The licentiate Li Yushuang had a maidservant named Chunyun, of some beauty. She was fifteen. Li wanted to take her as a concubine, and had already come to an understanding with his wife about it.
One day in broad daylight Chunyun saw a man come down from the roof-tiles. He put his arms round her coiffure and sniffed at it: “Your hair smells very sweet. You are going to be greatly honoured. You should follow me, not your master. Your master is a poor scholar who keeps a school; even if he passes the provincial examination he will end as nothing more than a school official. Tell your master to yield you to me, and to supply me with wine and food, and I will come and live in your house as a husband.”
Li was furious when he heard it, but there was nothing he could do. That night the spirit came and lay with the maid.
She begged her master to provide wine and food. When he did as she asked, the house was quiet day and night; otherwise there was a plague of bricks flying and tiles being thrown. Li had no choice but to discuss with people putting the house up for sale.
Li taught at the Shi family’s house on Wangxian Bridge and was not often at home. One day a merchant named Sun Gengwen came to look at the house. He knocked, and an old man with a grizzled beard in a grey squirrel-fur robe came out to meet him, waved his hand, and said: “This house is my ancestral property and is not for sale. Do not listen to the nonsense of that boy Yushuang, or take it over privately between you; you will find yourself in a lawsuit later.”
Sun was greatly alarmed, and went off and told Li, reproaching him: “While your father lives, a son may not act on his own.”
Li said: “My father died more than ten years ago, and there is no such old man in the household.” Then they knew the spirit had been mocking them, pretending to be his father, and the two of them laughed together.
After that people knew the house was haunted and it could not be sold. Li told the maid’s parents to take their daughter home and not ask for her purchase price. The maid gashed her own face and cut off her hair, and swore she would not go home. Her mother, fearing the spirit would do her harm, tied her up with rope, bundled her home, and married her to a scholar. The spirit never came again.
