On April 25, 2013, a 17-year-old Chinese high school student named Henry entered an abandoned dorm building with three friends after a badminton shuttlecock fell into its basement.
What happened next became one of the strangest stories connected to a Chinese school.
Henry and his friend Lee later claimed they returned from the basement without their childhood friend, Pan Bowen. But when they went looking for Pan, something was even more disturbing.
Nobody knew who Pan was.
Not their classmates. Not their teachers. Not Henry’s parents. Not even the people living in the apartment where Henry believed Pan had lived.
According to the story, Pan had disappeared not only from the school and his home but also from Henry’s photographs and other records.
So who was Pan Bowen?
Was he a real person? Was Henry suffering from a hallucination caused by extreme stress? Was this a case of false memory? Or was something much stranger happening inside that abandoned building?
Here’s what the story says happened.
The Badminton Game That Started Everything
The story began at a high school campus in Tianjin, a major city in northeastern China.
Henry was a 17-year-old high school senior. On the morning of April 25, 2013, he was supposed to be attending gym class with the other students.
The class was playing badminton.
But the outdoor courts were full, so Henry and his friend Wen decided to play in a courtyard near an old abandoned dorm building.
They were not supposed to be in that area.
While Henry and Wen were playing, two other students approached them with badminton rackets. One was Lee, Henry’s classmate. The other was Pan Bowen, Henry’s childhood best friend.
Henry was happy to see Pan.
The two had known each other since elementary school. They were both tall and thin, wore glasses, enjoyed video games and were described as quiet and somewhat nerdy.
They had also been extremely busy preparing for China’s Gaokao college entrance examination.
The exam was so important that both boys had reportedly been studying for as many as 14 hours a day.
Seeing Pan that morning gave Henry a rare chance to spend time with his old friend.
Then an ordinary badminton game took a strange turn.
The Shuttlecock Falls Into the Abandoned Building
Henry hit the shuttlecock toward Pan.
Pan hit it back, but his shot went off to the side.
The shuttlecock bounced along the ground and eventually fell through an open window into the basement of the abandoned dorm building.
The window was only for ventilation. It was just a few inches high.
Henry looked through it but could see almost nothing.
The easiest option was to return to the gym and get another shuttlecock.
But Pan was worried.
The boys were not supposed to be playing in the courtyard. If they told their teachers they had lost the shuttlecock, someone might discover that they had entered an off-limits area.
Pan decided to retrieve it himself.
He walked to the abandoned building and tried the front door.
It was unlocked.
Pan opened the door and went inside.
Henry followed.
Lee followed too.
Wen stayed outside.
Inside the Abandoned Dorm Building
The inside of the building immediately made Henry uncomfortable.
The air smelled of mildew. It was cold, and the dark hallways were filled with old furniture and clutter.
The entrance had some natural light coming through open windows.
The hallways did not.
Pan had already disappeared down one of the dark corridors when Henry and Lee heard him opening a door.
Pan called out that he had found the stairs leading to the basement.
The three friends followed.
The stairs were almost completely blocked by old furniture, desks and chairs.
It was difficult to move through even with light.
Henry began feeling that they should leave.
He told the others that finding a lost shuttlecock was not worth the risk.
But Pan insisted on continuing.
He felt responsible because his shot had sent the shuttlecock into the building.
So Pan began climbing over the furniture and moving down the stairs.
Lee followed.
Henry eventually followed them too.
The Descent Into Darkness
The first part of the staircase was difficult but manageable.
Then the stairs turned 90 degrees.
Beyond the turn, there was almost no light.
Pan and Lee moved ahead of Henry and disappeared into the darkness.
Henry could still hear them, but he could no longer see them.
He continued down the stairs by feeling his way around the furniture.
Eventually, Pan and Lee reached the bottom.
Henry followed them.
At the bottom of the stairs was a long hallway.
At the far end was a slightly open door.
Light was coming from the room beyond it.
