Novels like Tales of the Strange in China
Books Chinese readers most often put in the same booklists as Tales of the Strange in China, best match first.
- 101 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
- 102 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
- 103 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
- 104 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
- 105 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
- 106 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
- 107 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
- 108 The Diviner with the Evil Bone 邪骨相师 My name is Xiang Yin. According to my adoptive father, he took me in from a snake immortal. My adoptive father runs a funeral shop in a northern town. He foresaw that I was born with a gift for serving the immortals and would one day become the finest spirit medium. Everyone else says I'm a corpse-born child, steeped in darkness. Only my adoptive father treasures me, teaching me spells and skills. When I was seven, something strange happened. I sold a woman a pair of burial shoes in the midd 5.9kReads9.3Score66214d adds
- 109 Sleepless 惊眠 An imperial edict brings to light a secret treasure buried for a thousand years, and a mysterious sect stirs up a storm across the north and south. A mysterious tomb-raiding sect, invincible Embroidered Envoys, and fearsome grave robbers alongside the Tiangang and Disha. A young man returned from overseas plunges into the fray like a dragon diving into the sea, throwing the north and south into turmoil. Does the Yuan Emperor’s treasure really exist, or is it a legend spread to deceive the world? 4.6kReads9.5Score52414d adds
- 110 Not a Daoist Priest, but a Mage 不是道士是法师 Beat the drum and swing the whip. With a shiver, I emerge from the mountains. I open my mouth and speak like a human: I'm the half-mad Li Xiaoxian! Ever since I was born, bad luck has followed me everywhere. I've nearly died time and again. To fight against the fate laid out for me, I believed in the Lord, recited Buddhist scriptures, and even worked at a wholesale market. But Heaven played a cruel joke on me. Misfortune kept piling up until I became completely dazed and unhinged. Desperate to g 396Reads9.5Score—14d adds
- 111 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
- 112 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
- 113 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
- 114 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
- 115 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
- 116 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
- 117 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
- 118 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
- 119 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
- 120 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
- 121 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
- 122 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
- 123 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
- 124 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
- 125 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
- 126 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
- 127 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
- 128 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
- 129 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
- 130 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
- 131 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
- 132 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
- 133 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
- 134 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
- 135 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
- 136 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
- 137 The Rat King Underground 地下的鼠王 In Northeast China, there are things you must never ask about, places you must never go, and some graveyards that even rats won’t dare approach… Forty years ago, a plague of rats devoured an entire village. The bodies, gnawed down to bare bones, became a taboo the villagers never dared mention. But no one expected that forty years later, the nightmare would return: bloodstains, gold bracelets, overturned graves, and rafters creaking with “squeaks” in the night… Everything filled them with terror 1Reads—Score—14d adds
- 138 The Spirit-Summoning Garment 招魂衣 They say Northeast China is full of taboos, and you can’t even wear the wrong clothes! Old Li was tempted by a bargain and accepted a new outfit that was “free.” But he never imagined it was a “life robe” sent by a soul-caller. The price was his grandson’s life. From that day on, strange things plagued the household: a dog’s head rolled across the floor, relatives died gruesome deaths, living people were burned alive, and even the dead began knocking at the door to claim their lives… —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 139 The Person You Want to Kill Will Die Within Three Days 你想杀死的人，将会在三天内死亡 Type a name on the screen, and three days later, that person will die. A bizarre “Thrilling Murder Mission” System suddenly appeared on the computer screen. Young, down-on-his-luck Lu Yunming entered the name of someone he hated, though he wasn’t sure he believed it… Three days later, that person really did die in a crowd, an arrow piercing his head as blood sprayed everywhere. Lu Yunming had thought it was a freak act of judgment, but it turned out to be only the beginning of a nightmare. The S 1Reads—Score—14d adds
