That night, I sent Hu Zongren home, and before the car, he told me about it. Don’t let Sister Cai know that she and Fu Yunni are best friends, and I won’t be able to say it that day. I promised him and told him that I must exercise restraint according to Stuart’s law.
In the next few days, I often sent messages to Hu Zongren to find out the situation. Hu Zongren said that Situ Fa was very effective, but he seemed to have suppressed it. After a few days, he called me again and said that the new case was still not found in Jing Zhao. I told me that she was fishy. I asked Hu Zongren what the case was. Hu Zongren said that the place was not far from me, so you didn’t pick me up. I took a car and just crossed the bridge to get there. Of course, I knew where he said it was for the protection of the employer’s privacy. I wouldn’t say which one.
Didn’t I tell you what we were going to do and deal with when I asked Hu Zongren? Hu Zongren, as always, laughed and said that we can talk to people face to face about specific things. I know we can watch movies this time!
Chapter one hundred and forty-four [Case 19] Midnight Shadow
Shadow? Aren’t you working a case? What movie are you watching? Besides, I’m watching movies. Why should I go with you? I told Hu Zongren this in my words, but Hu Zongren smiled and said that this case was caused by a person in charge of a cinema who called and said that they had no door to welcome guests for a month in a row. It was declared that the movie theater was decorated, but nothing in it was said to be haunted. Please let’s investigate and I asked Hu Zongren if the price had been negotiated. Hu Zongren said, of course, these people have enough money for us to spend a while. I said, OK, you can make an appointment.
According to the agreement, Hu Zongren and I bumped into each other on the pedestrian street. Because I had been undercover in this area before, I came here casually for the delicious food nearby. So Hu Zongren and I didn’t contact our employer in time, but before that, we secretly went to the shopping mall over there to get a bowl of pickled cabbage and shredded pork rice noodles. This store has no name, but business is booming. Except for those who join in the fun, most of them come here to eat repeat customers. The boss is a 40-year-old elder sister. It is said that their sauerkraut is bought fresh vegetables by themselves. Pickled shredded pork is also a pressure cooker, which melts the meat flavor when it is pressed into the mouth. It is cooked with big bone soup and seasoning rice noodles for about 7 minutes. It is hard to pour oil and sprinkle chopped green onion, which can earn me a mouthful of water just before it is served.
This place is a commercial pedestrian street. Most shopping malls sell some cheaper clothes, and the store rent is slightly cheaper than the storefront. This place has a lot of lively scenes of Chaotianmen in the 1990 s. Except that the escalator has never been used as a staircase, if it is haunted, it is more like a haunted place, but it should not be because there is a big pond on the bottom floor. There are several green turtles in the pond, which are very old. Perhaps this shopping mall was chosen to raise turtles here for certain feng shui considerations when it was built.
After eating a bowl of rice noodles, we went to Pingjie floor to smoke and digest and throw away cigarette butts. Hu Zongren called the employer this time. After we told them the location, we waited for more than ten minutes. A middle-aged man in a black leisure suit came up to us and shook hands with us with a smile and said, This is the time for you two to invite the master. This way, please.
Before the man went, Hu Zongren and I followed Hu Zongren, yelling at me that this guy is so stingy to pick up people and didn’t even send a car. I said, are you sick? This is a pedestrian street. I’m afraid your car is a little too loud. The man turned to us and said, "No car, no car." It’s only a few minutes’ walk from our office, so I can smile awkwardly and despise Hu Zongren’s stupid logic a little.
Soon we arrived at his office, which is also located in a building on the pedestrian street, but this building is relatively old. The ground floor is a shopping mall, which is probably why it has not been demolished and newly repaired. After sitting down, this man moved the ashtray from his desk to the small coffee table in front of us, and then handed cigarettes to Hu Zongren and me. I saw that the cigarettes were not cheap, so I was more convinced that this unit was rich at the moment.
After lighting the cigarette, the man introduced himself, saying that his surname was Li and my surname was probably in the hope that I could have a good impression on him. He said that he was the sales manager of this cinema. When Hu Zongren asked Mr. Li what was a sales manager, he said that he would just buy a screening and talk about some foreign language films. To put it bluntly, it is necessary for him to decide the scope of the cinema from file to file.
Mr. Li said that in the early days, their cinemas were actually staff cinemas, but the scale of which was not large. However, in recent ten years, the development of this area has been very rapid, and soon several commercial pedestrian streets with the highest popularity in Chongqing have been formed here. Due to business opportunities, many large businesses and famous brands have settled here, of course, including some well-known large cinemas. Mr. Li told us that it is because of this crowded cinema business that the cinema business is getting worse day by day. Usually, some students and retired aunts from nearby schools come to see movies. Even if our ticket price is twice as cheap as others, the passenger flow is still small, Mr. Li stressed, but even so, we have not finished it for many years because of these people’s traffic. If we had changed elsewhere, we would have closed the door.
