Most of the magic practiced by the Secret Society requires the blessing of the Goddess Blackarti. Therefore, acquiring the Goddess's blessing has become a threshold for entering the society, which makes sense.
If what the older members say is true—that pleasing the Goddess can be done by evoking people's fear—then Elena's mind is filled with countless ideas. However, given her current state, she can only start with writing.
At this point, she increasingly desires to regain a normal human appearance, even seriously considering whether obtaining that badge might allow her to secretly leave the society and send a letter, just to verify her guess about the Goddess of Beauty.
"Let me first see how they do it," Elena said helplessly, picking up a pen and flipping through some samples generously provided by the members of the society.
These samples cover a wide range of materials, from the cheapest penny dreadful novels to popular Gothic novels. She read through them carefully and divided them into three categories.
The first category was the traditional penny dreadful literature. To entice people to buy in such short pieces, the authors filled them with sensational elements: cruel barons, poisoned noblewomen, ruthless gamblers, evil libertines, foreign princesses, and gravediggers, all filled with conspiracies, kidnappings, poisonings, murders, violence, and bloodshed.
Elena calmly read through this category of works. After experiencing the influence of R-rated films and similar plots from later eras, she felt neither fear nor even amusement at descriptions like "the axe pierced his chest, through his breastplate, sending the proud knight to the ground, gasping, groaning in pain." If it's just simple bloodshed and violence, she thought, even the heavily censored videos on short-video platforms are far more frightening than this.
The second category was Gothic novels, which, to her, were quite similar to the penny dreadfuls, but with a key difference: the distinctive settings. Dungeons, castles, forests, secret passages—some spooky atmosphere, but not much else.
The final category was closer to the horror stories she was familiar with. A few of them included ghosts and monsters, supernatural elements where people would hear footsteps in an empty room, see floating tables, or encounter ghosts dressed in clothes—yes, ghosts in actual clothes, which struck Elena as particularly strange. Why must ghosts wear clothes? She was even more puzzled by a storyline in which "the ghost chased after clothes to protect its dignity and was then destroyed."
"What's wrong with these people? Is clothing a must?" Elena muttered, though she acknowledged that not wearing clothes indeed was undignified.
In addition to ghosts, monsters also occupied a portion of the stories, some of them described so vividly that they seemed written by the monsters themselves, probably because the authors were, in fact, monsters and thus knew how to describe them well.
Beyond supernatural elements, there were also stories depicting mental illnesses, which aligned closely with modern Chinese horror films. For example, one story featured a sick person being haunted by a black monkey, which only he could see. When he tried to consult a doctor, the monkey became enraged, inciting him to suicide. From a modern perspective, this man might have been suffering from schizophrenia.
After finishing all the samples, the sky had already darkened. Elena lit an oil lamp and was about to rest for a while when Grace brought her dinner.
"I knew it. If you're not in your room, you'd definitely be here," Grace said, removing the silver food cover. She began to lay out the meal from the silver tray. The dinner was quite lavish: baked oysters as an appetizer, followed by creamy soup, roasted fish, a vegetable salad, freshly baked bread, and Elena's favorite rum-flavored pudding. Finally, for the drink, there was a full glass of chilled champagne.
Elena picked up her knife and fork and began eating, not forgetting to ask, "Have you eaten yet?"
"Of course," Grace smiled lightly. "What have you been doing in the writing room again? It seems like your second home."
Elena sighed. "Honestly, it's kind of eerie in this dim light. I've been reading some of the terrifying stories written by members of the club. Have you read any?"
"To be honest, I'm a bit scared of those stories," Grace wrapped her arms around herself. "When I was little, my brother used to read scary stories during our nightly reading sessions, and it scared the whole family."
"Sounds like you all are pretty sensitive to these things," Elena laughed. "But it seems like you're not completely uninterested in them."
