The Demon of the Well

[By Soon-I Park as told to JRB in 1997]

In the courtyard behind Song Doh Elementary School, in South Korea where I went to school as a little girl in the late 1950s, was a heavy-duty well of ancient design, with two huge square wooden buckets and a forbidding mechanism that made one of those buckets rise while the other descended. It had to be heavy duty because from it we got all the water for every purpose for a school with a thousand students. One of the heftier Grade 6 boys might show off by turning its wheel on his own, but usually it took two of them. How deep was it? Deep enough, but maybe not more than fifteen or twenty feet. Possibly it tapped into an underground stream. The water from the well was first rate, probably originating high in the mountains and then filtered through miles of sand and fine clay, before going on to the ocean, which was actually only half a mile away. 

            A peculiarity of this well, however, was the moan than would occasionally emanate from it, usually early in the morning or at twilight. It seemed to keep low to the ground, this moan did, and creep through the crawl space beneath the school. It did sound menacing, and my fellow students were sure it came from a demon who lived just out of sight in a niche at the water line. The moan said he was hungry. Please lean over, silly child, and be my dinner.  On days when the moan was heard, my Grade 3 classmates would whisper stories about the demon, excitedly, seriously, even reverently. There was always someone who swore their older brother or sister knew someone else who had honestly and truly been lured to their death that way.

            Even in Grade 3, I scoffed at such nonsense. Unlike all but a few of them, I was Christian, even Presbyterian. My mother's family had been one of the first converted by Canadian missionaries in 1885. We believed in no demons whatsoever, not at the bottom of wells, or anywhere else.

            So one day I said to my friends, "I will prove how silly you are. Meet me at the well after school and lower me down. If there is a demon there, he will have a good meal. If not, I shall laugh at you."

            They were terrified. "Oh no, no, no, Soon-I," they said.

            It was Friday. School ended at 7:00 PM. Normally there'd be school on Saturday too, but this week for some reason Saturday would be a completely free day. The teachers had gathered up their things and dashed home as soon as their last student was dismissed. By 7:15 there was nobody to be seen anywhere in the school grounds—except me and half a dozen other Grade 3 kids, dawdling casually next to the well.

            "We still don't think this is a good idea," they said.

            I stepped into the bucket that was waiting for me. Plenty of room for a small girl to be comfortable. "Lower me down," I commanded.

            They managed that somehow, perhaps because my extra weight in the usually empty bucket meant gravity was on their side. Soon I was at the water line. The bucket itself filled with water now, but that was okay. There was a sturdy wooden bar across the top of the bucket, reinforcing it, and this was dry. I stood on it and held onto the rope.

            "Okay," I called upwards. "No demon here. Pull me up."

            Well, there was a bit of movement to the rope, then a slackening, and a lot of confused voices at the top. No doubt it was not so easy for them to raise a bucket full of water and an eight-year-old girl. Gravity was not their friend anymore. Then—nothing. No movement, no sound. My friends had run away. I knew they were not running for help either. They'd be in for a hiding if they told any adult what they had been up to.

            I considered my situation. If worst came to worst, I would be there until Monday morning when someone came to use the well—say two and a half days. That wouldn't be fun, and I was already getting chilly. That was cold water even if I did not have to sit in it. I could sit on the cross bar and wrap my feet around the rope. I knew you could last several days without food and, of course, there was lots to drink.

            It was boring though. I tried shimming up the rope using one side of the well for my feet. I got a few feet up that way, but I wasn't strong enough and let myself slide back. Then I thought, the courtyard opened onto the park, which was a popular place. There would be adults and older kids coming out for air after their dinners, not so far away. If I screamed, maybe someone would hear me. It was certainly worth a try. So I began to holler. I hollered until I was exhausted, rested up a little, and started hollering some more.

            Now, I don't really know what was happening on the surface, but later I imagined the scene. The school had only the one paid caretaker. We students did all the cleaning; he was responsible for fixing things mainly, but also for checking on things. His job at the end of the day was to see the windows were closed and the fires were out in the stoves of all eighteen classrooms. That took a little time naturally. So the teachers had all gone home, but the caretaker was still there. He had just finished his rounds and was ready to go home himself when he heard this strange sound coming from the great well. "Huh, what's this?" he asked himself, approaching gingerly. Now he was no Christian—I never saw him at church—I don't think he was a Buddhist either. He could have been the sort who believed in random demons.

            However that might have been, with the last light of the day behind it, his head appeared far above me. He called down: "Are you the demon of the well, or are you little Soon-I Park?"

            "I am Soon-I Park," I said. "There is no demon of the well."

            "Hang on then," said the caretaker. "I'll reel you up."

            When I got to the surface, I wanted to say a quick "thanks" and rush off, but the caretaker wasn't going to let me off so easily. He kept me close while he sent a boy off on a bicycle for my mother. Other adults started to gather around, coming over from the park. By the time Mother arrived, there seemed to be a hundred of them all asking me the same question and me repeating the same implausible story about how I had somehow managed to lower myself into the well. I wasn't going to rat on my friends.

            As my mother dragged me home, I kept my eyes on my shoes, as shame dictated was proper, while she said, "How could you?" and "You must never never..." Yet in my heart I was sure Mother would have approved if only she knew all the circumstances. Had not I borne witness for our faith?

            Could the caretaker recognize every student—there were a thousand of us in that school— even in twilight at the bottom of a well? I don't know. He knew me. I was always like that, always a little more audacious than other girls, something of a tomboy. Everyone knew me and my exploits. The old men would say to one another, "If you don't know Soon-I Park, you must be a spy from the North." That was a common joke back then. They never tired of it, the old men didn't. "If you don't know Soon-I Park, you must be a spy from the North."