The Ghost Who Was Foiled

This old ghost tale imagines a spirit seeking another person’s death as a way to gain rebirth. Its narrator presents the account as trustworthy, but that is a storytelling claim. The supernatural premise is not an explanation of suicide or a judgment about people who have died by suicide.

A man from Tsing Tschoufu had passed his military examination and been ordered to report for duty at Tsinanfu. It was the rainy season, and night fell before he could reach the town inn where he had planned to stay. Just at sunset he came to a small village and asked for a bed for the night, but the families there were poor and had no room in their huts. So they sent him to an old temple outside the village and told him he could sleep there.

The statues of the gods in the temple had crumbled so badly that one could not be told from another. Thick cobwebs covered the doorway, and dust lay inches deep everywhere. So the soldier went back outside, where he found an old flight of steps. He spread his pack on a stone step, tied his horse to an old tree, took out his flask, and drank, for the day had been hot. There had been a heavy rain, but the sky had just cleared, and the new moon was going down. The soldier closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

Suddenly he heard a rustling inside the temple, and a cold breath of wind brushed his face and made him shiver. Out of the temple came a woman in a dirty old red gown, with a face as white as a whitewashed wall. She crept past quietly, as if afraid of being seen. The soldier was not afraid. He pretended to be asleep and lay still, watching her through half-closed eyes. He saw her pull a rope from her sleeve and vanish, and then he knew she was the ghost of a woman who had hanged herself. He got up softly and followed her, and sure enough, she went into the village.

At a certain house she slipped into the courtyard through a crack in the gate. The soldier jumped over the wall after her. The house had three rooms, and in the back room a lamp was burning dimly. Looking through the window, the soldier saw a young woman of about twenty sitting on the bed, sighing deeply, her handkerchief soaked with tears. Beside her a little child lay asleep. The woman kept looking up at the ceiling beam; one moment she would cry, the next she would stroke the child. Looking more closely, the soldier saw the ghost sitting up on the beam. She was beckoning the woman toward danger, and the woman kept looking up at her. This went on for some time.

At last the woman said, “You say it would be best for me to die. Very well, I will die—but I cannot leave my child!” And she burst into tears. But the ghost only laughed and kept coaxing her.

Then the woman said firmly, “Enough. I will die!” She prepared to take her life, but the child’s sudden crying interrupted her. She returned to soothe the little one and wept as she rocked it. The ghost frowned and hissed, afraid of losing its prey.

Soon the child fell asleep, and the woman began looking up at the beam once more. She was again in immediate danger when the soldier shouted loudly and pounded on the window. Then he broke the pane and climbed into the room. The woman fell to the floor, and the ghost vanished. The soldier brought the woman back to her senses. Then he noticed something hanging from the beam, like a cord with no end. Knowing it belonged to the ghost of the hanged woman, he took it and kept it.

“Take good care of your child,” he told the woman. “You have only one life to lose in this world!” And with that he left.

Then he remembered that his horse and baggage were still at the temple, so he went to fetch them. As he came out of the village, there stood the ghost waiting for him in the road. She bowed and said, “For many years I have been looking for someone to take my place, and today, just when it seemed I would really find one, you came along and ruined my chances. There is nothing more I can do about that. But in my hurry I left something behind. You must have found it, and I ask you to give it back. If I only have that one thing, I won’t mind not having found a substitute.”

The soldier held up the rope and laughed. “Is this what you mean? Why, if I gave it back to you, someone would surely hang themselves, and I can’t allow that.” He wound the rope around his arm and chased her off. “Now be gone!”

At that the ghost flew into a rage. Her face turned greenish black, her hair tumbled wildly down her neck, her eyes went bloodshot, and her tongue hung far out of her mouth. She reached out both hands to seize the soldier, but he swung his fist at her—and by accident hit himself on the nose, which began to bleed. He flicked a few drops of blood toward her, and, following the tale’s supernatural logic, she stopped attacking, drew back a few steps, and began to curse him. She kept it up for a long time, until the village cock began to crow. Then the ghost disappeared.

Meanwhile the farm folk of the village had come out to thank the soldier. After he left the young woman, her husband had come home and asked her what had happened, and only then had he learned what had gone on. So they all set out together along the road to find the soldier outside the village. When they found him, he was still punching the air and talking wildly. They called to him, and he told them what had happened. The rope could still be seen on his bare arm, but it had grown into the skin and circled his arm as a red ring of flesh.

Day was just breaking, so the soldier swung into his saddle and rode away.

About this tale

This ghost story comes from The Chinese Fairy Book, Richard Wilhelm’s collection, in the English of Frederick H. Martens (Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York, 1921). Wilhelm notes that it has been handed down by tradition and is given just as people tell it.

The story uses a harmful spirit and a replacement victim as its supernatural conflict. This retelling preserves the two interruptions and the soldier’s confrontation while omitting the source’s detailed mechanics of self-harm. It does not present the ghost premise as fact.

Read the original: Read The Ghost Who Was Foiled in the Project Gutenberg edition

Reading guidance: older readers. Contains a suicide crisis and frightening supernatural coercion. Detailed self-harm mechanics have been omitted. The mother’s suffering deserves support in its own right, and the tale’s ghost belief should not be used to stigmatize people in distress.

Reading the story closely

The ghost describes another person’s death as an opportunity for its own release. The soldier refuses that exchange even when returning the rope would end their immediate dispute. This makes his choice more specific than fearlessness: he considers the next person who might be harmed.

Compare what each witness can see. The soldier sees the ghost; the villagers later see him arguing with empty air and the mark on his arm. The mark supplies the tale’s closing evidence, but the mother’s thoughts and longer recovery remain largely untold. Discuss that gap without reenacting the crisis or asking readers to identify with its dangerous actions.

Talk about it

• How do the ruined temple, weather and red gown create the ghost-story atmosphere?
• What interrupted the young mother the first time, and how did the soldier stop her the second time?
• The story ends when the soldier rides away. What continuing care for the mother is missing from that ending?

Related stories

• The Flying Ogre — another spooky Wilhelm tale set on a lonely road
• The Night on the Battlefield — named in the book’s preface as a ghost story with a happy ending
• The God of the City — a drowned spirit who refuses to win freedom through another’s death