Novels like The Forbidden Zone of the Living
Books Chinese readers most often put in the same booklists as The Forbidden Zone of the Living, best match first.
- 151 The Bride of the Vengeful Ghost 猛鬼新娘 When I was sixteen, I rescued a woman who had been tricked into coming to our village, simply because I wanted to help. I never imagined that my actions would not only get the poor woman killed, but also lead to the deaths of more than a hundred villagers. And so my strange life began. 5.5kReads9.0Score38814d adds
- 152 My Pale Life 我苍白的一生 My name is Zhang Yuan, though my childhood nickname was Ergou. I'm male, born in 1990. Everyone encounters all kinds of strange, inexplicable things in life. By the way, do you believe in ghosts? 491Reads8.4Score10114d adds
- 153 The Fatal Rule 致命法则 A rich guy in the group chat sent out a red envelope and said the person who got the most money had to play a game with him. The game turned out to involve the class belle... 319Reads8.9Score—14d adds
- 154 The Wolf King’s Revenge 狼王的报复 They say wolves are spiritual creatures and must never be killed recklessly. That winter, heavy snow sealed off the mountains. The village was bitterly cold and hungry, and nearly every household had run out of food. When a she-wolf died at the village entrance, the villagers took notice. Desperate to survive the famine, they skinned her, enraging the pack in the mountains. That was when misfortune began. Every farm animal in the village was bitten to death. Hair began growing on the villagers' 19Reads—Score114d adds
- 155 Graveyard Hauntings 坟地诡事 Strange things have been happening in the village lately. Every night, a chilling woman's voice can be heard asking, "Who has seen the father of my child?" "Come back, child's father. Look how adorable our baby is." The villagers say it's the ghost of a young woman who hanged herself from a tree, returned to claim lives. But more than one girl hanged herself from that tree. Which of them is the ghost? 7Reads—Score—14d adds
- 156 The Red Ghost in the Village 村里的红厉鬼 The village lies far from anywhere, with winding mountain roads. The harvest is good every year, but the crops simply can't be transported out. The only family in the village with a vehicle is Niu Dakui's, who owns a secondhand three-wheeler. The whole village relies on the two Niu brothers to haul its crops to the city and sell them for cash. The brothers use this advantage to bully people in our village all the time. And now Niu Dakui has set his sights on Xiaorou, the new wife of Chen Sheng. 9Reads—Score—14d adds
- 157 Back from the Dead 死而复生 When I was little, there was a saying in the village. If someone in a family died, then came back to life after lying in state for three days, they might turn into an evil ghost. But that was just something the old folks said. Nobody had ever seen it with their own eyes. Then one day, something like that happened to Old Zhao's family. —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 158 The Longevity Lock 长命锁 For the past two weeks, whenever Song Yaozu steps into the bathroom to shower, he sees a woman's head dangling from the ceiling, glaring at him. He gets a longevity lock from a Maoshan medium, but everyone who later receives the lock dies in a freak accident… A longevity lock, a longevity lock. But isn't it also a lock that demands a life in payment?… 1Reads—Score—14d adds
- 159 The Village of the Dead 死人村 Rainy days gather ghostly energy. Moving graves is most taboo at such a time, but someone ignored the warning, dug up their grandmother's grave, and threw her bones into a mass burial ground. After that, strange things began happening in the village. People died one after another. Yet Grandpa Tianci was thinking of using ghosts to summon the souls of the dead! 141Reads—Score314d adds
- 160 The Cursed Mirror That Takes Your Place 替命诡镜 A strong, heavyset man becomes so emaciated that he's on the brink of death. Doctors can't figure out what's wrong with him, and even fortune-tellers are helpless. His wife gets him a Yin-Yang Mirror that can restore his fortune. But the mirror's power comes at a price: every name written on it makes someone else suffer his misfortune. The man is overjoyed. As one name after another is written down, death follows close behind… 2Reads—Score—14d adds
