In Laijiang there were two scholars who were close friends. The older, A, was a grave man. B’s wife called him “uncle”, and they treated him as family.
Then B’s wife died. He remarried, and A, from delicacy, stopped visiting, and they lost touch.
One evening in the rain, taking shelter in a tea pavilion two li from B’s house, A suddenly saw B’s dead wife. His heart leapt and his face changed.
The dead woman said: “Do not be frightened, uncle. It is you I need. My husband’s second wife is diligent about the house and good to my children. Today they had a small quarrel, and a hanging ghost has heard of it, and means to make her hang herself. If that woman dies, my family is finished. I beg you to come and save my husband.”
A said: “I am no shaman. What can I do? You are in the world of the dead — can you not restrain the thing yourself?”
“It is a vicious qi. How dare I match myself against it? You must come.”
A had no choice but to go with her.
At the door the door was already shut, and B’s dead wife slipped in through a gap and opened it. Somehow a lamp was already lit. She moved a chair into the courtyard and told A: “Sit here, uncle. If a beautiful woman comes asking to pass, that is the hanging ghost. Sit absolutely still. She will not dare come forward. I will watch from behind your chair.”
Presently a woman came with a red handkerchief in her hand, smiling and speaking sweetly: “I have business in front. Would you move back a little?”
A did not answer. The woman withdrew.
B’s dead wife said: “She has gone, but she will come back. When she comes her manner will be much worse. Do not be frightened.”
Presently the woman came. “Why do you not give way?” A took no notice.
Then the woman suddenly let down her hair and spat blood and was suddenly in front of A, who shouted at her with all his force. And the ghost was gone.
“What a pity,” said the dead wife. “You should not have shouted. If you had written the character 魄 in the air with two fingers of your left hand and pointed it into the ground, she would have gone in and been unable to get out. She is only gone for now. She will go secretly to my husband’s house. Knock at his bedroom door at once.”
A did as she said. B recognised his voice out of his sleep. “Why are you here at this hour?”
“Do not ask me anything. First ask where your wife is.”
B felt round the bed and could not find her. He opened the door hurriedly and called A in.
They lit a candle. She was hanging behind the bed. Together they cut her down, poured soup into her, and she came round slowly.
B asked his wife: “Why did you do such a thing?”
“I do not know. As if in a dream a woman invited me into the garden, and we walked about a while. Then I saw something like a round window, and she told me to put my head through and look. My head went in and would not come out.”
A then told them what he had met. And of B’s first wife there was no further trace.
Lu Zaitian, a geomancer of Jiangxi, was a friend of A’s, and told this.
