Raising Ghosts Records

Chapter 1 Homeless
My name is Li Tiaohe. I was born in Guiping in 76. My sister is Li Mushroom. She is a few minutes younger than me.

We lost our parents when we were two years old, and our siblings were raised by our grandparents. When we were six years old, our grandparents passed away one after another, leaving us to our uncle.

The family was poor, and the patriarchal uncle was only willing to support me, so he gave my sister to a Hunan couple who were working in Guiping to build roads.

The day the couple took my sister away, my sister and I were crying out loud, but the pain of parting was still imposed on our young hearts. From that day on, my goal in life was to find my sister back.

My uncle married his wife when I was eight years old. After that, my childhood was filled with endless work and endless beatings, and I was basically barefoot except in winter.My uncle later became addicted to gambling, and every time I lost money, he would beat me up for no reason. I lived with my uncle for eight years in total, but I couldn’t go to school all the time.

In mid-April 1990, I finally rebelled once. The 14-year-old uncle and I got into a fight while planting peanuts in the field.I knocked off his two front teeth with a hoe, and then I was kicked out of the house and started a wandering life.

After my uncle drove me out of the house, he didn't give me a dime. I stole three chickens from my uncle's house and sold them in the town for 17 yuan.

With this money, I decided to go to my sister, but where is my sister?I only heard from my uncle that I was in Hunan.I didn't know where Hunan was, but I thought it was a village far away, so I took the 17 yuan and set foot on the road to Hunan.

On the first day, I stopped and went until dark. At that time, most of the remote villages in Guangxi were not connected to electricity. After dark, there was no one outside. If there was no moon, I couldn’t see my fingers.Even if there is a moon, I can't go. If a poisonous snake bites me casually, I will confess my life.

The first night after I came out, I slept in the grain drying field, which was next to the village and was repaired during the big pot meal.That night was already April 14th, and after 12 o'clock in the evening, it would be the 15th.After walking for a whole day, I didn't know where I went, so I just followed the lights to the side of the village.I dare not spend the night in an uninhabited place. Even if I don’t go to find a village, I feel safer outside the village than in the wilderness.

There are probably only a hundred households in this village. At this time, most of the houses had turned off the lights and went to sleep. The moon was very bright that night. I found this grain drying field. After eating a few sweet potatoes roasted in the field at noon, I fell asleep.

I don't know what time it was at night, but a gust of cold wind woke me up. I was afraid I would catch a cold, so I went to a pigsty to get some straw to make a bed and continue to sleep.After turning around, I found that the pigsty doors were all locked. I was about to return to Shauguping when I passed a pigsty window and glanced inadvertently, and found two red coffins inside.

The moonlight shone through the window on the two red coffins, which was very scary and weird. I was so scared that I jumped into the paddy field and ran back to the drying field. I sat on the drying field with my feet full of mud and was scared to death.

After sitting for a while, I felt sleepy and uncomfortable again. I dozed off with my head on my knees, and vaguely heard the sounds of suona blowing, gong beating, and mage chanting sutras.

In most of the rural areas of Guangxi, when a person dies, he is put into a coffin after performing rituals at home, and then dragged to an open space to perform rituals for an hour or two, and then set off firecrackers all the way to the mountains to be buried.

In the middle of the night, I heard the sound of doing things for the dead. I was so scared that I immediately lost my sleepiness. I suddenly looked up and looked around but saw nothing, and the sound stopped abruptly.I didn't stay for half a second, and immediately ran into the village. The dogs in the whole village were howling, and I didn't stop until I saw a brightly lit hut.

This hut is a place to gamble. A dozen or so people gathered around to play Pai Gow and gamble. When I entered the hut, no one cared about me, so I hid in the room and watched the game of Pai Gow until dawn.

After killing a snake by the river in the afternoon and roasting it for dinner, I was so sleepy because I didn't sleep last night, so I found a shady banyan tree to sleep, and I slept until dark.

The shade of the banyan tree is very cool during the day, but it is very gloomy at night. I have heard people say that the banyan tree gathers shade, and there are many lonely ghosts living in the tree hole. At night, they come out to pull the hair of passers-by to eat.The drying ground where I slept last night was scary enough, it was still next to the village, how would I dare to spend the night under this banyan tree tonight, besides, today is already No.15.

At that time, children were not allowed to run around on the night of the first and fifteenth day of the lunar new year, which was the day when the dead went home for dinner.At that time, kerosene lamps were basically lit, and there was no TV to watch when there was no electricity. After dinner, I basically went to bed.Give me ten guts tonight, and I don’t dare to spend the night outside. I want to find a village where I can watch people gamble until dawn like last night.

I figured it was about eight or nine o'clock in the evening, and I wouldn't be too scared until late at night. I walked a mile or two and passed a bamboo forest.The bamboo forest is very dark and you can barely see the road. I don't know how deep the bamboo forest is, but the road leads to the bamboo forest. Maybe there is a village passing through the bamboo forest.

At that time, the roads in the village were all small roads, and there were very few small roads. The roads leading from one town to another were only one or two meters wide. At that time, bicycles were not popular in rural areas.