- 161 The Hanged Girls 吊死的姑娘们 Strange things had been happening in the village with increasing frequency. Every night, an eerie woman’s voice could be heard asking, “Has anyone seen my child’s father?” “Come back soon, dear. Just look at our little one, isn’t the baby adorable?” The villagers said it was the ghost of a young woman who had hanged herself from a tree, returned to claim lives. But more than one woman had hanged herself from that tree. Which one was this ghost? 11Reads—Score—14d adds
- 162 Soul Calming: A Violent Death 镇魂之死于非命 Latest murder case: A wealthy couple in a villa district have both met gruesome ends. The husband was found dead in bed, dressed as a woman. The wife turned on the gas and burned herself to death! The scene was bizarre, yet surveillance footage showed that both deaths were suicides! No one knew that this was simply the just deserts of their own evil, the consequences of their sins coming back to haunt them… 1Reads—Score—14d adds
- 163 The Bloodstained Embroidered Shoe 染血的绣花鞋 In the mountain villages of Northeast China, there are rules: those who die violently must not be cremated. At the very least, they should be put in a coffin and buried on the back hill. Lin Xiu, the new bride in Granny Wang’s household, was found naked and abandoned in a field. Her eyes and lips had been sewn shut while she was alive, and the embroidered shoes on her feet had mysteriously disappeared. The villagers cursed and complained about the bad omen. Granny Wang simply tossed the body int 95Reads—Score—14d adds
- 164 My Years in the Funeral Business 我干殡葬的那些年 People light candles, ghosts blow out the lamps. The dead return at midnight, corpses rise in funeral halls, and ancient relics lie buried for thousands of years. In my years working in the funeral business, I’ve encountered plenty of strange and uncanny things. The living walk the roads of the living world, and the dead walk the roads of the underworld. But sometimes, not everyone on the underworld’s roads is a ghost, and not everyone on the living world’s roads is human… 50.4kReads9.2Score5k14d adds
- 165 The Skinning Ghost 扒皮鬼 (Traditional supernatural horror + extreme horror + multiple twists + mystery + entirely handcrafted) Lately, I've been having nightmares every night. A fortune-teller said I might have a ghost clinging to me. He told me about a forbidden folk ritual: Put on a pair of worn underwear over your head, and it will block a ghost's sight. That night, I got home and followed his advice, half believing it. My girlfriend came back to the room after washing up and stared blankly at where I was. "Where... 64.2kReads8.3Score7k14d adds
- 166 My Girlfriend and Best Friend Are Plotting to Have Me Killed 女朋友和好兄弟密谋让我去死 “Do you believe a painting can kill someone?” I took a job worth three hundred thousand yuan: recreating Along the River During the Qingming Festival. At first, I thought it was just an ordinary copy, until the old man from the coffin shop in the painting knocked on my bed in the middle of the night, a woman in a white dress silently watched me from the entryway, and the “boat girls” that had appeared out of nowhere seeped into every stroke of paint like a curse. My buddy urged me on: “Fortune f 1Reads—Score—14d adds
- 167 Strange Happenings in the Ancient City 古城诡事 A mysterious phone call full of suspense and a childhood friend he hasn't seen in years draw him into a dangerous web of intrigue. Following the clues, he steps into one carefully laid trap after another. His friend, returned from the dead, Qin Zhijie, who clings to him relentlessly and seems neither wholly good nor wholly evil, and Shangguan Wan'er, whose identity is shrouded in mystery, all vanish without a trace at the most crucial moments. Why did Da Kui, who had braved life and death, come 50Reads8.8Score414d adds
- 168 Trading a Life for Wealth 借命换财 The money Grandma had secretly buried in the ground to treat her terminal illness was gone. I didn’t find out it had been stolen until our neighbor started livestreaming to show off his wealth. He’d also stolen the lucky doll I used to pray for Grandma’s recovery, and showed everyone how its wishes always came true. But the neighbor had no idea: he was trading luck for money. —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 169 Seven Hours of Terror in the Villa District 别墅区惊魂七小时 In the early hours of Qingming, a notice from the deceased property manager, Bohe, appeared in the residents’ group chat: “Pay your property fees in full by nine.” The residents sneered, until the doors and windows locked, the