"Well, yes. I have an aunt," Grace sat down, moving closer to Elena, "We used to visit her house. She's quite wealthy, has a big house, full of things. When night fell, we were in an entirely unfamiliar house, and if we heard a creaking noise, we'd jump out of our skins."
Elena imagined the scene and couldn't help but laugh. "That sounds genuinely terrifying."
"She had many servants, but we never saw them," Grace recalled. "Can you imagine? There were so many people living in the house, yet they would come and go without us ever seeing them. It was like they were ghosts. After that, every time we had to visit my aunt's house, I'd cry and throw a fit."
"I guess it could be related to the gas lamps," Elena pointed at the lamp on the table. "These lamps release carbon monoxide when burning, and if there's no ventilation, it can cause hallucinations."
"I'm not sure, but it definitely wasn't a fun experience," Grace stood up. "I should get back to my work now. Hope you manage to write a satisfying story."
Elena sat alone in the quiet writing room, the only light source being an old oil lamp, casting soft, mottled shadows. A clock on the wall ticked steadily, and the faint smell of oil filled the air.
When it came to ghost stories, Elena had indeed read many and could write some pretty frightening ones. However, she believed that starting with too terrifying a ghost story might cause people's fear threshold to rise. After that, writing a less scary story would likely fail to attract readers.
After all, once characters like Sadako and Kayako were introduced, it seemed like other Japanese horror films were never able to surpass them.
"How about… urban legends first?" Elena rested her left hand on her head, while her right hand scribbled on the paper. "Urban legends, not too scary, but with a sense of immersion... Hmm, let me think."
At the time, most urban legends in circulation were related to trains. Wherever there were railway tracks, there were stories about trains—such as the "Ghost Train," where people claimed to see trains running at night without hearing any sound, and the passengers on the train were said to be skeletons. There was also the "Headless Ticket Seller," a dead ticket seller who wandered around with a lantern, searching for his head.
These stories were likely born from railway accidents, becoming eerie rumors that often appeared in penny dreadful novels and cheap newspapers. People didn't take them as ghost stories, but they still caused panic.
But these were just child's play. Unless you were near the railway tracks at night, you wouldn't be scared. So, Elena needed to come up with an urban legend that had a broader appeal.
She recalled an urban legend that had once scared her: a wife was changing clothes in a dressing room while her husband waited outside. After a long time, he called the police, but they couldn't find her. She had simply disappeared. Years later, when her husband visited Thailand and attended a famous freak show, he discovered his wife had been turned into a mutilated human exhibit. When she saw him, she opened her mouth, but it had no tongue.
Elena had thought this story was unique to China, but it was actually a Japanese urban legend, which showed just how far-reaching this particular tale was.
Though ready-made clothes were not yet popular, many tailors offered changing rooms for customers to try on clothes. Moreover, during balls or social events in grand mansions, nobles often needed to change their clothes. She thought with a little modification, this story could easily be adapted to the current time.
There was also another legend related to health concerns— "bugs crawling into your ears." Even in modern times, there were many such rumors. It was said that at night, small creatures like centipedes or cockroaches would crawl into people's ears. Because human ears were warm, the bugs would treat them as their nesting places, crawling deeper and deeper into the ear canal, eventually reaching the brain and laying eggs there.
Although modern science had debunked the myth that bugs could enter the brain through the ear, many news stories still circulated about bugs crawling into people's ears, and just reading about them made Elena's ears feel cold.
In a time when medical knowledge wasn't widespread, such myths were like weapons of mass psychological destruction. Similar stories included parasites entering the stomach through contaminated water—an idea that could serve as a great public health lesson, albeit in a more disturbing way.
Over the next week, Elena came up with nearly ten urban legends, from "The Ghostly Principal" (who could be heard every night walking in high heels around the classroom of a deceased principal) to "The Roasted Baby" (where an unhinged nanny roasted a master's baby), covering various age groups and social classes. She wrote them all down and decided to show them to her fellow members of the Secret Society for feedback.