Miao Ridge Paranormal Chronicles: Thirty Nights of Mountain Folktales

[Guangxi + countryside + audiobook style + eerie + ghost stories + strange tales + mystery + suspense + anthology]

Western Guangxi is mountainous. Deep in the mountains live the Dong, Miao, Zhuang, and Yao peoples, each keeping their own customs and worshipping their own gods.

The year I entered the Hundred Thousand Mountains, I went with an old trader who bought medicinal herbs. By day, I followed him up the mountains to gather star anise. At night, I sat around the fire with the village elders and listened to their stories.

I spent three years there, traveling from the Dong villages of Sanjiang to the Zhuang villages of Baise, and from the Longsheng rice terraces to the border at Jingxi.

The Han call this Miao country the “Hundred Thousand Mountains.” The locals simply call it “the Old Mountains.” It is not a single mountain, but a vast range, layer upon layer, mist shrouding mist. Villages lie hidden in its folds, and you might go ten days or half a month without seeing a stranger.

Here, shamans go by different names. The Dong call them “Sa,” the Miao call them “Badai,” and the Zhuang call them “Daogong.” Whatever their name, they deal with matters that cannot be settled by the living.

Over those three years, I collected thirty strange tales: stories of poison worms, of escorting spirits to the underworld, and of weeping on the Wind-and-Rain Bridge at night.

Some came from drunken Daogong priests, some from old men on night watch, and some from poison-worm witches on the verge of death. As they told their stories, their eyes were fixed and unblinking. They didn’t seem to be making things up. It was more like they were recounting what they had experienced themselves.

Now, hiding away in a small hotel in Nanning, I’ve finally arranged these strange tales into a book. Do you want to know if they’re true? I don’t know. All I know is that nights in the Miao mountains really are longer than elsewhere. Whenever I write late into the night, there are always sounds outside my window: a roof tile rattling softly, a bronze drum rumbling in the distance, or fingernails scratching across wood...

Now, listen as I tell you, slowly, of thirty old tales from deep in the Miao mountains, stories of the living and the dead.