A Liu, a scholar of Wujiang, was tutoring in the Jiang family of Yuanhe county. At Qingming he asked leave to go and sweep his parents’ graves, and when that was done he was returning to his post. He said to his wife: “Tomorrow I am going to see a friend at such-and-such a place, and then take a boat to Changmen. Get up early and cook.”
His wife did as she was told, rose at cockcrow, and set to work. Liu lived in the country, his house backing onto a hill and facing a river. His wife rinsed rice at the river and picked vegetables in the garden, and had everything ready, but it was already full light and her husband had not got up. She went into the room to hurry him, called repeatedly and got no answer, and lifted the bed-curtain and looked.
Her husband lay across the bed with no head, and there was no blood.
In great alarm she called the neighbours to look. They all suspected the wife of murdering her husband with a lover, and reported it to the officials. The officials came and examined the body, ordered it coffined for the time being, and arrested the wife and questioned her under torture. In the end there was no real evidence, and she was put in prison, and the case dragged on for months undecided.
Later a neighbour went up the hill to gather firewood and saw an exposed coffin in an abandoned grave. The coffin was sound, but the lid was slightly raised, and he suspected grave-robbers. He called a crowd to open it and look.
The corpse’s face was as in life, with white hair all over its body, and in both hands it was holding a human head. They looked closely and recognised Liu the scholar, and reported it to the officials for examination.
The officials ordered them to take the head away, but the corpse’s hands held it so tightly that several men pulling could not open them. The officials ordered them to chop at the zombie’s arms with axes. Fresh blood poured out — and Liu’s head had no blood at all, because the zombie had sucked it dry.
The officials ordered the body burned, released the wife from prison, and the case was closed.