phones lost signal, and at exactly nine, everyone who’d skipped their payments jumped to their deaths. The bloody footage played on loop across every screen. I pulled out the payment records. My wife looked away. When I was tearing down an illegal structure, she’d secretly —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 170 The Skeleton in the Wall of Dorm Room 404 404女寝墙里的尸骨 In November 2025, human remains were discovered in a girls' dormitory at a high school. I sat in my swivel chair, with the DNA test report the lab had just sent over beside me. It read: DNA testing was conducted on hair follicles from clothing found with the remains inside the wall of Room 404, the girls' dormitory at Xingming Private High School. Preliminary findings suggest the victim died between six and ten years ago. Name: Chi Zhuo, male, 181 cm... I stared intently at the name, then took a —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 171 Possessed by a Starving Ghost on the Ghost Festival 七月半饿死鬼附身 When I was little, the village elders used to say that on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, the gates of hell swung wide open and restless spirits roamed everywhere. It was the worst night of all to go out. But I refused to believe in that sort of thing. I opened a tea shop in a mahjong parlor, thinking I could make a little extra money. Instead, I came face to face with something I should never have seen. No one was in the private room, yet I heard it bustling with noise. A customer —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 172 Who Killed Him? 是谁杀了他 At 8:30 on Saturday night, a woman arrived at her friend's home for dinner, as invited. The security door was ajar, and light from the hallway spilled through the gap, brightening the entryway. She could just make out the outline of a person lying flat in the bedroom opposite the door. As she turned on the lights, she caught sight of a woman lying facedown in the middle of the kitchen, vomit piled around her nose and mouth, half her face submerged in dirty water. Water from the sink dripped over —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 173 The Midnight Mantou Shop 午夜馒头铺 Have you ever noticed that some breakfast shops serve food that's delicious most of the time, but for a couple of days each month, it suddenly tastes dry and is hard to swallow? Have you ever wondered if perhaps that breakfast food was never meant for people to eat...? 377Reads7.4Score—14d adds
- 174 Escape from Hell 逃出地狱 Because my cousin is weak-willed and a classic henpecked husband, my sister-in-law's family wanted to take my father's inheritance all for themselves. Just before my father was about to die of his illness, they actually kidnapped me and sold me into northern Myanmar, that living hell, without my cousin's knowledge! —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 175 Double Taboo 双重禁忌 When Dongzi was a child, there were many deadly taboos in the village. For example, a pregnant woman must never cross paths with a funeral procession. If she did, the dead person's soul would enter her body, turning her into a man-eating evil ghost. Another taboo was that anyone who lived past a hundred would become an evil ghost. Three days before an elder turned a hundred, people had to take them to the back mountain and leave them to fend for themselves. If they kept the elder at home, the ev 1Reads—Score114d adds
- 176 Cheers Curse: Anyone Who Mishears It Dies 干杯咒：听错的去死 “That American exchange student says ‘Cheers’ to me in his dreams every night, until I realize he misheard ‘Go to hell.’” In the graduate dormitory, Dennis grows paler by the day, and the doctors can’t figure out why. Then Mina brings back the exorcist’s verdict: Seven years ago, a girl whose foreign boyfriend cheated on her jumped from this building. Every night, her shattered head presses against Dennis’s ear and repeats “Cheers” in English... But when we reach the tenth repetition, the corner —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 177 Bao Dadan’s True Accounts of Ghost Encounters 包大胆撞鬼实录 “You’ve heard of people who are ‘bold beyond belief,’ but have you ever seen someone scare a ghost into shutting itself away?” My name is Bao Dadan. It’s not a stage name, it’s my real name. My friends say I’m missing a screw, but they changed their minds after seeing it for themselves: I talked the “haunting female ghost” the landlord warned me about into