Mr. Li of Changshan was a nephew of the Grand Minister of Justice. His house was plagued by many strange apparitions. Once he saw, in the corridor hall, a long bench of flesh-red color, very sleek and smooth. As there had been no such thing there before, he drew near and pressed it; it yielded at his touch, soft almost as flesh, and he fled in fright. Looking back, he saw the bench move on its four legs and gradually slip into the wall. Again he saw a white rod leaning against the wall, clean and long. He went to support it, but it fell with a sleek slither and crept into the wall, not vanishing until after a while.
In the seventeenth year of the Kangxi reign, a scholar named Wang Junsheng set up his school in that house. One evening, when the lamps were first lit, the scholar lay on the couch in his shoes. Suddenly he saw a little man, about three inches tall, come in from outside. He made a little circuit and then went away again. After a while he returned carrying two little stools, which he set in the middle of the hall—just like the playthings children make from sorghum stalks. Presently two little men carried in a coffin, about four inches long, and set it upon the stools. Before they had finished arranging it, a woman came in leading several servant-maids, all as tiny as the others. The woman wore mourning garments, a hempen band about her waist and a cloth bound over her head. Hiding her mouth with her sleeve, she wept with a buzzing sound like a great fly. The scholar stared sidelong for a long while, his hair standing on end as if ice were laid on his body. Then he cried out loudly and fled in haste, toppling beneath the couch and trembling so that he could not rise. His household, hearing the strange cry, gathered in the hall—but of man or thing there was no trace.