Spooky Beijing: The City's Creepiest Tales

Build on a graveyard, expect a haunting. But hire a leper to be your gatekeeper, and the ghouls will stay away. That’s supposedly what happened at the Huguang Guild Hall at Hufangqiao Lu. The leper eventually died, though, and there was nothing stopping the ghosts from returning. That’s why if you throw a stone over the wall late at night, you’ll hear an angry scolding. But you won’t find anyone inside.

A tailor whose shop was located near the execution grounds at Caishikou was awoken one night by the sounds of a prowler, but he found only some of his sewing tools missing. The next day there was a commotion. The head of a decapitated criminal was found to have been stitched back onto his body – and the corpse was holding the tailor’s needle and thread.

Caishikou may have been where criminals were executed but Wudaokou was their final resting place. Do the mass graves under the high school attached to the Geosciences University explain the deaths of so many workers falling from the roof during its construction? Does it explain why several teachers later found the floor of the staircase disappearing beneath their feet?

There’s a well at the Forbidden City that a concubine threw herself into. If you dare look into it, they say, it’s not your reflection that will be looking back at you. There’s also a rumor that no matter what the weather, the Forbidden City starts to get very cold at 5pm everyday. Is it a coincidence that they try to hurry you out before then?

Ever wanted to sneak into the Bell Tower late at night? Don’t be surprised if you see a little girl looking for her embroidered shoes. If her father had been able to cast the bell to the Emperor’s specifications, she wouldn’t have had to throw herself into the molten metal to make the bell cast true – and wouldn’t have lost her pretty shoes.

81 Chaoyangmennei is well-known as a haunted house. The jilted wife of a KMT general hanged herself inside, and it’s said that her cries can still be heard during thunderstorms. In 2001, drunken construction workers broke through the wall of the cellar. None was ever seen again.

Paoju Hutong, east of Lama Temple, was the site of a munitions factory-turned-jail. In the 1980s, a notorious pickpocket was incarcerated there. One day, he ventured to the prison latrine late at night. “Hey, there’s no toilet paper here!” he shouted. No response. Then a shadowy hand appeared. There was a low growl: “I’ll give you some toilet paper.” Go to Miaofeng Shan in Mentougou District if you want to hear thousands of ghost soldiers howling in the night.

A taxi driver dropped off three girls (one dressed in white, one black and one very colorfully) at a residence in Fengtai District. They paid with a single bill; he gave them change. The next day, he saw he had been given joss money. “Three girls?” said the woman who answered the door when he drove back to the house. “No girls live here.” “But our cat gave birth to kittens last night.” Sure enough, one of the newborn kittens was white, one was black, and the last one was calico – and all of them were curled up around the money he had given the girls the day before as change. “What a great deed you’ve done,” exclaimed the owner. “You allowed those poor souls to reincarnate.”

“Who are you? What do you want?” demanded the old lady when she saw the stranger outside her Jinsong apartment. The long-haired woman stood silently with her back to her. The old lady tried to push past the woman, but then she let out a shriek and fainted. Later, when she woke up in the hospital, her family asked her what had happened. “When that thing turned, there was nothing but more long hair and its backside,” the old lady whispered. “That ghoul had no front.”

Rumor has it that a dragon known as Sea Eye was locked with chains in a well at Beixinqiao. When the Japanese occupied Beijing in 1937, a few of their soldiers pulled at the chains, only to be greeted with yellow liquid, the sound of wind and the smell of the sea. No one has ever pulled the chains all the way. In fact, it’s said that Line 5 subway construction was rerouted around the site so as not to disturb the dragon.

Despite all of the construction around the Drum Tower, the white bridge just east of Houhai remains untouched. A pair of 2,000-year-old animal statues can be seen under the bridge. Legend has it that if they are disturbed, Beijing will be under water. Prince Li’s Mansion, out by the West Fourth Ring Road, is one of the city’s legendary haunted houses. Over the past century, tornadoes as tall as three men have been experienced near the mansion. Ten steps away, all is calm.

When the Beijing Subway was first constructed, so many mysterious setbacks occurred that people began to say it was the thousands of graves that the construction disturbed. To appease their spirits, it’s said, a monk was hired to perform a ritual, during which it was promised that every day after 11pm, an empty train would be sent around to return the souls to their resting place. So, does this actually happen? Well, for most subway lines, the last train still leaves around 11pm. Who can say what happens afterwards?

Opposite Dongyue Temple near Dongdaqiao stands an ancient gate. In the Ming Dynasty, three eunuchs had it built, warning that nobody should ever move this gate. During the 1950s, authorities made three attempts to tear it down. Each time, someone died mysteriously. The gate stands there still.

November 14, 1995. Three men step onto Bus 375 between Yuanmingyuan and Xiangshan. The middle one, supported by two men in Qing-era uniforms, hangs his head. They make the other passengers nervous but the ticket lady says they’re probably drunk actors.
“Thief!” shouts an old lady a few stops later, grabbing the young man next to her, not letting go. He protests his innocence but she demands that they get off at the nearest police station.
“Young man, I just saved your life,” she tells him solemnly. “Those strange-looking men who got on the bus – when they walked past us, I saw that they had no legs!”
Three days later, the bus was found near Miyun Reservoir, nearly 100km away, with three badly decomposed bodies inside. The gas tank was filled with blood.

Click here to see the October issue of the Beijinger in full.