I asked Mr. Li, which factory did you say was the staff cinema? Mr. Li said that it was in the era of a certain factory that this staff cinema was the best equipped and the most luxurious of all the staff cinemas in Chongqing. However, due to the market-oriented operation of this enterprise and its becoming a joint-stock company, all the supporting facilities in many factories were transferred out of the market and shares. That’s why we took over this cinema. Mr. Li said that they originally belonged to a large film group in the southern part of China. In addition to filming film and television dramas, many of them belonged to projection institutions. Just like them, some of them were taken over from other places, but they were incorporated into that film group to weave and operate in a unified way, and then divided into
Hu Zongren told Mr. Li that you said so much, which means you are the contractors of this film group, right? Mr. Li smiled and said that it can be roughly understood that most of the distributor’s profits should be paid by himself. Hu Zongren said that the flow of people in your area is so large that the sun is full. And as far as we know, even the real estate developers who built this pedestrian street were famous in China and paid attention to Feng Shui. This cinema is not the mainstream consumer. How can it be haunted?
Mr. Li said that we just don’t invite you two to figure this out. Do you think that our management pays quarterly? It’s been more than a month since the quarter is over, and we have no turnover. Besides, we can’t directly say that we are not good partners. In the end, they think that we have cancelled this floor, and our losses will be great. Hu Zongren didn’t speak, which is probably why Mr. Li said that he was sincere enough and smoked well. So Hu Zongren said to him, Well, let’s tell us about the specific situation you encountered first.
Mr. Li said that about a month ago, their theater introduced a special package, in addition to popcorn and coke, they could also watch three movies in a row, but the connection was not fixed until midnight, so they called it "midnight show" to attract those couples who were in love so that they could feel the benefits of our theater.
When I was a child, the midnight show was the same as showing porn. Mr. Li also said that their midnight show also increased the choice of customers according to the different screening halls. This activity attracted more movie-goers than usual, and usually the number of people in the whole day was not as large as that in the late midnight show. So the company’s promotion strategy for this matter was very successful
Mr. Li said, but when everyone was happy about it, we encountered complaints the next day. Some guests were very excited and said whether we were trying to make money. Everyone was put in to watch the movie. There was no quality at all. At that time, there was a conflict with a manager on duty. Later, when we learned the situation, we learned that the complaints of this group of guests were because some people were rude to laugh or cry and talk when they saw the movie. Some people even ran to the screen from one end to the other. At that time, a cinema audience was very angry, so they scolded a few words about who was so incompetent, but the sound lasted for a long time, and there were often people walking around in front of the screen, which made many moviegoers very angry, so they went to the screening hall to complain before the post-conflict.
Hu Zongren asked Mr. Li, "Didn’t your theater put a movie before the movie?"? For example, turn the mobile phone into vibration, don’t make a lot of noise, don’t smoke and block others. Mr. Li said that this is a strict requirement of the national cinema. How can things not be put away? But there is nothing we can do about it. Hu Zongren asked Mr. Li how this incident ended in the end. Mr. Li shook his head and asked the cinematographer how it could end. No one admitted that it was his own cinema and there was no monitoring camera. We couldn’t find out who it was.
I suddenly interrupted Mr. Li. I said, is your projector a rear projection type or the original player type? Mr. Li said it was a screening, but the machinery and equipment were relatively new, so I asked him again. Did you say that there were people running around in front of the screen at that time and those people saw a figure or a specific person? Mr. Li said that he didn’t have a firm answer at that time, but several things happened after that, which made their employees suspect that the things that caused the conflict that day were not people at all
Or the root has never passed.
Chapter one hundred and forty-five [Case 19] Projection Hall
I remember that when I was in middle school, it happened to be a general color video camera, and then came some video recorder equipment, such as the early video tape, in which I saw the first naked woman in my life, and then VD appeared. At that time, if anyone had such a machine, it would definitely be a local tyrant, because the price was very high at that time, I came to high school and became popular with DVD, and many small shops renting and selling CDs appeared in many small facades near my home. I prefer light. People in these small shops rent a disc for one yuan a day. At that time, the network was not as developed as it is now. When you know that a certain film is on, but you don’t want to go to the cinema, it is a good way to rent a disc and go home.