silence; I roasted a “human-faced fish” deep in the mountains with pepper until it shrieked; even the “Slit-Mouthed Woman” covered her mask a —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 178 The Deadly Mirror Image in the Symmetrical Bathroom 对称浴室的死亡镜像 “At three in the morning, I saw my ‘future husband’s’ face in the mirror, and three days later, he ran me over with his SUV until I was nothing but scraps.” My landlady told me in a hushed voice that if I recited an incantation to a mirror at midnight for 49 days in a row, I’d see my destined partner. On the 47th day, her son’s twisted smile appeared in the mirror. I screamed and fled the apartment, but at the intersection he ran over me four times, reversing each time. The police said he kept s —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 179 Horror Sketches 恐怖素描 “The day I was accepted into art school through the recommendation program, I drew the killer who murdered Teacher Zhou with my own hands: the faceless woman who had been draped over my back for three whole months.” In the dead of night, a blizzard battered the studio windows with a crackling roar. I curled up in the bathroom and vomited, but a pale body slowly emerged in the mirror. Her long hair wound around my neck, her rotting fingertips stroked my spine, and where her face should have been. 3Reads—Score—14d adds
- 180 Paranormal Podcast 灵异播客 “What’s the most convincing paranormal story you’ve ever heard? As a paranormal podcast host, I thought I was just collecting urban legends, until a laugh that wasn’t mine came through my headphones. While I was adjusting the audio track, a shrill whisper seemed to breathe right into my ear, and a new waveform mysteriously appeared in the recording software. An expert told me, ‘That’s another audio signal. It isn’t human.’ Worse still, after I said, ‘Don’t come looking for me through my headphon —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 181 The Hypnosis Trap: The Forgotten Bloody Hand 催眠陷阱：被遗忘的血手 “I caused my husband and child’s deaths with my own hands, then spent an entire year forgetting them. The truth only tore through my memories as I fell, after my psychiatrist pushed me onto the rooftop.” The travel magazine from a year ago, the coffee cup that appeared out of nowhere in the living room, the unfamiliar father and son in the photo frame... I thought I was simply suffering from depression, until I encountered those blood-soaked hands during hypnosis and realized that forgetting was —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 182 The Night Shift Passage: An Invitation from the Dead 夜班通道：亡者邀请函 “Every night at ten, I open the supermarket’s rolling shutter right on time, never knowing that another world lies hidden at the end of the aisles: a black-gang nightclub that was burned to the ground. For two years, I watched my coworkers ‘disappear’ one by one. Even their names seemed to be erased, until Wang Tao grabbed my arm in the emergency exit, and a girl crawling with maggots in the Golden Ballroom pressed close to my ear and said, ‘Welcome to Brother Feng’s club. All the guests here... 1Reads—Score—14d adds
- 183 My Dead Friend 死去的好友 “I inherited my childhood friend’s billion-dollar fortune, but then received a call from him in the middle of the night. Yang Zhiyi, the man I’d pushed off a cliff with my own hands, gripped my throat with dirt-covered hands and asked me, one word at a time, in the mirror: ‘Why are you scheming against even my ghost?’” A staged mountaineering accident, a ‘will’ pieced together from lines in short videos: I thought I’d gotten away with a perfect murder, until a pair of glasses mysteriously appear —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 184 A Midnight Invitation to the Yin-Yang Eyes 阴阳眼的午夜邀约 “I’ve seen with my own eyes a boy with yin-yang eyes, blessed by Guanyin, get torn at by a shadow in a cemetery. I’ve heard Teresa Teng’s songs drifting out of a bakery’s refrigerator. And in a restaurant attic, I once came across a bloodied face embedded in the floor. But the creepiest thing of all is the ‘little ghost’ in my son’s playroom, growing up on the ‘fragrance’ it smells.” Notes written during a late-night cemetery exploration, a wandering spirit in cloth shoes in the kitchen during a —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 185 The Strange Happenings on Little C’s Moments 小C的朋友圈诡事 “My social media feed hides the truth behind