The Night on the Battlefield

There was once a merchant traveling up the road from the South toward Shantung with his goods. Around the second watch of the night, a violent storm swept down from the North. Just then he noticed an inn beside the road where the lamps were being lit, so he went in to get a drink and ask for a bed for the night.

The people of the inn did not want to take him. But one old man among them felt sorry for him in his plight. “We have just cooked a meal for soldiers who have come a long way,” he said, “and there is no wine left to give you. But there is a small side room that is still empty, and you may spend the night there.” And he showed him into it.

The merchant was too hungry and thirsty to sleep. Outside he could hear the noise of men and horses, and since none of it seemed quite natural to him, he got up and peeped through a crack in the door. The whole inn was full of soldiers sitting on the ground, eating and drinking and talking about campaigns he had never heard of.

After a while they began calling to one another, “The general is coming!” and far away the shouts of his bodyguard could be heard. All the soldiers hurried out to meet him. Then the merchant saw a procession carrying many paper lanterns, and riding among them a warlike-looking man with a long beard. He got down from his horse, came into the inn and sat at the head of the table. The soldiers stood guard at the door waiting for his orders, and the innkeeper brought food and drink, which the general ate and drank heartily.

When he had finished, his officers came in. “You have been on the march for some time now,” he told them. “Go back to your men. I will rest a little myself. There will be time enough to sound the assembly when the order to advance comes.” The officers took their orders and left.

Then the general called, “Send Asti in!” and a young officer came in from the left side of the house. The people of the inn barred the gates and went off to bed, while Asti led the long-bearded general to a door on the left, where lamplight showed through a crack.

The merchant crept out of his room and put his eye to the crack. Inside was a bamboo bed with no blankets or pillows, and the lamp stood on the floor. The long-bearded general took hold of his own head. It came off, and he laid it on the bed. Then Asti took hold of the general’s arms; they came off too and were carefully placed beside the head. Then the old general lay down across the bed, and Asti took hold of his body, which came apart below the hips, and the two legs dropped to the floor. Then the lamp went out.

Wild with fright, the merchant fled back to his room as fast as he could, holding his sleeves in front of his eyes, and lay down on his bed, where he tossed and turned without sleeping all night long.

At last he heard a rooster crow far away. He was shivering. He took his sleeves from his face and saw dawn creeping across the sky. When he looked around, he found himself lying in the middle of a dense thicket. All about him was wild country: not a house, not even a grave, anywhere in sight.

Chilled as he was, he ran about three miles until he reached the nearest inn. The innkeeper opened the door and asked in surprise where he had come from so early in the morning. The merchant told him what had happened and asked what kind of place he had spent the night in.

The innkeeper shook his head. “The whole district is covered with old battlefields,” he said, “and all kinds of uncanny things happen on them after dark.”

Where this story comes from

“The Night on the Battlefield” is chapter LV of Richard Wilhelm’s The Chinese Fairy Book, translated by Frederick H. Martens (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1921), among his ghost stories. Wilhelm’s note says he took it from the Sin Tsi Hia.

Martens’s preface mentions it, under the title “A Night on the Battlefield,” as one of the book’s “delightful ghost stories, with happy endings”: the merchant survives the night, although he is frightened, cold and unable to sleep. That limited sense of a happy ending should not conceal the story’s disturbing imagery.

Read the original: The Chinese Fairy Book (Project Gutenberg)

Best for older readers with an adult — a ghostly general’s head, arms and lower body are removed, and the witness spends the night in terror.

Reading the story closely

The inn first answers the merchant’s need for shelter, then becomes less reassuring with each observation. The soldiers discuss unfamiliar wars, the general’s body comes apart, and dawn removes the building itself. The last innkeeper supplies a possible framework—an old battlefield—without identifying the army or explaining its return.

List the clues in the order the merchant receives them, leaving the final explanation covered until the end. Which earlier scene changes most once the landscape is revealed? The narrator’s refusal to solve every detail lets the remembered routines of war remain more unsettling than a fully explained ghost.

Questions to ask

• What clues make the merchant suspect that the inn is not quite natural?
• What do you think the soldiers and their general really were?
• Why do you think the story ends with the innkeeper’s words instead of explaining more?

More stories like this

• The Ghost Who Was Foiled — another Wilhelm ghost story where a traveler comes through safely
• The Punishment of Greed — the ghost story just before this one in Wilhelm’s book
• The Talking Silver Foxes — fox spirits, disguises and unsettling encounters