Tag Archives: Chinese ghost story

鬼压床 or gǔi yā chuáng

Age: 24

TEXT:

鬼压床

gǔi yā chuáng

CONTEXT: Informant-“One thing relative to ghost is like in Chinese sleep paralysis is often called “gǔi yā chuáng”, which literally means a ghost pressing on your bed. So scientifically, it means your mind wakes up before your body fully does, so you feel like unable to move. But in folk belief in China, like people describe it as a ghost or spirit sitting on your chest. So this is interesting because it shows how people use like folklore to explain scary bodily, bodily experiences before scientific explanations became common. And I heard it from my family when I was a little. I think if it’s in both ghost stories and folk-like explanations of strange experiences”

ANALYSIS:

The informant explains that gǔi yā chuáng, at least to her, is a cross between folk belief and a ghost story as it, in some ways, has to do with the paranormal. Learning the story from her family, she has grown up with this belief and come to understand it as a dated way of understanding the more scientific world around us at a time that we lacked the means to fully comprehend sleep paralysis.

Ghost in photography

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: Oct 29th
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

Me: Have you ever heard some ghost stories from your parents or grandparents?

S: Yes. I once heard a scary story from my parents.

Me: Why did they tell you this story?

S:You know, adults like to make fun of kids by telling them ghost stories and see how they are terrified.

Me: What is the story then?

S: It happened in a ‘Village-In-The-City’. A boy died of traffic accident and a funeral was held for him. Several girls passed by and one of them picked a flower from the wreath for the boy. She was going to a photo studio, hence she put the flower on her hair and took the photo. When the photographer developed the film, he barely saw a boy’s face behind the girl. He waited for the girl to come back and take the photo, but the girl never returned. He managed to get in contact with the friends of the girl, only to be told that the girl had died due to another traffic accident.

Context: The information was collected in a informal private conversation.

Interpretation: Both photos and ‘Village-In-The-City’ are related to ghost in Chinese cultural background. When photography was first introduced to China, people were terrified because they thought that the soul of human would be captured by the photos. So, when the girl picked the flower from wreath, an action that was considered to be irreverent, the soul of the dead boy might just followed her and was captured by the photo. ‘Village-In-The-City’ may be a special phenomenon in China when the city area expanded so fast that the original village is unable to move away. It is kind of a liminal space where the urban area overlaps with rural area, providing a good background for ghost stories.

My Mother’s Favorite Ghost Story

Nationality: Singaporean
Age: 56
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: 04/27/2021
Primary Language: English

Context

This is a tale that my mother often told me and my sister when we were children. Tales like these are common especially during the Hungry Ghost Month or Ghost Festival. The Ghost Festival takes place on the fifteenth day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar and is a time to pay respect to one’s deceased ancestors. The term ‘jie’ refers to my elder sister.

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Performance

The following is transcribed from a conversation between me, (M), and my mother, the interviewee (I).

M: Can you tell me the ghost story that you always tell jie and me when we were younger?

I: Which one?

M: The one I hated the most.

(I laughs)

I: Yes. So, you used to get a lot of bruises on your arms and legs when you were younger.

M: Why did I get so many bruises?

I: You just ran around a lot I think. But so, I used to tell you that whenever you get a bruise and you don’t know why, it’s because you did something wrong that day, and there’s a ghost living under your bed that comes out during the Hungry Ghost Month and pinches you in your sleep. And you get one pinch for every wrongdoing.

M: That’s terrifying. Why did you tell jie and I that story?

I: It was funny, you girls always get so scared. It also wasn’t real, and I didn’t think you girls would believe me.

M: What things would we do wrong that would warrant the story?

I: Small things like picking up your clothes or finishing your food.

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Analysis

This story has always frightened me as a child, but today I can look back and laugh at the tale and also understand where this myth comes from. The myth of a ghost pinching children at night for their wrong behavior is to encourage good behavior. The behaviors that were encouraged were never significant things of not hurting someone or not lying, they were often smaller things like finishing all the food of your plate or learning to tie your shoelaces properly. I think with smaller behaviors, it’s often harder to justify because there isn’t huge moral reasoning behind it. And thus it can be easier to come up with a myth and use fear to get children to behave well.

The Haunted Art House in Woodneuk

Nationality: Singaporean
Age: 84
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: 04/12/2021
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: Malay, Hokkein

Context

My grandmother enjoys telling us stories of Singapore when she was younger, one of the stories she most enjoys telling is that of the haunted art deco house at Woodneuk. This story came about during one of our conversations.

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Performance

The following is translated and transcribed from a story told by the interviewee.

“When you go behind Holland Road there’s the old mansion. Now everyone goes there and takes photos but last time no one went there because it was haunted. It’s still haunted, but nowadays no one cares, no one respects the place. It’s an old house build for the Sultan a hundred years ago. The house was very big for time, and it meant to be a beautiful place. The Sultan had a Scottish wife, but when she died, he left the place, and he never bothered to go back. So it just sat there. And the place is haunted, the wife never left the house because she loved it so much and never wanted to leave it. But now kids go there and take photos and they are disturbing the wife.”

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Analysis

This is a fairly common ghost story told in Singapore about the abandoned mansion. There aren’t many abandoned buildings in Singapore as it is a small city with limited space and the government is proactive in ensuring that all the space available is used. Thus, the very abandoned places like the mansion in Woodneuk have many myths and tales surrounding it. Historically, the story is accurate. There was a Sultan with a Scottish wife that build the mansion, though the story gets a little blurry with whether the wife died and why the Sultan left the house. I think in the case of the Woodneuk mansion, the ghost story was put in place to scare people away from visiting it. My grandmother was frustrated with children going there to take photos and felt that they should’ve just left the house alone. The architecture in the house is traditional and unique and it would stand that there are those that would hope to protect it. However, because the government does not protect the house and make it a cultural landmark, people have spread ghost stories in an attempt to keep people away. In the age of social media and with the new generations believing less and less in superstition, this no longer works effectively. And instead, the idea that the place is haunted actually drives people to go visit it.

Relatives in Dreams

Nationality: China
Age: 47
Occupation: Government officer
Residence: China
Performance Date: October 29, 2020
Primary Language: Chinese

Main Piece: Interviewer: When I was little, I lived with my grandparents. One day at breakfast, my grandfather told me that his mother, who has been dead for years, came to his dream last night. In the dream, she complained to her son that her feet were cold. In the beginning, my grandfather did not understand what she meant, so he decided to visit his mother’s grave. The grave was in the cornfield and the coffin should be covered by straw. When my grandfather arrived, he discovered that the straw at the end of the coffin was shoveled away by someone unknown. Then, he suddenly understood the meaning of the dream, so he put the straw back to the top of the coffin. After that, my grandfather has never received any complaints from his mother.

Background: There are lots of ghost stories in rural China. Many people there state that their dead relatives have come to their dreams to inform their living conditions in the underworld. Then, according to dead relatives’ needs, people burn some money or clothes for their relatives so they could live more comfortably in the other world.

Context: I have heard this story from this interviewer in the past, so this time I just ask her directly when we were having supper together. She was quite convinced and confident about this story because there were some similar dreams happened to her relatives as well.

Thoughts: My aunt used to tell me a similar story of her great grandfather in her dreams asking her to burn some clothes for him. In fact, I did not feel frightened when I first heard these stories. Instead, I thought they were very warm. These stories embody people’s yearning for their dead relatives. We all hope that our loved ones can go to another wonderful world and still communicate with us after death. Therefore, those stories actually comfort a lot of people by making them feel less afraid of death.