seven cases of the living encountering evil spirits: Reporter Xiao Chen’s right shoulder is covered in bruises marked with the bite prints of an infant spirit; a junior student is chased to her apartment by a split-headed zombie on Halloween; tenant Xiao Chang waves through the window to a boy with no eyes every night at ten... The creepiest thing is the severed-hand granny who suddenly reaches out in front of a meat grinder at the market at three in —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 186 The Watcher Beyond the Cat’s Eye 猫眼外的凝视者 “That night, at dawn, the ‘person’ outside my peephole stared into my eyes for a full three minutes, until I realized its pupils weren’t moving.” A late-night food delivery buzzer jolted me awake, but there was no one outside the door. It wasn’t until I crushed the eyeball stuck to the peephole that the news began reporting a series of dismemberment murders in this very building. Even more terrifying, when I approached the peephole with trembling hands to check, that bloodshot eye was still pres —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 187 Nobody Working the Night Shift at This Company Is Human 公司里上夜班的都不是人 “You are absolutely not allowed to linger after work.” That was the rule my boss personally gave me on my first day. But when I returned to the office late at night to pick up the engagement ring, the elevator showed an overload despite being empty, the printer started spitting out a death certificate bearing my name, and on my social feed, my girlfriend was smiling sweetly as she posted an engagement photo with my boss. Even more terrifying, I kicked a corpse on the fourth-floor stairwell. That —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 188 The Woman You Must Never Cross 最不能得罪的女人 Seven years ago, a yellow weasel slipped into my bed in the middle of the night and said it could help me get revenge. I agreed three times. Two bachelors hanged themselves in the village, the tongues of the village shaman’s entire family of four were torn out, and the son of the village chief, whose whole family of eight had been wiped out, went mad. It wasn’t until I got on the bus bound for the county town that I realized none of the passengers had feet. They were all dead people who had “sho —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 189 Terror on a Snowy Night 雪夜惊魂 I’ll never forget that winter night when a blizzard trapped me on the top floor of the seventh floor. The keycard unlocked Room 744 with a beep, and the smell of mold mingled with the cold, stinging my nostrils. The 340,000 yuan in my backpack weighed heavily on my shoulders. I snapped the three deadbolts shut behind me, only to hear a soft click from the aluminum window frame. Have you ever seen a figure hanging upside down outside a seventh-floor window? Its entire face was pressed against the —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 190 No One Escapes 谁也逃不掉 “That haunted building took four of my friends twenty years ago. Now it’s finally come for me.” Trembling, I stood in the bedroom of Li Lisha’s home, watching Wang Yuanyuan smile at me from outside the window. But she had hanged herself twenty years ago... Even more terrifying, I suddenly realized something: back then, the five of us went to the Lotus Haunted House together, and I was the only one who made it out alive... Now a rotting hand is squeezing my neck from behind, and I hear the whispe —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 191 What Happens If You Smoke While Mining? 在下矿时候抽烟会发生什么 Have you ever seen three hundred corpses tumbling in boiling water? I have. On my first night down the mine, I ran into an old miner whose whole body was ice-cold. He shared a cigarette with me, until I felt the bones at his severed wrist. As I ran for my life, the entire tunnel suddenly filled with stones draped in red cloth. A dead person sat atop every stone, their faces peeling away, and they were all pointing me down the same path. At the end, a huge pit held a pool of boiling water, bubbli —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 192 Sacrifice at the Haunted School Festival 诡校祭品 Please follow these rules: 1. Whether it is day or night, do not make eye contact with any teacher you see. If you accidentally do, don't worry. The first time, the teacher will let it slide. 