Ghost Record

  In 1990, at the age of 14, I wandered off to find my six-year-old sister who had gone missing. Along the way, I caught a small water ghost in a river. Over the next eight years, I traveled with this water ghost across half of China, encountering many strange people and events.

  Let me introduce myself, I am Li Tiaohe, born on the Qingming Festival in 1976 in Guiping, Guangxi. At the same time, my sister Li Mogu was also born, only one minute younger than me.

  My mother was unmarried and pregnant, my father was a educated youth from Shanghai who returned to Shanghai in September 1975. After my father left, my mother discovered she was pregnant, waited two years for him to return but he didn't so she drank pesticide and killed herself, leaving behind our two-year-old brother and sister with our grandparents.

  My sister and I were six years old when our grandparents passed away one after another, leaving us to our uncle. Our family was extremely poor, so my uncle only wanted to raise me and sent my sister Li Mugu to a couple from Hunan who worked on road construction in Guiping.

  The day that couple took my sister away, both my sister and I cried our voices hoarse. The pain of separation was forcibly imposed on our young minds. From that day on, my life goal has been to find my sister back.

  When I was eight years old, my uncle got married. After that, my childhood was filled with endless chores and beatings, except in winter when we wore shoes. My uncle later became addicted to gambling, and every time he lost money, he would beat me for no reason. I lived with my uncle for eight years but never had the chance to go to school.

  In April 1990, I finally rebelled and got into a fight with my uncle while we were planting peanuts in the field. I was already 14 years old at that time. I used a hoe to knock out two of his front teeth, and then I was kicked out of the house and started drifting from place to place.

  After my uncle drove me out of the house, he didn't give me a single penny. I stole three chickens from my uncle's house and sold them in town for seventeen yuan.

  With this money, I decided to go find my sister, but where was my sister? All I had heard from my uncle was that she was in Hunan. I didn't know exactly where Hunan was, and thought it was just another village, a very distant village. So I set out on the road to Hunan with these seventeen dollars.

  The first day, we walked and stopped until nightfall. At that time, most of the remote rural areas in Guangxi did not have electricity, and after dark, there was no one outside, it was pitch black, you couldn't see your hand in front of your face even if there was a moon. Even with a moon, you still couldn't walk, or else a venomous snake would pop out and bite you to death.

  The first night after I came out was spent sleeping in the sun-dried rice field, which was adjacent to the village and was built during the big pot meal. That evening was already April 14th, and after midnight it was the 15th. After walking for a day, I didn't know where I had walked to, but followed the lights to this village. In places without human habitation, I didn't dare spend the night, finding a village even if not entering it, outside the village is safer than the wilderness.

  The village has no more than a hundred households, and most of the houses have already gone to sleep. The moon was very bright that night, I found this drying field, ate a few bites of sweet potatoes baked in the field at noon, and fell asleep as soon as I lay down.

  I don't know what time it was at night, a gust of cold wind woke me up. Afraid of catching a cold, I went to a pigpen to find some straw to continue sleeping. After circling around, I found that all the doors of the pigpens were locked. Just as I was about to return to the sun-dried rice field, I inadvertently glanced through a window of a pigpen and saw two bright red coffins inside.

  The moonlight shone through the window onto those two red coffins, extremely terrifying and eerie, scaring me so much that I fled in a panic, jumping directly into the paddy field and running back to the threshing ground. Covered in mud from head to toe, I sat on the threshing ground, scared half to death.

  After sitting for a while, I felt drowsy and uncomfortable, so I rested my head on my knees to doze off. In a daze, I heard the sounds of blowing conch shells, beating cymbals, and Buddhist monks chanting scriptures nearby.

  In most rural areas of Guangxi, after a person dies and has had Buddhist rites performed at home, they are placed in a coffin and then taken to an open area for another one or two hours of Buddhist rites. Afterwards, firecrackers are set off as the coffin is carried up into the mountains for burial.

  At the third watch of the night, I heard the sound of doing Buddhist rites for the dead. It scared me so much that my drowsiness was gone in an instant. I suddenly lifted my head to look around but saw nothing, and the sound also stopped abruptly. Without staying for half a second, I immediately ran into the village. All the dogs in the village were barking loudly until I saw a small cottage with lights on, then I stopped running and walked in.

  This small hut is a gambling den, with over a dozen people crowded inside playing cards and betting. I walked into the hut without anyone paying attention to me, so I hid inside and watched them play until dawn before leaving.

  In the afternoon, I killed a snake by the river and roasted it to eat. Since I didn't sleep much last night, I felt extremely sleepy and found a shady banyan tree to take a nap under. Before I knew it, I slept until dark.

  During the day, it's very cool under the banyan tree, but at night, it's very gloomy. I've also heard that the banyan tree gathers yin energy, and many lonely spirits and wild ghosts live in its hollows, coming out at night to eat people's hair. Last night was terrifying enough sleeping on the threshing ground near the village, let alone tonight under this banyan tree, especially since today is already the 15th.

  We were in the first year of junior high school at that time, and children couldn't run around wildly on the fifteenth night. That was the day when the deceased returned home for dinner. At that time, basically, kerosene lamps were used, there was no electricity, so there was no TV to watch, and after dinner, everyone had already gone to sleep. Tonight, even if I have ten times more courage, I wouldn't dare spend the night outside, I want to find a village, just like last night, watching people gamble until dawn.

