An old man from a village in Yangxin County ran a roadside inn with his son. The village lay about three or four miles from the county seat, and travelers passing through often stopped at the inn for the night.
One evening, four wagoners arrived and asked for lodging. Unfortunately, the inn was already full. With nowhere else to go, they pleaded with the old man to take them in.
The old man hesitated. He had thought of a place where they might sleep, but feared they would object.
“Please,” the men insisted. “All we need is a roof over our heads. We won’t complain about anything else.”
The old man’s daughter-in-law had recently died. Her body lay in the house, awaiting burial, while his son was away buying lumber for her coffin. The room where she lay was otherwise empty, so the old man led the travelers through the village to it.
Inside, a dim lamp burned on a table. Behind it hung a funeral curtain, and beneath it lay the dead woman, covered by a paper quilt. Beyond that room was an inner chamber with several beds.
Exhausted from their journey, the four men had barely laid their heads down before their breathing grew heavy. Soon, three were fast asleep.
The fourth remained in the hazy state when he suddenly heard a rustling from the funeral bed.
He held his breath and peered through the darkness.
The dead woman had thrown off the paper quilt and risen. She climbed down from the bed and slowly made her way to their chamber.
Her face was a pale golden color, and a strip of raw silk was wrapped around her forehead.
She bent over the first sleeping man and blew on him. Then she moved to the second and did the same, followed by the third.
The watching wagoner was terrified. He knew she would come to him next. He secretly pulled his quilt over his head, held his breath, and tried not to make the slightest sound in his throat.
Before long, the woman approached him. Just as she had done to the others, she bent down and blew on him.
He lay perfectly still.
After a while, he sensed that she had left the room. Then he heard the rustling of the paper quilt again.
Carefully, he poked his head out and peered into the other room. The woman was lying stiffly on the funeral bed, just as she had been before.
He was so frightened that he dared not make a sound. Instead, he reached out with his foot and nudged his companions, one after another.
None of them moved.
He thought desperately about what to do. There seemed to be no way out except to get dressed and run.
He had just begun to rise and shake out his clothes when the rustling started again.
Terrified, he dropped back down and buried his head beneath the quilt.
The dead woman had risen once more. She came to him and blew on him several times before finally leaving.
A little later, he heard the funeral bed creak. She had returned to lie down again.
The wagoner slowly reached a hand out from beneath the quilt and felt around for his trousers. He pulled them toward him, hurriedly got dressed, and fled barefoot from the room.
The dead woman rose as well, apparently intending to pursue him. By the time she emerged from behind the funeral curtain, however, he had already unfastened the door latch and escaped.
She came running after him.
The wagoner ran and screamed, but no one in the village woke. He considered pounding on the innkeeper’s door, then feared he would be caught before anyone could let him in. Instead, he turned toward the road to the county seat and ran for his life.
When he reached the eastern outskirts, he spotted a temple and heard the sound of a wooden fish being struck inside. He rushed to the gate and pounded on the door.
The monk inside was startled by the man’s frantic behavior. He hesitated, however, and did not immediately open the gate to let him in.
In the blink of an eye, the dead woman arrived. She was barely a foot away from the wagoner.
He was desperate.
Beside the temple stood a white poplar tree, its trunk over 10 inches in circumference. The wagoner darted behind it and began circling the trunk to keep it between himself and the corpse. When she moved to the right, he went left; when she moved left, he went right.
The woman grew increasingly furious.
But both of them were growing tired. At last, the dead woman suddenly stopped.
The wagoner stood panting beside the tree, sweating.
Without warning, the woman leaped forward and stretched both arms around the trunk, reaching across it to seize him. The wagoner was so startled that he fell to the ground.
She failed to catch him. Instead, she clung to the tree, frozen upright in place.
The monk had been listening for a long time. When he heard no more sounds, he finally crept outside.
He found the wagoner lying on the ground. Taking a candle, he examined the man and thought he was dead. But when he looked more closely, he found that the man was still breathing.
The monk carried him inside. The wagoner did not regain consciousness until dawn.
The monk gave him something warm to drink and asked what had happened. The wagoner recounted the entire ordeal in detail.
By then, the morning bells had finished ringing, and the sky was just beginning to lighten. The monk went outside to examine the tree.
Sure enough, the dead woman was still standing there, rigid and motionless, clinging to the trunk.
The monk was in shock. He went to report the matter to the magistrate.
The magistrate came in person to inspect the scene. He ordered several people to pull the woman’s hands away from the tree, but they would not budge.
On closer examination, he saw that the four fingers of each hand had curled like hooks and pierced deep into the wood. Even her fingernails had disappeared into the trunk.
Several men pulled together before they finally managed to free her hands.
The holes left by her fingers looked as though they had been bored into the wood with a chisel.
The magistrate sent constables to the old man’s inn to investigate. The family was already in an uproar: the daughter-in-law’s body had vanished, and the wagoners were dead.
The constables explained what had happened. The old man then accompanied them to the scene and took his daughter-in-law’s body back home.
The surviving wagoner wept as he spoke to the magistrate.
“We set out as four men,” he said, “but now I’m the only one returning. How will the people in my village ever believe what happened?”
The magistrate gave him an official document certifying the circumstances and sent him on his way.