2. The dormitory lights go out at ten. Once they do, do not speak. Go to bed quietly, close the doors and windows, and draw the curtains. There will be nothing outside. If there is, ignore it. 3. Someone will inspect the dorms at night. If you encounter them, close your eyes and pretend to be asleep. You mi —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 193 Peeping Is a Crime 偷窥有罪 On what seemed like a peaceful night, I, an ordinary shut-in, was unexpectedly swept into a vortex of terror unlike anything I had ever known. Every evening, through my telescope, I watched Li Weiwei, the yoga instructor who lived in the building opposite. It was a secret, thrilling pleasure. But then came that eerie night, and everything was turned upside down. Li Weiwei's graceful figure moved as usual among the pavilions in our residential compound, but the shadow of a woman in red had appear —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 194 Spirit Medium 跳大神 “I watched with my own eyes as an actor performing a spirit-summoning ritual fell to his death onstage. That night, the whole village blocked the guesthouse entrance, sickles in hand. The Qing dynasty ghost said, ‘The foreigners must die,’ but when Anton was unconscious with a high fever, the villagers knelt in the torrential rain and kowtowed to my leg bone.” The heavy rain washed open a mass grave beneath the wasteland, and skeletal hands clutching rusty rifles pierced the earth. The resentful 5Reads—Score—14d adds
- 195 The Haunted Houses I’ve Experienced 我经历的凶宅 The older generation often says that people who die violent deaths cannot enter the cycle of reincarnation. Their souls endlessly haunt the places where they died, seeking substitutes. Only then can they be reborn. That’s why we often hear in the news about car crashes that keep happening at certain locations. Sometimes the place isn’t even a proper intersection, yet terrible accidents leave cars wrecked and people dead. Some streams aren’t even as deep as a person is tall, yet every year there 2.1kReads8.9Score19914d adds
- 196 The Corpse Stitcher’s Daughter 缝尸匠的女儿 My father, Liu Si, was the most famous corpse tailor in Laoshan Village. After the start of winter, the women of the village were torn to pieces by wild bears in the mountains, one after another. My father suggested finding their bodies and sewing them back together so they could be buried in peace. But rumors spread through the village: “The bears were lured here by the Liu family. They'll do anything to make money sewing up corpses.” The village chief forced my father up the mountain to kill t 16Reads—Score—14d adds
- 197 The Wronged Ghost in the Incinerator 焚化炉里的冤魂 On the surface, he was an official who upheld justice. Behind the scenes, he was the most brazen crime boss around! He was a cunning, utterly inhuman demon! He killed, robbed, and took lives, yet remained above the law! And all his audacity came from his powerful "protectors"! Before he was brought to justice, he did whatever he pleased, leaving countless people and families with memories of unbearable pain... —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 198 The Jinx 丧门星 Li Datou married a girl from the city, which was quite the rare thing in the village back then. Lian was exceptionally beautiful. When she first married Li Datou, every man in the village, young or old, was green with envy. But in less than half a month, everyone in the Li household was dead. —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 199 Death’s Pallbearers 死亡抬棺 There was a half-immortal in this little mountain village named Yu Shouwang. Just after dusk, someone came rushing to his house. “Uncle Shouwang, you have to come take a look. The village chief's father's coffin was just carried to the village entrance, and now nobody can move it. It's downright eerie!” Strangely enough, as soon as the half-immortal arrived, they were able to move the coffin. But at the time, only Old Yu Shouwang knew that this and the series of tragedies that followed were all 1Reads—Score—14d adds
- 200 The Blood Sacrifice’s Curse 血牲的诅咒 In the Northeast, there's a taboo no one dares to break lightly: eat livestock that have become spirits, and you'll suffer retribution. But one year, during a famine, the harvest was good in that remote little village. Old Yang suddenly slaughtered the old ox he'd raised for fifteen years. On the very day the ox was killed, a crowd of strange, unfamiliar people came to the village, demanding meat night after night. —Reads—Score—14d adds
