A soldier in the imperial guard, fond of riding and hunting, once chased a wild rabbit and galloped to Dongzhimen Gate(东直门). By ill luck, he collided with an old man drawing water from a well, causing the old man to fall into the well. Terrified, the soldier hastily fled back home.
That night, the soldier saw the old man from the well entering his house, accusing him: ‘Though you didn’t intend harm, you didn’t rescue me when I fell into the well.
Compelled by a millennium-old demon, the female ghost Nie Xiaoqian harms people through seduction. Admiring the impoverished scholar Ning Caichen’s true virtue, she refrains from causing harm and follows him home.
In Shandong(山東), there was a scholar named Lin Changkang(林長康), who, at forty years old, had not yet passed the provincial imperial examination.
One day, just as he was contemplating abandoning his studies, he suddenly heard someone call out, ‘Do not lose heart!’ Lin Changkang was startled and asked who it was. The voice replied, ‘I am a ghost. I have been following you, protecting and watching over you for several years.’
In Shucheng County(舒城縣), Luzhou Prefecture(廬州府), there was a villager named Chen(陳姓者). His wife was suddenly haunted by a female ghost who sometimes strangled her throat with hands and other times tied her neck with straw ropes. No one around her could see the haunting ghost. Tormented and in agony, she frequently clawed at her clothes, pulling out many straw ropes.
Chen gave his wife a bundle of peach tree branches, saying, ‘If the female ghost returns, use these to strike her!’
According to folklore, when a wicked person is dying, the King of Hell will send evil ghosts to seize them because only these evil spirits have the power to subdue such wicked individuals.
In Yangzhou(揚州), Tang(唐氏)’s wife was both fierce and jealous, responsible for the deaths of numerous concubines and maids. Shortly after, this fierce woman fell critically ill. Even in her sickness, she continued incessantly cursing and raging just as she did in her normal days.
An illustration for the ghost story “The Scribe(司札吏)” in “Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio”, in Qing Dynasty.
“The Scribe” is a short story from the collection of classical Chinese short stories “Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio” by the Qing dynasty writer Pu Songling. The story tells the tale of a tyrannical and superstitious magistrate who had many taboos. One day, the magistrate’s scribe accidentally violated one of his taboos, and the magistrate had him killed.
Wanxia and Aduan were lovers. Dancer Wanxia was reported to have committed suicide by jumping into the river. Aduan was heartbroken, yet he was surprised to find that Wanxia had come back as a ghost.
Du Bo(杜伯), also known as Heng, was a senior official of the Zhou dynasty. The king’s concubine, Nv Jiu(女鸠), wanted to have an affair with Du Bo, but Du Bo refused. Nv Jiu was angry and one day told the king, “Du Bo is secretly trying to seduce me.” The king believed her and imprisoned Du Bo in Jiaodi. He sent Xuefu(薛甫) and Sikong Qi(司空锜) to kill Du Bo.
Du Bo’s friend, Zuo Ru, tried to persuade the king not to kill Du Bo nine times but failed.
In the second year of the Dali period, Magistrate Li Zuoshi of Shanyin fell ill with a serious illness. After several days, his condition improved slightly, and he traveled from Kuaiji to Longqiu. His cousin, Magistrate Li Shu, was serving as the county magistrate in Longqiu, and he invited Li Zuoshi to stay at the county office for a few days.
One night, Li Zuoshi was talking with his guest, Li Ju, by candlelight when suddenly twenty or so men dressed in red robes and carrying weapons appeared in the corridor.
In the Langya region, there was a man named Qin Juebu who was already sixty years old. One day, he was walking home at night after drinking. He passed by the Fengshan Temple when he saw his two grandsons coming to meet him. They supported him for over a hundred paces, suddenly grabbed him by the neck and threw him to the ground.
“You old slave, you beat me once, and now I’m going to kill you!”
In the summer, a heavy storm flooded the toilet of Lu Yanxu, the warehouse keeper of Xuzhou. The water soon drained away, and Lu Yanxu invited his neighbors to come and see. They saw a grave pit below, with a large coffin in the middle. Inside the coffin lay a woman in her twenties. She was white and clean, with fingernails that were five or six inches long. She had more than ten gold hairpins in her hair.
He saw a little ghost, shaped like a seven or eight year old boy, without clothes.
Towards the end of the Kaiyuan Dynasty, Yuzhou experienced numerous cases of tigers attacking people. Despite setting up traps with mechanisms, none proved successful in catching a tiger.
One moonlit night, a man climbed a tree and patiently waited. He spotted a small ghost resembling a seven or eight-year-old boy, unclothed, strolling nearby. The boy wore turquoise-colored top and bottom clothes.
