Lingnan Ghost Arts

My name is Wang Luo, from Guangxi, born in a small county town.

Old villages in small towns are always filled with tales of ghosts and spirits, passed from mouth to mouth—stories of water ghosts seeking substitutes, the wailing of ghosts in wild mountains, or spirits returning home on the fourteenth of the seventh lunar month.

When I was a child, living in the old house, I’d often hear voices and coughs during summer nights. I could never tell if I truly heard them, or if, after hearing so many of those ghostly tales, I simply frightened myself.

With so many legends, all sorts of taboos and customs followed. In our village, there were two great taboos: the deep mountains to the north, and the old blind crone who dwelled there.

What kind of place was that northern mountain? We had an unwritten rule: any child who died young was not to be lavishly buried. A thin coffin and a simple stone were enough. In the old days, everyone was poor and couldn’t afford coffins. If a child died young, people would dig a pit in the northern mountains and bury them there. For those even younger, the body would be wrapped in a mat and tossed into the hills. That place became a gathering ground for all the village’s darkest tales, full of lonely, wandering souls.

As for the old blind crone—she wasn’t from the village and no one knew when she’d arrived. It hadn’t been long. Her appearance was frightful, almost monstrous: her face covered in deep wrinkles and age spots, her blind eyes swollen like eggs, a mouth full of rotten yellow teeth. She was hunched, emaciat