu Zhenzhen.” The male actor pulled out a jade Buddha hanging around his neck. “We all carry something to ward off evil. But strangely enough, none of us haunted house actors have ever seen Xu Zhenzhen.”
“If there really might be a haunting, why would you still fill the haunted house with Xu Zhenzhen’s name after moving to Jiujiang? Aren’t you afraid of bringing that ghost here too?” Chen Ge thought these people were problematic. “You’re not putting on an act now, are you? The note, the recording—all your own doing, just to scare me.”
“Absolutely not.” The two actors looked on the verge of tears. “First, understand this: our haunted house’s first stop was in Xinhai. To attract visitors, we thought of combining real events to boost the scare factor. Xu Zhenzhen’s mysterious suicide was especially famous in Xinhai—just seeing that name could stir up deep-seated memories in local tourists.”
The male actor’s face was pale. “We were forced into it. Over the past two years, fewer and fewer people came to play. We updated the scenes multiple times, tried everything we could think of. As visitors dwindled, we had to find some way to keep the place alive.”
“So you felt justified in turning a real death into a haunted house subplot?” Chen Ge thought these people were even bolder than him—at least he had backup plans.
“As it turned out, combining it with a real case boosted our approval ratings steadily. Many visitors came back for second or third visits with friends, trying to crack the subplot and uncover Xu Zhenzhen’s secret.”
“If it was so popular, why did you come to Jiujiang? Why not stay in Xinhai and keep making money?” The tape recorder in Chen Ge’s hand kept emitting heart-wrenching screams, but he seemed not to hear them.
The two actors stared at Chen Ge, at a loss for words. Every step he took forward, they took a step back.
“Many visitors saw Xu Zhenzhen in the haunted house. That accident made us the highest-rated and most popular haunted house in the scene. But it didn’t last. Our fame drew the ire of Xu Zhenzhen’s family—her sister found us.”
The female actor revealed the hidden past of Tian Teng Hospital. As Chen Ge listened, he casually turned off the recorder.
“We negotiated. Xu Zhenzhen’s sister felt we had defamed her sister and father, demanding high compensation and a redesign of the haunted house interior.”
“Our manager only agreed to remove Xu Zhenzhen’s name. Compensation and a full redesign were out of the question.”
“Xu Zhenzhen’s sister got angry and planned to take legal action. I don’t know the details after that, but soon enough, the haunted house shut down.”
The woman likely wasn’t lying. Large mobile haunted houses faced complicated approvals, and accidents could easily get them shut down—Chen Ge knew this well, since his parents had run a mobile haunted house in their early years, only settling in New Century Paradise after building enough reputation to partner with the park.
“We packed up the props, changed the scene layout, renamed it, and moved to another city. But the results were terrible. We lasted only two weeks with almost no visitors.”
“After discussing it with the manager, we decided the problem still lay with Xu Zhenzhen. So we came to Jiujiang, far from Xinhai, and recreated the peak-era setup.”
The two actors had already backed out the door. Staring at Chen Ge holding the tape recorder, they spilled everything.