A taxonomy of Chinese ghosts

Carolyn Choa wrote this wonderful piece inspired by one of our Daily Prompts on Instagram: “If you were a ghost, would you let people see you?”

I guess the short answer is no, I wouldn’t, for the simple reason that I am terrified of ghosts myself, so I wouldn’t want to frighten anyone.

There are many different kinds of ghosts in Chinese culture, all of whom are frankly alarming :

There are those who like to disengage their heads and allow them to fly about, mostly in the setting of a bedroom. These are usually female spirits who have died tragically. They have long hair and a pale face.

There are those who hang from bridges and swing into view on a dark night, just as one is about to drive past. These dangly apparitions are usually dressed in some sort of a white nightie, also with long black hair, which seems to be de rigueur.

There are those who like to pull at your feet with cold fingers if you are silly enough to sleep with them exposed under the blanket. Long tapered fingers of either sex are favoured.

There are the ones who zip along exterior stone walls. They are flat as a sheet and are usually pale green and slightly luminous.

Some are seen to leap into wells repeatedly. They tend to be young girls, likely to be maids in big houses running away from their lascivious masters.

Some like to appear suddenly in the middle of the road under a new moon, so that you have to screech to a halt in your car. These may disguise themselves as humans and ask for a lift, claiming some sort of emergency. It is imperative that you do not, I repeat, NOT, let them in.

We mustn’t forget the ones who enjoy the opera and wander about in the upper galleries of empty theatres, nor the ones who show their feet under bathroom doors. If you were to push open these doors you will find that the feet and ankles, usually in white socks and black shoes, float quite freely and are not attached to any legs, or indeed to anything at all. They are often found in school lavatories and our school hosted a few of these. They had a preference for the bathroom on the second floor next to the school office and as students we all tried to avoid going there if at all possible.

Naturally there are also the ones who enjoy turning on taps, knocking on doors, disappearing into lifts, appearing outside tenth-floor windows on a stormy night etc.etc.

Fortunately, and touch wood, I have so far been spared these petrifying encounters, though I have certainly heard noises.

The first was a naughty ghost who enjoyed pressing our doorbell, when I was about three or four years old. Each time we would open the door to find no one outside, nor any footsteps running up or down the tiled stairs which were quite wide, echoey and open to view. We lived in a four-storey building then, and there was no lift. After this disturbance had gone on for some time, after all the children in the neighbourhood had been quizzed and eliminated, and after my mother had started opening the door faster and faster, never to find any shadow of a human being in sight, my father finally resorted to summoning a Catholic priest to perform an exorcism. I don’t recall ever having been frightened, just curious. The day the priest was to arrive was highly anticipated, and everyone prayed that it would restore some quiet to the building. It all seemed rather exciting and I suspect that was the beginning of my fascination with rituals.

Many many years later, quite recently in fact, my brothers came up with an explanation of what might have happened. It was their habit to play on the flat roof of the mortuary next to our apartment, and to peer down into the cold room where post-mortems were regularly conducted. They seemed never to have been disturbed watching bodies being opened for science, and indeed they are now both doctors. But one day they were shocked to see that the body was that of a child. Until that moment they had not realised that children died too. They got very scared, turned around and ran home as fast as they could. They now think that it was in that moment of fear and vulnerability that the spirit of the child followed them home, and when shut outside the front door, had endeavoured to press on the doorbell repeatedly, alas never to have been admitted.

In any case, after the exorcism everything stopped. The spirit had been given a good send-off and was finally able to find a more suitable home.

The second time I heard something had to do with our very much loved dog who had been run over by a neighbour’s car. He had a habit of rushing up and down the corridor whenever excited. On the day we moved into a new flat, when I was nine or so, my brother and I were left alone for a few minutes seated by the dining room table. Suddenly we both heard our dog’s characteristic rushing feet, and his way of panting excitedly. This sound emanated no more than a few feet away, and was totally distinctive. We turned towards each other simultaneously and said the dog’s name. This was, I think, around tea-time. In any case it was in broad daylight. Neither of us was remotely frightened, just very happy our beloved dog was still with us and that he was excited about our new home. We had literally just moved in that day, so it was not anywhere our dog had been before. This seems to disprove the theory that spirits only hang around locations significant to them.

Anyhow it turned out to be a one-off occurrence. Having checked out the space, our dog never found it necessary to visit again.

A lot of people find it effortless to sense whether a house is a happy one, full of positive human energy, or if the atmosphere seems colder than it ought to be. In France some estate agents are apparently moved to certify old chateaux as ghost-free, though I am not sure how they arrive at their conclusions.

Suffice to say that if I were a ghost, I would first of all try not to make the temperature drop. Secondly I would do my best not to bump into furniture and make things fall or fly, and thirdly I would attempt to find some quiet corner in nature, where nobody can see me, and keep company with the dew or the stars.

In short, I hereby promise not to haunt anybody, though I might try to send occasional discreet messages so that family and friends will know that I think of them with love and care. These may be in the form of a flower, a leaf, a road sign, a butterfly, a fox, a frog, or a piece of music, dispatched from a fluffy cloud somewhere both far and near.