You know, sometimes we dream of leaving the city behind, finding a run-down house in the woods, fixing it up with our own hands, and turning it into a peaceful home. Right?

Sơn Nguyễn had the exact same thought. In 2023, he—a real-life software engineer—managed to buy a bargain: an old farm in the Austrian Alps. The villagers whispered about it, calling it the “cursed house,” abandoned for 37 years after a mysterious disappearance. But Sơn was a man of logic, not superstition. To him, it was just a renovation project with huge potential. He got to work.

Everything was fine… until one day, he decided to clean up what everyone assumed was an old garbage pit behind the house. And then, keng—his shovel hit metal.

At first, he thought nothing of it. But as he dug deeper, clearing layers of dirt and rubble, it wasn’t trash. It was the heavy metal lid of a long-buried well. And when he and a neighbor finally managed to lift it… what lay beneath turned a forgotten history into a living nightmare.

Four skeletons were neatly lined up: the family of four who had vanished without a trace in the spring of 1986. Next to them, a rusty pistol and a tiny metal box. Inside the box was a piece of paper.

And the most horrifying part? That paper didn’t just reveal the 37-year-old mystery—it pointed directly to a killer that no one had ever suspected.

To understand, we need to go back 37 years to the fateful weekend of An Vũ’s family.

Many times, I’ve wondered why I even bought that farm. People call it bravery. I call it reckless. My name is Sơn Nguyễn, a software engineer. I spent half my life in Vienna, glued to a screen, surrounded by honking cars and the constant rush of the city. Maybe that’s why I craved absolute peace.

Then I found it: the dilapidated Bower Farm in the high mountains of the Austrian Alps. The villagers of Haberg whispered that it was haunted, abandoned for 37 years. A Vietnamese immigrant family—the Vũ family—had disappeared without a trace from this very place.

But I’m practical. Ghosts and curses aren’t real. What I saw was a bargain. A piece of land, a stone house, isolated in breathtaking nature, for a suspiciously low price. I wanted a place to hide, work remotely, and restore something with my own hands.

The first day I arrived, I almost drove straight back to Vienna. The roof was falling apart, the beams rotten, the windows just empty frames. Inside smelled of mold and rodent droppings. Not scary—just discouraging. But practicality kicked in. Broken roof? I replaced it. Rotten windows? I changed them. Frayed electrical wiring? Rewired everything.

I wasn’t a professional, but I had Google and the perseverance of a coder debugging for months. I repaired the roof, replaced every window, installed a new electrical system. Step by step, the house came alive.

When the interior was usable, I turned to the exterior. That’s when I noticed it: a strange hollow behind the house, near the old horse stable. Not natural—a depression filled with broken bricks, stones, dry branches, and compacted earth. It looked like an abandoned construction pit.

The elders in the village mentioned it used to be a deep stone well, filled in by the previous owner—An Vũ’s grandfather—for safety. But to me, it was just an eyesore. I planned to level it, add soil, and plant a small vegetable garden. A simple dream: me at the window, looking at rows of tomatoes and herbs.

On a bright August day, I grabbed my shovel and wheelbarrow. I promised myself it’d take a morning. Digging was brutal; the earth was packed from decades of neglect. Then my shovel struck something.

A dry, heavy keng of metal. I thought it was scrap… but as I cleared the soil, I froze. It wasn’t scrap—it was a giant metal lid, thickly rusted.

I remembered the old man’s words: the well. My engineer’s curiosity overcame fatigue. I had to see what was beneath.

I pried, pushed, and cursed. Sweat soaked my shirt. The lid wouldn’t budge. I ran to the village to fetch Mr. Bắc, a lifelong farmer as strong as a mountain bear. Together, we lifted the lid with all our strength. The smell hit instantly—a mix of mold, decay, and a sickly-sweet stench.

Beneath the lid, four skeletons lay side by side: two adults, two children. The Vũ family. A pistol, a small metal box, and a note—the very piece of paper that would unravel the decades-old mystery.

Fast forward: police arrived within an hour. The farm transformed from a peaceful retreat to a crime scene. Forensic teams meticulously excavated the well, cataloged evidence, and confirmed via DNA: the skeletons were indeed An (32), Mai (30), and twins Leo and Ly (7).

The pistol: a rusty Styer 1912. The note inside the metal box? Written in Swiss-German, a language not native to the Vũ family nor the Austrian villagers.

This reopened the investigation. Suddenly, Khang Vũ—the jealous older brother—surfaced again. In 1986, he had an alibi, verified by witnesses: he was over 100 kilometers away that weekend. Case closed, right?

Wrong. The note revealed a detail overlooked for 37 years: Khang had spent five years working in Switzerland. Fluent in Swiss-German, he had the knowledge to write the note. The investigation pivoted from disappearance to murder.

My quiet mountain dream had turned into the center of a 37-year-old homicide investigation. The farm, my retreat, was now the command post of Tirol’s criminal police. And it all started with the strike of a shovel on a rusty lid.