Chapter 0050 The Ghost Couple
Ms. Bao sighed: "In the old community's square, there were some children's toys, a slide and so on, and many children would go there to play. That day, several children were playing on the slide. My husband happened to be on vacation, so I asked him to take Yangyang downstairs to play. Yangyang was two or three years older than the others and was usually a bit of a bully. He pushed a smaller girl over to play by himself. The girl cried, and my husband sat watching nearby, smiling and smoking. The girl's mother saw my husband's attitude and got very angry. She questioned my husband and, at the same time, reached out and pushed Yangyang down."
Hearing this, I couldn't help but interject with a smile: "Your husband must have exploded, right?"
"He did. He immediately started cursing. The other woman didn't back down, saying my husband didn't know how to raise a child. In a fit of rage, my husband slapped the woman across the face," Ms. Bao said. "That woman's husband and younger brother showed up at our door that evening, and the two families got into a huge fight. Eventually, neighbors called the police, and the police managed to separate the two sides. Everyone had only superficial injuries; it wasn't serious. Logically, that should have been the end of it—at most, the two families would avoid each other like enemies in the future..."
I asked, "Then what?"
Ms. Bao said: "Later, my husband completed a project and made a lot of money, so we sold the old house, wanting to buy a new one. After registering with the real estate agency, the manager strongly recommended this apartment in the garden community where we live now. He said the owner was moving abroad and urgently needed to sell, and the price was ten percent lower than the market price. If we agreed, he was willing to waive the agency fee just to boost transaction volume, but we had to complete the procedures within ten days because the owner had to move to Japan in ten days."
I said, "This house is great. The community is clean and beautiful, and the property management facilities are good. If the price is low, it's a real bargain."
Ms. Bao sighed: "That's what we thought at first. Because this garden community is famous in Dalian, we all felt like we found a great deal. Especially my mother-in-law, after viewing the house a few times, insisted that we must buy this house. I said I wanted to look at other properties, but she got very unhappy, saying it wasn't easy for her son to earn money, so why wouldn't we buy a house that saves money? After she said that, I couldn't argue anymore, so my husband paid for the house. We moved in with our family of four, and less than half a month later, my mother-in-law was walking her dog in the community one day. A girl passed by, and the dog barked fiercely at her, scaring the girl into kicking the dog once. My mother-in-law went up and slapped the girl twice. The girl's family was timid and didn't come to argue with us. Another time, my husband got into a huge argument with someone whose car grazed his car when driving in, and he even broke the other person's head with a tire lock, paying more than 20,000 yuan in compensation. Since then, people in the community avoid us, saying that our Bao family is like the Black and White Impermanence—trouble if you cross us."
I smiled. China has gotten richer in the past decade or so, but spiritual civilization hasn't kept up, so the quality of many people is still low. That's normal. Everyone has encountered people like this. But how does this relate to the problem she wants to talk about? Ms. Bao noticed my confusion and said: "Then one night, my mother-in-law went to the bathroom in the middle of the night. She accidentally fell as she passed through the living room, hitting her head on the tile floor, and died suddenly. Less than half a month after her death, Yangyang went to the living room to get water one night. Without turning on the lights, he saw my mother-in-law sitting on the sofa, which terrified him. She has been dead for half a year now, but my husband and I occasionally hear movement and sighs in the living room late at night. The sound is exactly like my mother-in-law's."
I said, "When I entered the community, I heard people seemed to be discussing your family."
Ms. Bao waved her hand: "Don't even mention it. Those people hate us. But those are secondary issues. The main problem is the severe haunting in my house. The microwave turns on by itself in the middle of the night, the TV lights up suddenly, and the stereo plays automatically. At first, we thought it was my deceased mother-in-law appearing, but late one night, my husband, child, and I returned from a social dinner. I entered the bedroom without turning on the light, but the curtains weren't drawn. The moonlight was very bright that night. Under the moonlight, I saw two people sitting on the bed—a man and a woman. The man wore a white shirt, and the woman wore a red slip dress. They were sitting side by side on the edge of the bed, just staring at me. I fainted right then and there. Later, my husband told me that he didn't see anything after turning on the light and claimed I was hallucinating."
