The Ghost of the Niu River and Chinese zhiguai compilations
- Date of account
- Late eighteenth century, circulated in nineteenth-century editions
- Location
- Qing China
- Source
- model_recalled_reference
- Record updated
- 2026-10-10
Record summary
Yuan Mei’s Zibuyu is a major Qing collection of anomalous anecdotes involving dreams, ghosts, possession, uncanny encounters and altered perception. Although compiled in the eighteenth century, it remained influential through nineteenth-century Chinese print culture and translations. It offers comparison material for how short reports distinguish testimony, hearsay, moral interpretation and literary embellishment. Individual stories should be selected only after checking a reliable edition, because titles and episode divisions vary and the collection’s zhiguai genre does not claim modern empirical documentation.
Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.