- 140 Horrifying! The Eighth One 惊悚！第八个 Horrifying! The Eighth One 38Reads—Score314d adds
- 141 Tales from the Civil Affairs Bureau: The Sequel 民调局异闻录后传 Twenty-six years ago, when I was born, someone told my fortune and said my fate was tainted by ill luck. So my grandfather gave me a name meant to ward it off: Shen La. Twenty years ago, when I was six, I innocently saw a friend from that other world. Four years ago, when I was still a special forces soldier, I took part in a bizarre incident. Fate led me to an organization called the Bureau of Folk Affairs Investigation and Research, where I became an investigator. From that day on, my nightmar 1kReads9.4Score—14d adds
- 142 The Yin and Yang of the Mist 迷雾阴阳 The Municipal Public Security Bureau's Special Cases Investigation Division, or Special Investigations Division for short, specializes in supernatural incidents that defy rational explanation. Shen Yanzhi, an officer in the division who is calm, rational, and skilled in talismans and spells, meets Lin Mo, a descendant of a family of yin-yang masters whose bloodline can suppress evil forces and whose gentle nature conceals a stubborn streak, while investigating a case. Together, they gradually un 29Reads—Score—14d adds
- 143 The Unlucky Heavenly Master Walks the Mortal World 冤种天师走人间 The Maoshan Celestial Master holds yin and yang in check, slays ghosts, banishes demons, and dispels ill omens. A three-foot peachwood sword, a stick of incense for virtue! My fate is unusual: I court death but never die, so my master took me in as a disciple and taught me the secret arts of Maoshan. After descending the mountain, I met a beautiful older girl I knew as a child, and she led me down a road of no return. A beauty in an ice coffin, a snow-mountain witch, a fox spirit beneath the moo 714Reads7.4Score10114d adds
- 144 The Blood-Red Bun Shop 血色包子铺 The buns I sell have already sent two customers to their deaths. And yet my shop is still packed with customers. Just as the police run out of leads in the case, there is a third person who dies after eating one of my buns... 11Reads—Score—14d adds
- 145 Strange Tales from the Countryside 乡野诡事 There is a saying among the common folk: those who keep an "immortal patron" may earn fortunes and receive countless favors from them, but when death comes, the patron takes it all back. The village elders say that Bu Gui was not born to his parents, but was sent to them by Seventh Granny with the help of an "immortal patron." Seventh Granny is a renowned spirit medium from far and wide, and now she is close to death. A series of strange events befalls Bu Gui. To stay alive, he has no choice but 3.7kReads8.9Score23414d adds
- 146 Paranormal Civil Servant 灵异公务员 Wang Xiaotian, a civil servant wielding the "Heaven-Measuring Ruler," transmigrates to a parallel world where the supernatural resurges in the 1990s. Zombies have to meet their KPIs, and ghosts who like people have to follow the proper procedures. Using the bureaucratic wisdom he's gained from writing reports and mediating disputes, he specializes in dealing with every kind of monster and demon that refuses to cooperate. When a red-clad vengeful ghost has to write a work summary, and a thousand- 17Reads—Score—14d adds
- 147 The Republic-Era Book of Mysteries 民国诡秘录 Sometimes, the one who takes your life isn’t a person at all, but an evil spirit or demon. And the one controlling those spirits from behind the scenes might well be human... In the chaotic Republican era, foreign powers encircled the nation, eager to invade China, while warlords fought among themselves at home, leaving the land in ruins. On the other side of the jianghu, evil spirits rose everywhere and ghosts ran rampant, while mysterious foreign religions invaded as well. After waking from a 773Reads—Score10514d adds
- 148 Three Partners in Crime 黄雀三人行 I went to the bathroom to take a shower. When I came out, I found my client lying dead on the floor. —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 149 Trapped in a Horror Script World, Fighting to Escape 穿到鬼怪剧本世界，拼命逃生 I was inexplicably pulled into the world of a script. The System told me that the only way to return to reality was to break the curse. How is someone as weak as me supposed to survive in a world full of ghosts and monsters?! 25Reads—Score—14d adds
- 150 Sisters of Vengeance 怨鬼姐妹 Chunlan became pregnant before marriage and was driven out of her home. Everyone despised her and kept their distance. The vicious, hard-hearted Old Madam Zhao unexpectedly gave Chunlan a bowl of meat today. Chunlan died, and Zhao Er panicked. "Mother, the child in Chunlan's belly is mine." "Hmph. I never intended to spare the baby in your wife Xifeng's belly, either." 4Reads—Score—14d adds
