The Chinese police have found a new way to train their recruits physically, and even psychologically. Now they are trained not only to battle the living, but also to have the guts to face the dead and other supernatural beings.
Using an abandoned house and some scary props, the new soldiers are set for training when evening comes. Each is given a minute to study the house layout before entering with only a flashlight in hand. The goal is to survive all the “obstacles,” find the control room and disable the mechanisms working the props.
“After only three steps, my flashlight shone on a skeleton,” wrote a journalist who was permitted to test-run the new haunted house training center.
“Suddenly the wind started howling and there was lightning. I saw another skeleton hanging in the middle of the pouring rain. On my left, the screams of a baby shocked me. Then I heard a woman weeping, and then giggling. When I turned, a female corpse with long hair and dressed in white was hanging from a tree.”
It turns out that this strategy is used especially on soldiers born in the late 1980s and ’90s since they are products of the one-child policy and thus have been spoiled by their parents.
“The house generates tension, fear, the inability to concentrate, and improves psychological balance,” Zhigang Xia, a senior police officer, explained.
“This house was going to be demolished, but we thought even the directors of horror movies could not find such a perfect spot,” he added.
