When Mr. Song Yushu of Laiyang served as a bureau official, the residence he rented was very desolate. One night two maidservants attended the Grand Lady, his mother, as she slept in the main hall, when they heard a pattering sound in the courtyard, like a tailor spraying water on cloth. The Grand Lady urged the maids to rise, and they cut a peephole in the window to look out. They saw an old woman, short and hunchbacked, with hair as white as a broom bound into a chignon two feet long, walking rapidly around the courtyard like a bird in urgent flight, all the while spraying water without end. Startled, the maids returned and reported. The Grand Lady too rose in alarm, and the two maids helped her to the window to watch. Suddenly the old woman pressed against the window and sprayed directly through the lattice. The paper of the window burst, and all three collapsed, unknown to the rest of the household.
When the sun rose, the whole household gathered and, finding no answer to their knocking, were alarmed. They pried open the door and found the mistress and two maids lying dead together in the room. One maid was still warm below her ribs; they raised her and poured water into her, and after a while she revived and told what she had seen. When the gentleman returned, he was so grieved and enraged he wished for death. He searched closely for the place where the old woman had vanished, and digging down over three feet, gradually exposed white hair. Digging on, he found a corpse shaped like what they had seen, its face swollen as in life. He had it struck, and the flesh and bones crumbled to pulp, while the skin held nothing but clear water.