The boys assumed that the light came from the same outside window through which the shuttlecock had fallen.
They believed the answer was simple.
Walk to the door.
Get the shuttlecock.
Leave.
But then Pan stopped.
Pan Says He Lost His Keys
Henry and Lee were walking down the hallway when Pan suddenly separated from them.
He said he had lost his keys.
Pan believed he had dropped them somewhere on the stairs.
Henry and Lee wanted him to forget about the keys and continue.
But Pan refused.
He said he needed them to get home.
So Pan returned toward the stairs and began searching through the furniture in complete darkness.
Henry and Lee decided to continue toward the door.
They expected Pan to still be searching when they returned.
But something strange happened.
The Door That Never Got Closer
Henry and Lee started walking toward the light.
The door was clearly visible ahead of them.
But no matter how quickly they walked, they did not seem to get any closer.
They began walking faster.
Then they were almost running.
Still, the door seemed just as far away.
Eventually, they stopped.
Henry asked Lee if he felt the same thing.
Lee said yes.
Neither of them understood what was happening.
Then Henry turned around.
What he saw terrified him.
The darkness behind them seemed different from ordinary darkness.
He described it as an incredibly deep blackness, almost like a void.
The hallway they had just walked through appeared to have disappeared into something even darker.
Henry called for Pan.
There was no answer.
Instead, his voice produced an unusually large echo.
The space suddenly seemed enormous, almost like a massive cave.
Then everything became silent.
“The Place You Came From Doesn’t Exist Anymore”
According to Henry’s account, something even stranger happened next.
While standing in the darkness, Henry experienced what seemed like a voice inside his mind.
The message was simple:
“The place you came from doesn’t exist anymore.”
The thought filled him with intense fear.
Henry felt trapped.
He believed the only way out was the illuminated door at the end of the hallway.
He grabbed Lee and told him they had to run.
The two friends sprinted toward the door.
This time, they reached it.
They pushed through.
But what they found on the other side was not the room they expected.
They Walk Out Somewhere Completely Different
Henry expected to find the basement room containing the shuttlecock.
Instead, he saw bright sunlight.
He smelled fresh air.
He saw the sky.
They were outside.
In front of them was a concrete staircase.
Henry and Lee ran up the stairs.
When they reached the top, they realized they were nowhere near their high school.
They were on the grounds of an elementary school several blocks away.
There was no obvious underground tunnel connecting the two locations.
The school also had security gates.
Henry and Lee had no idea how they had reached the place.
But they had a bigger problem.
Pan was missing.
He had never come out of the basement with them.
They Return to Find Pan
Henry and Lee ran back down the stairs.
They tried to open the door through which they had emerged.
It was locked.
They had no way to return through it.
So they ran back toward their high school.
Eventually, they reached the abandoned dorm building.
Henry tried the front door.
It was locked.
That was strange.
The same door had been unlocked when Pan entered the building earlier.
Henry then remembered Wen.
Wen had stayed outside while the others entered.
He should have been waiting for them.
But Wen was gone.
The badminton courts were empty too.
Something about the entire situation seemed wrong.
Wen Doesn’t Know Who Pan Is
Henry and Lee went into the main school building.
They looked through a cafeteria window and saw students eating lunch.
Then they saw Wen.
He was sitting at a table by himself.
Henry and Lee rushed over to him.
They asked what had happened.
Where was Pan?
Had a teacher caught him?
Had someone locked the abandoned building?
Why wasn’t Pan there?
Wen looked confused.
He did not seem to understand their questions.
Then he asked:
“Who is Pan?”
Henry and Lee were stunned.
Wen apparently had no idea who they were talking about.
Nobody Remembers Pan Bowen
Henry and Lee began asking other students about Pan.
They reportedly spoke to hundreds of people.
Nobody knew him.
More disturbing, people did not simply say they had forgotten him.
They claimed Pan Bowen did not exist.
Henry and Lee checked the school’s student records.
Pan’s name was not there.
Henry went home and told his parents what had happened.
