Shh, It’s Time for a Ghost Story

[Short ghost stories + Chinese-style horror + rural setting + strange folk tales]

Have you ever heard of a cow bride?

The legend says you must offer the blood of an old yellow ox that can no longer plow the fields.

Skin it, pull out its tendons, and hammer ninety-nine iron nails into its skull.

Nail it inside a wooden coffin and leave it hanging for forty-nine days. When you open it, a peerlessly beautiful woman with pale skin will be inside.

My older brother was born disabled, ugly, and coarse, and our family was poor. He had no chance of finding a wife.

So my father sacrificed our old yellow ox in a yin coffin ritual.

The ox had clearly been skinned, dismembered, and had its neck snapped, yet someone heard an animal wailing inside the coffin all night...

On the forty-ninth day, a young woman with red lips and pearly teeth really did crawl out of the coffin!

But from that day on, strange things began happening in the village...