When I was a child, the elders used to tell me there were many kinds of ghosts in the world—wronged spirits, vengeful ghosts, wandering phantoms, and restless souls. Among them, the vengeful ghost was said to be the most dangerous. Such ghosts were rare, but if you ever encountered one, great misfortune would befall you. As a child, I didn’t believe these stories—until something happened that completely changed my mind.
I remember that every year, there were always a few days when my family would stay at my third great-uncle’s house. His village was deep in a mountain valley, sparsely populated, with only a few small settlements scattered across the vast, remote hills. The locals were deeply superstitious, firmly believing in ghosts and spirits. When someone fell seriously ill, they wouldn’t go to the hospital—instead, they’d seek out shamans, spirit mediums, or witches. Most of the time, these rituals did nothing to help, yet the shrines and altars in the area never stopped receiving offerings.
In my great-uncle’s village, there was a particularly promising university graduate named Zhi Guo. After graduation, he became a teacher at a well-known high school in the city and was highly respected in all the surrounding villages. One day, he received a call from home saying his father was critically ill and urging him to come back immediately. After receiving the call, Zhi Guo finished his evening classes and rushed straight home by bus. Because the village was so remote, he had to get off the bus and walk a long stretch of mountain path to reach the village. Almost no one traveled this road at night—after all, even if you weren’t afraid of ghosts, you’d still fear wild animals. But Zhi Guo, driven by worry for his father, hurried into the mountains without hesitation.
That night, Zhi Guo returned to the village, but his mind was no longer clear. He kept babbling incoherently, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing. The village chief, alarmed by his condition, quickly summoned the village’s renowned witch. After examining him, the witch gasped in shock and said, “He’s encountered a ghost! And the resentment is extremely strong. We must exorcise it at once, or someone will die!”
After a long and frantic ritual, Zhi Guo finally fell into a deep sleep. We curious children, who had been watching the scene, were then sent back home by the adults.
Later, I heard that Zhi Guo recovered physically, but he became much duller and more withdrawn. If you called his name, it would take him a long time to respond. According to my great-uncle, “On his way back, Zhi Guo saw someone on a hillside. When he went closer to look, he found that half of the person’s face was shattered, and their eyeballs were dangling out… That’s why he turned out like this. Not long before, a man surnamed Zhang had died there. It was raining, and he was rushing to find a midwife for his pregnant wife when he slipped and fell down the hill. Maybe because he never got to see his child, his spirit was filled with such deep resentment that when Zhi Guo accidentally crossed paths with him, this tragedy occurred.”
This isn’t a story I made up. Even today, I can still clearly recall the image of the witch wrapping Zhi Guo in a fishing net and performing the ritual. I’m not trying to promote superstition. I just want to tell everyone: Never walk alone at night, especially in the deep of night!