But his parents also asked the same question.
Who was Pan?
According to the story, they had no memory of Henry having a childhood best friend named Pan Bowen.
Henry then went to the apartment where he believed Pan lived.
The apartment existed.
But a different family lived there.
They had never heard of Pan.
Pan Disappears From Photographs
Henry wanted proof that Pan had existed.
He went to his computer and searched for photographs of himself with Pan.
But the files he believed contained pictures of the two friends would not open.
They appeared to be corrupted or damaged.
According to the story, Pan had disappeared from almost everything.
He was not in the school’s student records.
Nobody remembered him.
His apartment was occupied by another family.
And the photographs Henry believed showed him and Pan could not be opened.
Only Henry and Lee continued to remember him.
The Psychiatrist’s Explanation
Eventually, Henry visited a psychiatrist.
The explanation he received was very different from what he believed had happened.
According to the story, the psychiatrist suggested that the enormous stress of preparing for the Gaokao had caused Henry to hallucinate an entire friendship with a fictional person.
Henry reportedly rejected this explanation.
After all, Lee also remembered Pan.
But everyone around them seemed to believe that Henry and Lee were mistaken.
Eventually, the two young men decided to move on.
They took their Gaokao exams, entered different colleges and gradually lost touch with each other.
But Henry never completely forgot Pan.
What Happened to Pan Bowen?
The story has several possible explanations.
None of them is proven by the account.
A Hallucination
One explanation is that extreme stress caused Henry to experience something that felt completely real.
The Gaokao was an enormous source of pressure, and the story says Henry and Pan had been studying for as many as 14 hours a day.
The psychiatrist’s theory was that Henry had created Pan as part of a hallucination.
However, this explanation does not easily account for Lee remembering Pan as well, at least according to the story.
The Mandela Effect
Another theory discussed by people who encountered the story was the Mandela effect.
The term describes situations in which groups of people share a strong memory of something that does not match available evidence.
Some people wondered whether Henry and Lee had somehow developed the same false memory of Pan.
This theory, however, does not prove what actually happened.
An Alternate Universe
Another, more supernatural explanation suggests that Henry and Lee somehow entered an alternate universe.
Under this theory, the strange basement was a passage between realities.
Pan may have remained behind while Henry and Lee emerged somewhere else.
There is no evidence presented in the story that proves this.
A Made-Up Story
There is also a much simpler possibility.
Henry and Lee could have invented the story.
That would explain why there were no records of Pan and why the story eventually disappeared from the internet.
But again, there is no definitive evidence presented that establishes this explanation either.
Henry Eventually Deletes the Story
Years later, Henry reportedly wrote about Pan online.
The story spread widely in China.
People debated what had happened.
Some believed the psychiatrist’s explanation.
Others believed Henry and Lee had experienced a strange memory phenomenon.
Some suggested an alternate universe.
Others believed the entire story was fabricated.
But then something happened that made the mystery even stranger.
Only a few months after the story went viral, Henry reportedly deleted the post.
He also deleted other material he had shared about Pan.
According to the transcript, he eventually refused to acknowledge that he had ever published the story at all.
The Unanswered Mystery of Pan Bowen
The story of Pan Bowen remains unsettling because it offers no clear ending.
A group of teenagers entered an abandoned building to retrieve a badminton shuttlecock.
Two of them later claimed they became trapped in a strange hallway.
They emerged several blocks away.
One friend was missing.
And when they returned to school, nobody seemed to remember that friend.
The story becomes even stranger with the claim that Pan disappeared from official records, his home and photographs.
But there is no definitive evidence in the transcript that proves a supernatural event occurred.
The story could involve hallucination, false memory, an invented story, or something else entirely.
What makes it memorable is the central question that remains unanswered:
If Pan Bowen never existed, why did Henry and Lee remember him?
And if he did exist, how could an entire school, family and set of records seemingly forget him?
For now, there is no confirmed answer.
Pan Bowen remains a mystery.