However, at that time, I often believed in the propaganda paintings on the cover of the disc, which led me to rent it home. It turned out to be a stolen disc. The so-called theft was not a reproduction of this quality, but someone actually took a camera or something and secretly filmed it in the cinema. I remember clearly that the first stolen disc I saw was the whole film "Hero" filmed by director Zhang Yimou that year. I accompanied the strong echo in the cinema. When the reverberation was oblique, there was a ghost picture, and from time to time people saw a wonderful place laughing and suddenly someone got up and walked past the screen.
So when Mr. Li talked about their cinema, I thought I could imagine the scene at that time, and all I wanted to ask him was whether the cinematographers saw a person walking by or just a shadow.
But Mr. Li said that they even complained that the man didn’t, so I asked him what happened afterwards. Mr. Li told me that after receiving the complaint, because no one could be found, no one took the initiative to admit that the cinema side could apologize to those who watched the movie. It was a big deal that the ticket money was refunded if they were stingy. They also specially gathered employees to talk about how to avoid this situation as much as possible, so someone went out to each screening hall to equip a professional to maintain the order at the scene and correct some improper behaviors, even if they could not correct us. It’s rare to know who did this discussion, and it was unanimously passed by everyone. After a few days of trial, the effect was not bad, but just when they thought it should be maintained, it was the same night at midnight, and there was another problem in the screening hall.
Mr. Li told us that there was a young worker who was a girl in this hall, and he always stayed away from the aisle after the screening. Maybe she had seen these films several times, but she was not tired anyway, so she played with her mobile phone there. Mr. Li said that at the end of the second film, there was a hiss in the audience. Some people said, "Let’s wander around." Did anyone say that the projectionist dozed off? There is always someone who heads up, and everyone is booing, so our worker wants to see what happened. At this time, he found that the big screen picture has been tilted about 3 degrees, and there is one side root that does not cover the screen.
I smiled and told Mr. Li that I thought it was normal for the audience to complain. If it were me, what might be difficult to listen to? I said it at this time. Mr. Li nodded symbolically and echoed me, but the problem was that there was no projectionist at the midnight show!
Hu Zongren asked Mr. Li that there was no projectionist, so how did your film get broadcast? Mr. Li said that it was so, because the midnight movie was a theater, and it was also a promotion strategy to set a preferential benefit for those night cats. But anyway, it was late after all, and you said that it was enough to let people work overtime and keep the projectionist. I’m afraid it was not so hard. Mr. Li told us that the projector didn’t need to be complicated this time, and the operating procedures were all set and it was early. It’s already past the film age. Double-click on the brain screen to play it. Who wouldn’t? Their cinema projectionist just needs to make the best adjustment to the distance when the projector passes through the window.
Mr. Li explained to us that there are some different film formats, such as Indian films and the United States, but China, South Korea and Russia are different, but the screen size is fixed. At this time, some distance adjustment is needed, and the screening room is full of projectionist after adjustment that night, and we need our workers to play it when the film arrives. There was no one in the screening room that night.
When I went to the cinema with people before, I always liked to choose the last row, because the last row was often in a higher position and there were fewer people. I especially liked the middle position of the last row, because that place could just see the film from the best angle, and at the same time, I could see the projector on my head shining through that small window. When I was a child, I was naughty and ignorant. If there were few people in the cinema, I would pretend to reach out to those screens and leave a huge handprint on the screen. Whenever I did this, I always heard a person scold me from that small hole.
So I always thought that there was someone in that small room and there must be someone.
Mr. Li went on to say that the worker was trying to figure out what was going on when he saw the screen was crooked. Suddenly, a huge man’s head flashed by and almost occupied the whole screen. Hu Zongren asked him if the audience in the last few rows were suddenly angry. Mr. Li shook his head and said that it was definitely not because everyone saw that the head was upside down.
I gasped, and I was a little overwhelmed by this sudden shock, covering up my panic. I quickly told Mr. Li that so many people in the cinema must have seen this strange phenomenon, and you were complained again, right? It’s strange for Mr. Li to say that many people must have seen the shadow of the man’s head at that time, but it seems that few people noticed that the man’s head was upside down. Maybe they also noticed that they were dazzled. Mr. Li went on to say that even our worker at that time didn’t think about it carefully, but immediately ran to the projection room to check whether a machine was crooked or not, and ran to the back to see if it was really crooked.
Mr. Li said that our projector was fixed on a tripod and the nut was screwed. Unless it was a violent collision, it might be crooked. When our worker saw that it was crooked, there were still mice, and she was in a hurry to fix the machine again. Suddenly, she heard the audience in the movie theater make a big noise. Someone scolded, "Oh! The whole screen is now black! " "Black is still a lamp!" So our worker wanted to see what was going on outside through the mouth, but when she looked out through the small mouth, she found it was dark and could not see anything.