  I reckon it's around 10 or so at this time, not yet midnight, and I shouldn't be too scared. I walked for about a mile or two, and had to pass through a bamboo forest. The bamboo forest was very dark, and the road could only be vaguely seen, but it led into the depths of the forest, which seemed to stretch on forever; perhaps there would be a village after passing through this forest.

  In those years, the roads in the village were all small paths for people to walk on, and even these small paths were rare. The road from one town to another was only about one or two meters wide, and bicycles were not yet popular in rural areas.

  So this road is the only way I can go, otherwise I'll have to spend the night outside. I spat a mouthful of saliva onto my palm, rubbed it in, and wiped it on my face. Gritting my teeth, I steeled myself and walked into the bamboo forest. The bamboo grew very densely here, and walking inside was even darker than looking in from the outside - I could only barely make out the outline of the road. I regretted entering this bamboo forest, but thinking about how far it would be to go back to the village made me grit my teeth and keep moving forward.

  On both sides of the road, in the dark and dense bamboo groves, it seemed that frightening monsters were hiding, ready to jump out at any moment and pounce on me. I started running, wanting to quickly leave the bamboo forest. After less than 2 minutes, it was so dark that I couldn't see the road anymore. Because of fear, I took out a match and lit one, but after the match went out, everything around me became even darker.

  I actually didn't know where this road led, I just thought that after passing through the bamboo forest there would be a village. I was hesitating whether to continue walking forward when suddenly it lit up behind me.

  I turned around to see that three yellow flames were floating two meters above the ground, and these suddenly appearing three flames scared me so much that my legs went soft, because they were ghost fires.

  I didn't know that ghost fire was phosphorus fire back then, and I never went to school. Although now I don't believe that ghost fire is phosphorus fire either. Ghost fire and phosphorus fire are different, phosphorus fire is just a self-ignition phenomenon, it burns in the air for a moment and disappears. While ghost fire is more like a conscious ball of fire, it can stop and move, even follow people, with a purposeful drift to a certain place, just like a transparent person holding a torch.

  I've also heard adults say that ghost fire is a guiding light, when people die and can't find the road to the underworld, the ghost fire comes to guide them. Some people also say that ghost fire is used by ghosts to go out for a stroll, just like people going to market, where there is ghost fire is the ghost market, they come here to receive the paper money and incense burned by their families.

  Those three clusters of ghost fire illuminated the entire bamboo forest, floating in mid-air with two high and one low. After seeing me, the ghost fire stopped drifting and burned at a height of about two meters above the ground.

  This is not my first time seeing a will-o'-the-wisp, I've seen it at least ten times. In the past, when I was catching frogs with my uncle in the mountains and rice fields at night, I saw it many times too. But neither my uncle nor I were afraid, besides, the will-o'-the-wisps we saw were all far away.

  In this gloomy bamboo forest, encountering a ghost fire at such close range, and being alone, I would definitely be scared out of my wits. But as the saying goes, "the more you fear something, the more it likes to tease you", our rural elders often say that these things will haunt you if you're afraid of them.

  I immediately bowed my head, my right hand tightly grasping a bamboo branch as thick as a finger, my eyes fixed on the three balls of ghost fire, in a standoff for over a minute. This minute was like an eternity, during which the ghost fire did not move at all, as if it were nailed to the air like a torch. And although I stood still, every cell in my body was tense, and by this time I was already drenched in sweat.

  I let out a loud roar to muster up my courage, cursing and swearing at the same time, something like "You son of a bitch, who told you to scare people here? Watch me dig up your grave and gnaw on your bones!" Although I was cursing like this, in reality I was scared stiff. As I cursed, I snapped off that bamboo branch and charged towards the ghost fire like a madman, preparing to use the branch to extinguish it.

  In rural areas, it's common to say that a broom is used to sweep away dirty things. The function of a broom is to clean and sweep, and mountain spirits are also called dirty things, which are most afraid of being swept away by a broom. In the past, brooms in rural areas were all made of bamboo branches, so I used bamboo branches to deal with it.

  That ghost fire saw me holding a bamboo branch and rushing over like crazy, immediately floating up, passing over my head and drifting into the depths of the bamboo forest.

  I was already scared to the point of cold sweat all over my body, where I dared not chase after it. Rushing forward was just a counterattack with no retreat, and it wasn't that I wasn't afraid of it. So when I saw the ghost fire floating away, I immediately rushed out of the bamboo forest. After leaving the bamboo forest, I was afraid that something would come out from behind me, so I turned my head to take a look, but all I could see was pitch blackness, yet somehow I felt like there were countless evil spirits and ghosts lurking in this bamboo forest.

  I don't know how far I ran, but I was exhausted to the point of death. Suddenly, I saw a small temple. The temple was very small, just a single room made of mud bricks and tiles. At the entrance of the temple hung two red lanterns. As I walked in, I saw five deities enshrined inside: Pangu, Nezha, Xuanwu Emperor, Qianliyan, and Shunfeng'er. The central deity, Pangu, was the tallest, over a meter high, holding the moon in his left hand and the sun in his right hand. In front of him, Nezha was only as tall as a beer bottle.

  In front of the statue, there was an offering table with some peanuts and a incense burner on it. Since it was the 15th day of the lunar month, the two lanterns hanging in the temple were still lit, plus there were five statues of gods, I felt extremely safe and decided to spend the night in this temple.

  Actually, this mountain temple is a gathering place for lonely souls and wild ghosts. Because on the first and fifteenth of every month, there are people who come to burn incense, they enjoy the villagers' incense fire, and generally will not come out to harm people. However, I didn't know any of these things before, and just thought that temples were all places where gods lived.