We’re fast approaching that time of year when souls and saints appear. A time for recalling and repeating tales of the unexplained. So come along, I invite you to revisit this true tale of a little boy who encounters a foreign ghost in a Chinese cemetery.
My late husband Eugene was a “ghost whisperer.” Or so some believe.
He saw his first ghost when he was still a child. It was wartime and he lived in a war zone—a place with more than its share of people who’d died before their time, more than its share of discontented, angry spirits.
Enemy troops occupied his island in those days. Still, little Eugene wandered the lanes, watching the flow of life, playing and talking to the shopkeepers. One afternoon, he found himself far from home as the sun was sinking into the sea, and he realized he’d never make it back before curfew unless he cut through the cemetery.
As he sprinted down the lane, shopkeepers on either side were pulling their metal shades down for the night. The cemetery was all long shadows and pools of darkness. He heaved open the iron gate and darted inside. Then, skipping and dodging around the tombstones and newly dug graves, he raced into the spreading darkness.
That’s when he saw the ghost. She was floating over the graves, a tall, shining woman in a flowing white dress with the long nose and round eyes of a foreigner.
He froze for an instant. Then he ran as fast as he could, stumbling over grave markers, rocks, and uncut grass. He didn’t stop until he reached the gate on the other side of the cemetery. Looking over his shoulder, he saw her. She was close behind, floating between the trees, watching him.
“Stop following me,” he shouted.
She reached her hand toward him.
And he took off again.
When he told his mother and grandmother what he’d seen, his mother scolded him for staying out late. His grandmother put her arm around him and asked if he’d ever done anything to harm a foreign woman.
“No, Grandmother,” he said. “Never.”
“Then you needn’t worry. Next time you see a ghost, remind her you did her no harm during her lifetime, and she will leave you alone.”
It was useful advice since the white woman in the cemetery was not the last ghost Eugene was to encounter.
Happy Halloween.
Do you have a favorite ghost story or a tale of the unexplained?
Recommended reading materials for Halloween and All Saints Day:
Everyman ( play) by unknown
Elergy written in a county churchyard (poem) by Thomas Gray
Thank you, John. Here’s a link to Elegy written in a Country Churchyard. I haven’t read it since high school. I like this line: “The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,”
Good advice from Grandmother! How reassuring to live with a “ghost whisperer”.
My husband and his maternal grandmother had a special relationship. Her words must have meant a lot to him.
Such a sweet photo of him! And scary story! What a brave little boy he was! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for stopping by, Lenore. I guess little boys need to be brave during wartime. Of course, it’s better to come home on time so you don’t have to cut through the cemetery.
I feel like I need more Ghost Whisperer stories! Delicious chills.
Ghost stories are so much better with the lights off or, better yet, when told out in the woods around a campfire. This isn’t a ghost story, but once we were camping in the mountains (in bear country) in an old-fashioned tent. Very early in the morning (It was still dark.) we heard something that sounded like clawing on the side of our tent. After a few minutes of shivering, my husband opened the flap and saw a friend who, somehow, had found us in Mt. Baker National Forest and was throwing cones against our tent.
LOL. Pretty mean and pretty funny.
What a great story. I remember when you mentioned Eugene’s ghost whisperer ability in other blog posts. I always do wonder if ghosts are real. I for one have never seen one but other people around me have seen some, even my wife saw in her early childhood the ghost of her grandfather passing by her on a bicycle few months after he had passed away
I think I mentioned in an earlier post that when my husband’s grandmother died, she lived in Taiwan and he lived in Japan. He woke up in the middle of the night knowing she had died. He told his mother, who didn’t believe him until she received a telegram later that day.
It seems that many Chinese are intrigued by ghosts and ghost stories. Either they’re more imaginative than we are, or they’re most sensitive to the spirit world.
I think you had also another article along the lines that Eugene had to travel due to work to some country where the factory? was haunted or something. Could be also I have some totally messed up memory right now mixing together other stories.
No, you’re exactly right, Timo. The post you’re referring to is Eugene and the Angry Bangladeshi Ghosts. It was a cement plant.
Great post especially for Halloween. I bet there are more stories.
You’re right, Kate. There are more stories. Maybe I’ll drag another one out next year.
Such a great story, Nicki!!! Perfect for Halloween! Have a good one!
Trick-or-treaters never seem to make it to my neighborhood, but the city of Edmonds closes down one of the main streets between 5 and 7. The merchants are ready with big supplies of candy for the kids, and kids, adults, and dogs parade around in their best costumes. The rest of us come to watch.
Do you have trick-or-treaters?
I loved how you told this story, Nicki. I could feel your husband’s fear as he sprinted through the cemetery. That’s great advice he received. Thanks for sharing this! Happy Halloween!
Thanks, Jill.
Blogging doesn’t often give the opportunity to practice fiction-writing skills. Halloween gave me a chance to tell a little story. Happy Halloween.
Great punchline, Nicki. That sounded every bit a real encounter, and from how you told it, Eugene recalled every bit of detail. It could be his imagination, but you never know really. Some things are simply explained by the beings around us. I don’t have much of a good ghost story as this. But one time in high school in Singapore, some of my guy classmates were being cheeky and sat under and opened umbrella in class – all three of them. Our teacher chided them, saying it is bad luck. They kept doing that. A few minutes later, the electricity to the whole school got cut. Perhaps it was a coincidence 🙂
Even in this scientific age of ours, there are still many things we don’t understand. The more we learn about the human brain, for example, the more we realize there are still many mysteries about our brains yet to be discovered.
The book I’m reading now, Sapiens, suggests that somewhere around 1500 A.D. humans discovered ignorance. Before that time, they didn’t know (or weren’t concerned with) how much they didn’t know. And it was the discovery of ignorance that ushered in the Scientific Revolution and the tremendous progress and advance in knowledge over the past five hundred years.
So I suppose it’s good to keep an open mind and acknowledge our ignorance of many things, even the possibility of the existence of ghosts. I’m not saying they exist, but…