A ghoulish tale from the Far East

Zach- October 24, 2005

Halloween isn’t really celebrated here in Shanghai; it’s mostly expats and the pubs that cater to them that are advertising this upcoming All Hallow’s Eve. However, Tiffany and I had our own hauntingly eerie, goosebump-inducing experience this past week.

It all began innocently enough. Vanessa’s mom was coming to Shanghai to visit. We had heard numerous stories from Vanessa about her strong-willed mother, and how she exerted great influence on the family and its affairs. A significant part of her visit was to be dedicated towards Vanessa’s older sister, Andrea, who at 23 had defiantly revealed to her mother that she was dating a German boy. But none of this matters to our story.

Vanessa informed us last Saturday that we were invited to lunch to meet her mother. As the venue was the most famous soup-dumpling house in Shanghai, Tiffany and I were quite excited to go. Little did we know the steep price we were to pay for those tasty soup dumplings…

Lunch seemed to be going well; the light chit-chat and easy banter matched our delight as each successive round of steaming, delectable dumplings were delivered to our table. I don’t really remember how Vanessa’s mom started talking about her dead grandfather. But suddenly, the entire table was silenced, enraptured with her every word:

Many years ago, her grandfather had passed away, in the Chinese village from which her family had originally emigrated. She was just a young girl at the time of his death, and was living in Singapore. Her parents made travel arrangements as soon as possible, and they flew into China, took a bus to the nearest town, and hired a local driver from there to take them to their “lao jia” (hometown, or literally, “old home”) for the funeral. As per the local Chinese custom, the dead body was kept unburied for a period of five days, to allow for proper mourning. Necessarily, the open coffin was kept outside, where the vile odors wafting from the rapidly decomposing body could drift downwind of the village. The fact that Grandfather had died in July did not help matters at all, and between the stifling summer heat and still, humid air, the family’s mourning was significantly enhanced by their own misery. The body had to be attended to at all times, as a display of respect and mourning. However, another reason for the constant vigil was to protect the body from stray animals wandering near the body, specifically, pregnant cats, which were known to be involved in strange and mystical phenomena, and had a legendary history of attempting to jump over the coffins of dead, unburied bodies.

The journey for Vanessa’s mom and her parents to get to the village was a long and arduous one, and one not made easier by the fact that a rapidly forming summer thunderstorm had cast a gray pall across the vast plains, threatening to tear through the sky at any moment. By the time the car pulled into the village, it was getting late, and the clouds that had been gathering force all day were rapidly darkening, blotting out what little daylight remained. The brisk winds had turned ugly, whipping dirt and brush through the air, and carrying sporadic droplets of impending rain. Nevertheless, the remaining uncles and cousins who still lived in the village happily met them outside, and hurried to help them carry their luggage indoors. Their eagerness was not wholly unmotivated hospitality, however. As transportation was not as regular in those days, it had taken the family two days to reach the village, and so Grandfather’s vigil was already on Day 3, which meant that the village-based family had already attended to the body for almost 72 straight hours. They were exhausted. And especially with the increasingly driving rain and first flashes of lightning, they were more than ready to hand over the mourning reins to their newly arrived family members. The problem was, Vanessa’s mom and her parents were just as tired themselves after the rough journey. With the perfect filial piety of all good Chinese girls, Vanessa’s mom volunteered to take the first night’s watch, outside, in the middle of a thunderstorm, so that her parents could sleep and rest. The other family had seen the storm approaching, and so had erected a canopy over the coffin under which Vanessa’s mom could take cover.

So it was that Vanessa’s mom found herself sitting outside, in the middle of the night, surrounded by pitch black darkness (the village, of course, had no streetlights), with a howling thunderstorm whipping the canopy around, and all alone. Well, not all alone. She of course had her dead grandfather to keep her company, and caught creepy glances of him every few minutes, when his body would be lit up by a random flash of lightning. And she would jump, seconds later, when the inevitable, bone-shaking crack of thunder followed. Unnerved as she was, fatigue eventually set in, and Vanessa’s mom began to nod off. Some time later, with a prescience of danger, her eyes suddenly popped open, and peering desperately into the darkness, she could just barely make out the creeping silhouette of movement near the coffin. But though her mind willed action, the enervating weariness had slowed her reflexes, and she could not move quickly enough. A long streak of lightning split the night, and revealed her worst nightmare. As if caught in a freeze frame, Vanessa’s mom could clearly make out a pregnant cat leaping over her grandfather’s dead body, its face locked in an evil, hissing snarl, its luminescent, opaque eyes locking with hers. Then, just as suddenly, the light died, and absolute darkness was restored. Vanessa’s mom froze. Unable to get up or sit back down, she prayed that she had been hallucinating. Thunder struck the earth, and in horror, Vanessa’s mom saw her grandfather’s body pop out of the coffin. Lightning flashed again, and her jaw dropped at the sight of her decomposing grandfather, risen from his coffin, leaning in towards her. With her mouth set open in a silent scream, Vanessa’s mom stumbled backwards in terror, unable to tear her eyes away from the ghastly body that began to follow her. Somehow, she managed to turn and break into a run, back towards the house, only to find that her nightmare was not to end. The haunted corpse continued to close in on her, and entered the house right on her heels. With her pounding heart in her mouth, sure she was going to die, she spotted her uncle, who had heard the commotion, and ducked just as he threw a broom, hitting her grandfather squarely in the body. And just as suddenly, the body slumped to the floor, dead again. It was then that Vanessa’s mom remembered how to scream again.

Much later, a vague explanation was given to Vanessa’s mom. The lightning had passed an enormous amount of electromagnetic energy and charged her grandfather’s body, which was attracted to the iron in her blood. This accounted for the corpse following after her. When her uncle struck the body with the broom, the charge was grounded and the bond broken. To this day, her cousins will marvel at the time that they were woken to the hysterical screams of Vanessa’s mom, and all rushed downstairs only to find Grandfather’s body, collapsed on the living room floor. Vanessa’s mom, suffice to say, has not attended a funeral since. In fact, she was so traumatized by the event that when I asked her permission to retell her story, she only agreed on the condition that I not use her name.

That’s it for now. Stay tuned for later this week, when we discuss the other half of our visit with Vanessa’s mom. Happy Halloween!