Hu Zongren said that the cinema used to be dark. What’s so strange about that? Mr. Li said that even if the emergency exit sign on the black wall still emits a faint light, but our worker didn’t see anything, so she tried to get a closer look. After finishing this sentence, Mr. Li probably leaned slightly closer to Hu Zongren and me. Then he said that as a result, she found that it was not dark, but was blocked by something black, which was a woman’s long hair.
I thought about the picture at that time. If it were me, I would probably be scared to death before I said it to Mr. Li, and those hairs were just a person with loose hair on his back. When our worker just reacted and screamed, the body suddenly turned around and dropped a few inches, so the whole small square hole was a woman’s face.
I heard Mr. Li say these words after the worker said that I didn’t see her personally, so he told us that the face in his hand looked white, a little morbid, his cheeks were thin, his mouth was slightly sunken, but his mouth was half open, but his mouth was a little distressed, his eyes were also very dark, and his bangs could not see his hair. The situation looked very scary at that time, because the woman’s mouth was half open and her lips were still slightly moving, and she didn’t know what to say.
Mr. Li said that as soon as the worker was scared, he fell to the ground, covered his eyes with his hands and screamed in an attempt to attract other colleagues, but there were few people late, and no one heard the audio and video in the screening hall. It didn’t take long for her to feel that she had covered her eyes and her fingers were touched by a cold thing, and then that thing broke her fingers.
Mr. Li said that the worker looked like that cold thing at that time felt like chicken skin that had been dead and left outside for a long time.
Chapter one hundred and forty-six [Case 19] Expert Dojo
I told Mr. Li that it wasn’t chicken skin, it was just the touch of the dead, because after death and at the front seam, people died instantly, and at the same time, some physical functions were not lost. At that time, when the ghost reappeared after a long time, one of the means was to make itself feel tactile, and this touch was that you said that the cold feeling was similar to chicken skin because of death and the ghost body was formed by gathering yin, but the chicken skin was just a little different from human skin.
Mr. Li asked me, when you said it was a long time after death, did that mean you had been dead for many years? I said it’s based on my experience. If there is such a specific touch and it feels like your shape, it’s been dead for a long time, I added, but it was really haunted. At present, it seems close.
I actually put it mildly enough. I didn’t directly tell Mr. Li that the cold thing was just a ghost finger. I once encountered a similar case. A girl who rented a house was stretched out her hand under the bed of a little girl’s ghost, and she asked to let the girl see what she said. According to Mr. Li, since the ghost appeared in a place that should not have appeared, it was very visible. It must have a certain purpose, and that purpose was not necessarily to let the other party see it, and then she was shocked.
Mr. Li nodded, but I noticed that he had frowned. Obviously, what I said almost confirmed the haunted thing, and it was a ghost who had been dead for many years. After drinking saliva, Mr. Li continued to tell us that the worker saw a huge eye through his fingers, and the eye level was higher than his own, so the ghost looked at her hard, and the distance was probably close to her hand, so she didn’t know where she got the strength to throw herself and kick. After punching for a while, I found that I didn’t hit anything, so I got up the courage to open my eyes and found that there was nothing around me except the stool and garbage basket that I had just pushed over.
The worker didn’t dare to stay any longer, so he started to lose the whole auditorium while chanting Amitabha in his heart. Mr. Li said that he didn’t know about it until the next day, because after work, he found that the auditorium door was wide open and the machine speakers were all in a mess in the screening room. Waste paper and garbage were scattered all over the floor, but nothing was lost. Mr. Li made a mysterious gesture and told us what the strangest thing was. Do you know that the tripod of the fixed projector was neatly placed?
I’m a little puzzled and asked, didn’t you say that the worker didn’t go to check because he was crooked the night before? Why did you put it right now? Mr. Li said that he didn’t know what had happened at that time, so he asked other workers who was in charge of this hall last night. The worker said who was who, but he didn’t come to work because the night shift usually didn’t come to work during the day, but Mr. Li thought that the worker was irresponsible to the work, so he called the girl and heard the whole story in tears, that is, we just heard it.
Mr. Li said that at that time, he was also surprised that because of this incident, the workers left the remaining film first. Who continued to play it? If it’s true that the projector was tilted when she left, as this girl said, and the audience in the screening hall scolded her one by one, then why didn’t the company receive a complaint after she fled? I hung up myself and asked several other hall workers who were on duty together that night. They all said that Gen didn’t know it was because she didn’t see the girl during class. Hu Zongren said, well, I know that the ghost thought it was bad for the guests and helped you to be a projectionist for one night and put out the film.
