(Summer Horror) The Curse of the Black Church

I wasn't going to post this but... okay here's a horror story that's been floating around Korean blogs and it's actually unsettling as hell.

Medieval Europe. A tiny village in Hungary. There's this gothic church everyone calls the Black Church, and it has been giving people the creeps for CENTURIES. Like, during its original construction, workers kept dying in freak accidents for no reason. No explanation. Just. Dead. So naturally the whole village decided yeah, this place is cursed, and they just kind of. Left it at that.

Fast forward a few hundred years and the church is still there, still terrifying everyone, when this young priest named Thomas gets assigned to it. He's devout, idealistic, full of purpose. Hears the rumors and goes "lol superstition" and moves in anyway.

Spoiler: it gets worse.

First weekend there. Middle of the night. Thomas wakes up to whispering. He thinks okay, wind, whatever. But the whispering gets CLEARER. More distinct. Coming from the direction of the main altar. And Thomas, this absolute menace of a man, decides to walk toward it.

The church is basically dark except for a few candles flickering. He gets to the altar and. Oh. There are FIGURES there. Like, robed figures in ancient clothing, a whole group of them, circling the altar and muttering, all pointing at this black book sitting on top of it.

Thomas walks right up to them. "Who are you!! Do you not know this is sacred ground!!" he shouts.

They all turn to look at him at once.

All of them.

At once.

And then they go "YOU MUST NOT STAY HERE. LEAVE."

Thomas steps back but he's gripping his cross and starts reciting prayers out loud. The figures start writhing like they're in pain and then they just vanish. But the second they're gone the black book FLASHES and Thomas gets hit by some invisible force and goes down.

He wakes up the next morning on the floor. Book still on the altar. Church totally silent. Like nothing happened.

Except something in him had shifted. He knew it wasn't a dream.

So he starts digging through old village records and finds out the builder of the church had his family killed in a witch hunt. This guy was so destroyed by it that he made the black book specifically to channel demonic power and curse the place. The book was the source of everything.

Thomas decides he has to destroy it.

He comes back one night with holy water, a Bible, blessed candles, the whole setup. Opens the book. It's full of ominous symbols and spells in some ancient language he can barely read. He starts pouring holy water on it and praying.

Church goes pitch black. Freezing cold wind from nowhere. The figures are BACK and reaching for him this time.

But Thomas doesn't flinch. He just gets louder. The candles blaze up and push the figures back and he keeps going until he hits the last line of the prayer and the black book catches fire and burns to nothing.

Just. Gone.

The church went quiet. The figures didn't come back. And apparently after that the Black Church became a normal, peaceful place where villagers actually wanted to be.

Thomas just stood there in the dark, surrounded by candle smoke, having absolutely ended a centuries-old curse on a Tuesday night.