My Great-Grandfather Stole Back Ten Thousand Ghost Silver Dollars

[Supernatural Mystery] [Don't Read at Night] [Folklore] [Not for the Faint of Heart]

What he stole was silver dollars. What he had to return was his life!

Before my great-grandfather died, he forced out one last breath and muttered a few words:

"The silver dollars... give them all back. Every last one... If you want to stay alive..."

Ten thousand silver dollars. He had stolen them from an old ravine in the Northeast. Ginseng diggers called it the Land of the Dead. No one who went in ever came out.

With those silver dollars, the Pi family bought land, opened a pharmacy, and became the richest family for a hundred miles around. And because of those same silver dollars, my great-grandmother died within three years, while her four sons went mad or became fools, one by one.

On the night of the burial, someone saw my newly widowed great-grandmother, the youngest of the great-grandmothers, blow gently toward a room full of silver dollars. Three sandalwood chests blazed as bright as day, and a pillar of light shot up from the middle of the courtyard into the sky. A dark shadow descended along it.

My great-grandfather never said who had given him the silver dollars, not even on his deathbed.

He wrote only one line in the notebook he left to his eldest son: Greed, anger, and delusion, all three curses cling to this money. To break them, you must return to the old ravine and give back what is owed.

The last page of the notebook was soaked through, leaving only half a sentence: Of the three things, one is in...