PÚ Sōnglíng: The Transformed Corpse

The Transformed Corpse

Procursus:

The present story of a reanimated and irrationally homicidal corpse may or may not be a vampire or zombie tale as we know them in English storytelling, since the creature ignores her first victims once they are dead and never catches the one she pursues. But it is unquestionably a story about the depersonalized hostility of a reanimated dead body. For a brief note about Chinese “zombies,” click here.

This version, like so many Chinese frightening tales of the supernatural, comes from the brush of the remarkable PÚ Sōnglíng 蒲松龄 (1640-1715), one of the stories in his “Liáozhāi” 聊斋 collection. For more about this remarkable writer, click here.

However Pú is not the only teller of this tale. A closely similar variant was collected as part of an oral tradition project among Chinese in San Francisco in the early 1930s. It is also available on this web site (link). Pú’s influence on Chinese ghost lore was enormous, and it is tempting to imagine that the San Francisco version, despite the intervening centuries, is a well remembered retelling ultimately derived from Pú’s writings. But Pú himself does not claim originality for his stories, so we do not know how old this one may actually be.

DKJ

The Transformed Corpse

by Pú Sōnglíng 蒲松龄

Dramatis Personae

An old innkeeper and his sons

His long-deceased but still unburied wife

Four weary travellers

A temple full of frightened Buddhist priests

A Daoist priest living nearby

A pragmatic magistrate

Acknowledgements: The traditional Chinese text is from the Chinese Wikisource. Pinyin and simplified character versions were mechanically created from it. The translation is from J.J.M. de GROOT 1892-1910 The Religious System of China. Leiden: E.J.Brill. Vol. 5, pp. 734-738. The Wikisource Chinese has been corrected in one or two places, following de Groot, and repunctuated.


1.	A certain old man of Yángxìn 阳信 (in Shāndōng 山东) lived in Càidiàn 蔡店, a place in that district. His village lay five or six miles from the walls of the district-city. He and his sons kept a road side-inn to lodge travelling traders, and several carters and itinerant peddlers used to put up under their roof.
2.	One day as it was getting dark, four men appeared. Perceiving the house, they went thither with the intention of staying, but the sleeping-rooms destined for visitors were all occupied.
3.	Considering that there was no other place to put up, the four men urgently entreated the landlord to take them in somehow, on which he hm’d, and said he thought a place might be found for them, though it would not suit, their taste. The strangers replied that all they desired was a single mat to sleep on, and a shelter, and that they could not be at all particular.
4.	The fact was, that a daughter in-law of the old man had just died, her body still lay uncoffined in her house, and the son had gone to fetch a coffin and had not yet returned.
5.	The old man took the strangers down the street into the lonely house where the corpse lay. They entered the apartment, where a lamp shed a dim light over a table ; behind this a curtain hung, and the deceased woman lay there under paper shrouds.
6.	They saw also a sleeping-place in a screened-off section, with four beds placed against each other in a row. Fatigued by their journey, the strangers had no sooner thrown themselves on their pillows than they were snoring loudly.
7.	One of them was not quite off, when suddenly he heard a creaking sound on the couch of the corpse. Immediately he opened his eyes, and saw distinctly by the light of the lamp standing before the corpse, that it had raised the shroud and risen.
8.	In a moment it was on the floor, and slowly entered the sleeping-room. Her face had a wet gold hue, and she wiped her forehead with a coarse gauze cloth.
9.	In a stooping attitude she approached the beds and blew thrice on the three sleeping travellers; the fourth, terror-struck, fearing that he too might be hit, gently drew the blanket over his face and held his breath to listen.
10.	Forthwith she breathed on him as she had done on the others; then he perceived that she left the room, and hearing the rustling sound of the paper shrouds, he put out his head to take a peep, and saw her lying rigid as before 1.
11.	The traveller, extremely frightened, lacked courage to raise the alarm. Stealthily stretching forth his foot, he kicked his comrades, but they did not stir in the least, and thus he conceived there was no other alternative for him but to put on his clothes and slink away.
12.	No sooner, however, did he rise and move his coat than again there was that creaking noise, which caused him to hide himself anew, terror-stricken, with his head under the blanket. He perceived that the woman came again and breathed over him repeatedly, doing this over and over again before she retired.
13.	After a short pause, he knew by the noise on the death-bed that she had lain down as before. Now he put his hand very slowly out of the blanket, seized his trousers, quickly got into them, and ran out of the house, bare-footed.
14.	The corpse too jumped up as if to give him chase; but by the time it came forth from behind the curtain the traveller had drawn the bolt and was off.
15.	With the corpse at his heels he rushed forth with loud shrieks, which alarmed everybody in the hamlet.
16.	He would have thumped the door of the inn but for his fear that it would make him lose time and bring him within reach of the demon; so, seeing the road to the district-city before him, he ran up it with all his might, till he reached the eastern suburb.
17.	Here he saw a Buddhist convent, and hearing the wooden fish, nervously beat on the outer gate. But the monks, astonished at such an unusual tumult, hesitated to let him in; and as he turned round, he saw the corpse quite near him, hardly one foot off. -A hollow, fish-shaped block beaten with a clapper while reciting sacred books and liturgies.
18.	In these straits he sought . shelter behind a white willow four or five feet thick, standing outside the convent-gate. As the corpse dodged to the right, he dodged to the left, and so on, which enraged the corpse more ,and more, and exhausted them both.
19.	On a sudden the corpse stood still. The traveller, soaked with perspiration and with panting chest, sheltered himself behind the tree; the corpse raised itself fiercely and threw both its arms around it to grab him. At that moment he sank to the ground in fright, and the corpse thus missing its victim, remained rigid embracing the tree.
20.	For a good while longer the monks stood listening, and hearing nothing more, they came forth circumspectly, to find the traveller flat on the ground.
21.	By the light of their torches they perceived, that though he was apparently dead, there was still a slight palpitation under his heart. They bore him into the convent, but the night passed away before he came round.
22.	Having refreshed him with some broth, they interrogated him, and he related to them the whole story. By that time the morning-bell sounded, and in the early dawn, still dimmed by mist and fog, the monks examining the tree discovered the woman upon it in a rigid condition.
23.	In great consternation they reported the incident to the magistrate of the district. This grandee appeared in person on the spot to hold an inquest, and ordered his men to pull off the arms of the woman ; but so firmly were they fixed in the tree that it was impossible to unclasp them.
24.	They found, in fact, on a closer inspection, that the four fingers of either hand were bent like hooks, and sunk into the wood so deeply that the nails were buried in it. A fresh batch of men was set to work to pull with all their might ; and as they tore her off, the holes made by the fingers were found to look as if made with a chisel or auger.
25.	Now the mandarin dispatched a messenger to the old man, who gave him a confused mixture of truth and untruth about the disappearance of the corpse and the death of the travellers. The matter being explained to him, he followed the messenger and took the corpse home.
26.	The traveller, bursting into tears, said to the magistrate: “I left my home with three men, and now I must return alone; what shall I do to make my fellow-villagers believe my words?” So the mandarin gave him a certificate, and sent him home with some presents.
27.	Source: “Strange Tales From a Rustic Studio” (1): The Transformed Corpse