I asked, "Did your husband and son encounter similar things later?"
Ms. Bao said helplessly: "Yes! To guard against thieves, we installed a surveillance camera in the living room when we moved in, recording 24 hours a day. One night, my husband went out to play mahjong with friends. I was sleeping soundly in the bedroom with the door closed and didn't hear him come back. In the middle of the night, I vaguely heard him push the door open and come in. Without a word, he took off his clothes and... did that with me. He carried on for over half an hour. I begged him to stop, but he kept going. Finally, I got angry and kicked him off the bed. He left the bedroom for the living room, and I didn't pay him any mind and just fell asleep. The next morning, I didn't see him. I worried if he went out to find a prostitute last night, so I turned on the computer to check the surveillance footage. The result was that last night he... he didn't come home at all!"
I asked suspiciously, "He didn't come home all night?"
Ms. Bao looked embarrassed: "Yes, I called him. It turned out he played mahjong all night the night before and was sleeping at a friend's house. But who was the man... the man last night? Even though I was half-asleep, I still recognize my own husband's face. It clearly was him that night!"
As Ms. Bao was talking, her husband came out of the bedroom and waved his hand: "Stop talking! What good is telling him all this nonsense? How can he help you? They're all a bunch of scammers!"
"Don't mind him. That's just how he is," Ms. Bao said reassuringly. I asked her if she had sought help from anyone else. Ms. Bao said: "I found a very famous Xianjia from Dalian. The Xianjia said my mother-in-law was buried in some kind of 'corpse-nurturing ground' (Yangshidi), which is an extremely unlucky act that brings endless misfortune to descendants unless the body is relocated and reburied. So, my husband and I went to the rural graveyard where my mother-in-law was buried and found someone to open the coffin. What we saw frightened us all. My mother-in-law was buried with my father-in-law, who died over ten years ago, and his remains were long reduced to bones. My mother-in-law's body had been buried for several months, and it was summer, yet she looked exactly as if she had only died a few hours ago, with no change at all. We had no choice but to change the location and rebury her."
As she narrated this part, Ms. Bao still looked terrified, as if the scene was still vivid in her mind. I was also quite startled; I had never heard of something called a "Yangshidi." Ms. Bao's husband sat on the sofa, lit a cigarette, and their son, Yangyang, clung to his father, looking terrified. Mr. Bao scoffed: "That's what she says, but I asked many fortune tellers. They all said that any body buried in a Yangshidi won't rot. But the graveyard in my old village is definitely not a Yangshidi. Otherwise, why did my father's body rot into bones?"
I nodded: "That makes sense. I think your mother-in-law's body not decaying doesn't seem to be because of some Yangshidi. I find the cause of her death suspicious. Did she perhaps run into something that night and was frightened to death?"
Ms. Bao and Mr. Bao exchanged glances, both showing surprise and respect on their faces. Ms. Bao said, "How did you know? Later, my sister helped me find a 'spiritual consultant' (Kanshis) to come to my house. That person said the Yin energy in my house was too heavy, especially in two places: the master bedroom and the living room. He also said that someone must have died in the living room within the last six months. My sister certainly didn't tell him about my mother-in-law's death beforehand!"
I chuckled: "That doesn't necessarily mean the consultant is powerful. Many people gather information thoroughly beforehand to appear accurate."
Ms. Bao said, "But he was right about the master bedroom! The night I saw the ghost couple sitting on the bed, that also happened in the master bedroom. Even though this house is haunted, nothing has ever happened in the second bedroom where my son Yangyang sleeps."
I thought to myself, could this spiritual consultant really be authentic? Mr. Bao snorted: "What good is that? All talk and no solution is the same as saying nothing!"
I said, "It's obvious that your mother-in-law's soul is still in this house. She might be walking around the room right now, maybe even watering the flowers."
When the couple heard this, their mouths dropped open. Mr. Bao asked anxiously, "My mom is walking around this room? Why can't I see her?"