Although Hu Zongren’s words sound a little indecent, I really can’t think of other possibilities. I asked Mr. Li, didn’t you feel anything wrong that day? Mr. Li said, of course, that something was wrong. Most of their business people believed this to some extent, so they didn’t tell other workers that they were afraid of causing panic. They reported it to their leaders privately. A leader also believed these people, so he said, then you should spend some money to let this person know. Hu Zongren answered and said, so you found us, right?
Mr. Li shook his head and said that it was not true, but that he had asked someone to inquire about the secret of a dojo master at that time, and invited him to check inside and outside the screening hall. The master said that there was resentment here, and that it was a woman and a young woman, and the ghosts were still lingering. Mr. Li said that before the master said these words, he was simply asking someone to look at it and did not tell the truth, which could also test whether the master was cheating or really alive. Who knows that the master told the truth firmly? As soon as he saw the lifeline, he asked the master what to do. The two entrances to the cinema and the top of an aisle were covered with spells, and the door leading to the projection room was sealed. Previously, the projector had a small mouth with silver paper painted with runes, and the projector was dismantled. A divinatory mirror was fixed on the tripod, and the mirror mouth was directly facing the cinema screen. A long lamp was installed in front of the divinatory mirror. However, the master told me that it was not very bright. It took seven days and seven nights to let people in, Mr. Li added. By the way, before installing the hexagram mirror, the master also wrote some small words askew, most of which were unfamiliar words, but from the glyph, it was the opposite. I took over from Mr. Li and said, of course, I have to write the reverse word, so that the hexagram mirror refracts the light and projects it on the screen to have the positive mantra.
Mr. Li said, how do you know that I didn’t cheat when I invited the master?
I couldn’t help secretly nodding my head and thinking that this treatment is definitely an expert. I was just about to ask Mr. Li when the master’s surname was, but Mr. Li grabbed the lead and said that after handling these things, the master laid a Dojo in front of our screen, dancing swords and burning incense for a long time before taking the money and leaving. Before leaving, he stressed to me again that he might hear something in seven days, but don’t let people in. Remember to remember.
Mr. Li told us that after the master left that day, he locked the screening room himself, and the screening room had to go through the screening room before he could get there. Before he left, he specially checked the door seal. Because there was a missing hall, he needed to find an excuse to talk with other colleagues. So he said that the equipment in that hall was broken and sent to be repaired. After the machine was sent back in a few days, it was taken seriously, but it felt different for Mr. Li. He was always a little nervous when he passed by the screening room door every day, but he told us that he didn’t know whether it was an illusion or not, and he still heard it
Mr. Li said with a smile that because the cinema was connected from other units and the equipment was also based on the projection chair, Calais was not changed for the time being, and it was the kind of person who bounced back when sitting in the chair. Mr. Li also said that once he had the courage to lock his ears and wanted to hear if there was any movement inside, he suddenly felt as if he was sucking something from his ear through a door.
Hu Zongren frowned and asked him what it meant to suck something. Mr. Li patted his thigh and said, Master Hu, have you ever drunk coke? Hu Zongren said of course. Why? Do I look like a person who has never drunk coke? Mr. Li said, then you know that most cinema colas have ice cubes, right? Hu Zongren, of course I know what’s wrong. Do I look like a person who hasn’t drunk coke with ice? Mr. Li said that the sound of sucking things is very similar to the ice cubes left after drinking coke and then absorbing sound inside.
I stopped talking to Hu Zongren, and Mr. Li went on to say that he thought too much about everything else, but the sound was too real and the impression was too clear, so he was very sure that there were people or not people in it at that time
Hu Zongren said to Mr. Li, have you ever thought about what happened when your ear was stuck? And just behind the door, where is your ear? Mr. Li shook his head and said that he didn’t know Hu Zongren. He smiled and said that because the other party wanted you to hear it, he wanted you to know that although you were separated by a door, I also knew what you were doing. I just wanted you to know that I had noticed you.
I frowned. Hu Zongren was a little extreme, but when he turned to look at Mr. Li, he looked frightened and didn’t know what to say at the moment
Chapter one hundred and forty-seven [Case nineteen] Late-night lovers
It was a long time before Mr. Li recovered from Hu Zongren’s deliberate shock. He went on to say that he never dared to be curious about going near that door again. He had planned to wait for the Dojo gentleman to say that it was time to go in and have a look, but all this was ruined by an ignorant colleague.