Zhou Yihan of Qiantang was a provincial graduate of a bold and generous temper. One very hot summer he went out on the lake at nightfall with seven or eight companions.
When they came below Dingjia Hill, one of the party said: “I hear there are a great many ghosts to the left of the Long Bridge at Jingci Temple. Why not go and look for them? Perhaps we may see one to the face, which would be good for a laugh.”
They all urged one another ashore, and walking along by the bridge they met a man carrying a night net with fish. The graduate looked at him closely: it was his own grave-keeper. So he said: “Lend me that net; I will return it in the morning.” The grave-keeper agreed, and the net was handed to a servant to carry on his shoulder. His friends asked why, and the graduate said: “I am going to catch all the ghosts under South Screen Mountain in one net.” At which they all laughed, and they took a lonely path up the hill.
The moon that night was as bright as day. In the wood ahead they saw a woman in a red jacket and a white skirt, looking up at the moon.
His friends said: “At this hour of the night there can be no woman out of doors. She is a ghost for certain. Who dares go first?”
The graduate offered, and strode forward. When he was about half a bowshot away a cold wind blew, the woman turned round, her face was running with blood and her two eyes hung upside down. The graduate trembled, stood frozen and could not move, and shouted again and again: “The net! Bring the net!”
The others came up and cast the net over her. There was no trace of her; in the net there was only a foot or so of rotten wood. They carried it back, knocked up the grave-keeper for a sharp saw, and sawed it into pieces inch by inch — and it ran with fresh blood.
So they bought a bottle of the innkeeper’s lamp oil, carried it to the stern of the boat, lit a fire and heated the oil, and dropped the sawn pieces of wood into the bottle. In a moment green smoke flew up, and the wood had become charcoal.
At daybreak they went into the city and told their friends and kin: “Last night we boiled a ghost in an oil bottle — a very strange business indeed.”
