Note 1 — VII.—GHOSTS, APPARITIONS, AND SUPERNATURAL BEINGS.

The Chinese endow certain sorts of ghosts with peculiarly malevolent powers. Thus those of women who die in childbed, or while pregnant, are peculiarly obnoxious, and those of suicides still more so. The ghosts of those who die natural deaths seldom appear to the survivors; as a rule the fact of a man’s ghost appearing implies that he has died by violence.1 The commonest type of ghost story to be met with in China is that wherein somebody who has been foully dealt with appeals to those who represent his interests to avenge him. It would of course be more odd if there were no coincidences pointing to the truth of the alleged appearances than if there were not. But I must confess that in China as elsewhere they sometimes leave a bona fide impression of the marvellous which can neither be explained nor rejected.