廟鬼

新城有个生员叫王启后，是布政使中宇公王象坤的曾孙。他看见一个妇人进入室内，相貌肥黑并不出众。笑着靠近坐到榻上，神情十分轻薄。王启后拒绝她，她却不肯离开。从此坐着躺着常常看见她，但王启后意志坚定，始终不为之动摇。妇人发怒，掴他的脸颊有声，但也不太痛。妇人把带子悬在梁上，抓住他要一起上吊。王启后不自觉地自己投到梁下，伸长脖子做出上吊的样子。人们看见他脚离地，直挺挺地站在当中，却也不会死。从此得了癫狂的病，忽然说："她要和我一起投河了。"望着河狂奔，拉他才停下来。像这样百般作弄，每天发作好几次，法术和药物都没有效果。一天忽然看见有个武士拿着锁链进来，怒声呵斥说："淳朴诚实的人，你怎么敢扰乱！"就锁住妇人的脖子，从窗棂中出去。才到窗外，妇人不再是人形，目光如闪电，嘴巴血赤得像盆一样大。想起城隍庙里有四个泥鬼，其中有一个和她一模一样。于是病像失了一样痊愈了。

Wang Qihou, a licentiate of Xincheng, was the great-grandson of Commissioner Wang Xiangkun. He saw a woman enter his room, fat and dark and ill-favored. Smiling, she came and sat on his couch with a most lascivious air. Wang repulsed her, but she would not go. From then on, whether sitting or lying, he always saw her; but his resolve was firm and never wavered. The woman grew angry, slapped his cheek with a ringing sound, though it did not hurt much. She hung her girdle from the beam and, seizing him, tried to hang herself and him together. Wang, without knowing it, threw himself beneath the beam and stretched his neck as if about to hang. People saw his feet leave the ground and his body stand stiff in the middle of the room, yet he did not die. From then on he suffered from madness. Suddenly he would cry, "She means to drown herself with me!" and rush madly toward the river, to be dragged back only with effort. A hundred such assaults came upon him, several times a day, and neither charms nor medicine availed. One day he suddenly saw a warrior come in with a chain, who cried in a great voice, "How dare you molest so simple and honest a man!" He fettered the woman about the neck and carried her out through the lattice-window. No sooner was she past the window than she lost her human shape—her eyes flashed like lightning, and her mouth was red and wide as a basin. Wang remembered that in the City God's temple there were four clay devils, and that one of them resembled her to the life. Thereupon his malady vanished as if it had never been.