So this road is the one I must take, otherwise I can only spend the night outside. I spit out a handful of saliva in the palm of my hand, rubbed it on my face, gritted my teeth and walked into the bamboo forest.The bamboo grows very densely in this bamboo forest, and it is a bit darker when walking inside than looking inside, and one can only barely see the outline of the road.I regretted walking into this bamboo forest a bit, but when I thought that there would be a village after going back a long way, I could only bite the bullet and go forward.

In the dark bamboo bushes on both sides of the road, there seemed to be terrible monsters hiding, and they would jump out at any time and throw me down and eat me.I ran up and wanted to get out of the bamboo forest quickly. After walking for less than 2 minutes, it was so dark that I couldn't see the road at all.Because of fear, I took out a match and lit one, but after the match went out, the surrounding area became darker.

In fact, I don't know where this road leads, but I just think that there will be a village after walking through the bamboo forest. I was hesitating whether to continue walking, when suddenly a light appeared behind me.

I turned around and saw that there were three groups of yellow flames floating two meters above the ground. The sudden appearance of the three groups of flames frightened me, because they were ghost fires.

How did I know that will-o'-the-wisps are phosphorus fires before, not to mention that I haven't been to school, although now I don't believe that will-o'-the-wisps are phosphorus fires.There is a difference between ghost fire and phosphorus fire. Phosphorus fire is only a phenomenon of spontaneous combustion, and phosphorus will disappear after burning in the air.The will-o'-the-wisp is more like a conscious fire, it will stop and go, and even follow people, drifting to a certain place purposefully, just like a torch held by a transparent person.

I also heard from adults that the will-o'-the-wisps are the fires that guide the way. After death, people cannot find their way to the underworld, so there are will-o'-the-wisps to guide them.Some people also say that ghost fires are used by ghosts to hang out, just like people go to the market, the place where there are ghost fires is the market of ghosts, and they come here to receive paper money and incense burnt by their families.

The three will-o'-the-wisps illuminated the bamboo forest, two high and one low floating in mid-air. The will-o'-the-wisps stopped flying when they saw me, and burned about two meters above the ground.

This is not the first time I have seen will-o’-the-wisps. I count them no less than ten times. I have seen them many times in the past with my uncle catching frogs in mountain ponds and rice fields, but my uncle is not afraid of me, and neither are the will-o’-the-wisps I saw. far.

In this gloomy bamboo forest so close to the will-o'-the-wisp, or alone, I must be scared to pee?But if you are afraid, you will always have to face it when you encounter it. We rural old people often say that the more you are afraid of these things, the more they like to play tricks on you.

I immediately bowed down, tightly grasped a finger-thick bamboo branch with my right hand, and stared at the three will-o'-the-wisps for more than a minute.This minute or so seemed as long as a century, during which the will-o'-the-wisp never flickered, like a torch nailed in mid-air.And although I stood still, the cells in my whole body were tense, and I was already sweating profusely.

I yelled with all my strength to embolden myself, while swearing swear words, probably a bloody beast, who made you scare here, see if I don't dig your grave and gnaw your bones.Although I scolded like this, I was actually terribly afraid. I broke the bamboo branch while cursing, and rushed towards the will-o’-the-wisp madly, intending to extinguish it with the bamboo branch.

For dirty things, it is a common saying in rural areas to use a broom to drive them away. The function of the broom is to clean up, and mountain spirits and ghosts are also called dirty things, and they are most afraid of using a broom to drive them away.The brooms in the countryside used to be made of bamboo branches, so I used bamboo branches to deal with it.

Seeing me rushing madly with the bamboo branch, the will-o'-the-wisp immediately fluttered, passing over my head and drifting towards the depths of the bamboo forest.

I was so frightened that I was sweating all over, how could I dare to chase after it, rushing over was just a counterattack with no way out, not because I was not afraid of it, so seeing the will-o’-the-wisp drift away, I rushed out of the bamboo forest immediately.After I got out of the bamboo forest, I was afraid that something would come out from behind me, so I looked back and couldn't see anything, but I could feel that there were countless evil spirits lurking in the bamboo forest.

I didn't know how far I was exhausted, and I suddenly saw a small temple. This temple is very small, just a small single room covered with mud bricks and tiles.There are two red lanterns hanging at the entrance of the small temple. When I walked into the temple, I saw five statues enshrined inside, namely Pangu, Nezha, Emperor Xuanwu, Clairvoyant and Shunfenger.Pangu sitting in the middle is the tallest statue, more than one meter high, holding the moon in his left hand and the sun in his right, while Nezha in front is only as tall as a beer bottle.

In front of the statue is an altar with some peanuts and an incense burner.Because it is NO.15, the two lanterns hanging in the temple are still on, and there are five statues of gods, I feel extremely safe, so I plan to spend the night in this temple.

In fact, this kind of small mountain temple is a place where lonely ghosts gather, because there are people who come here to burn incense on the fifteenth day of the Lunar New Year. They enjoy the incense of the villagers and generally do not come out to harm people.But I didn't know this at all before, I just thought that temples were the places where gods lived.

(End of this chapter)