Forget dusty history tomes. '耳食錄' is a gossip column from the spirit world, penned by a Qing Dynasty scholar named Jun Yue. He didn't invent these stories; he collected them. The book is a series of short, strange encounters. A scholar rents a room, only to find it's already occupied by a melancholy ghost with unfinished business. A kind man helps a wounded animal, which later returns as a beautiful woman to repay him. A greedy official is haunted by the consequences of his corruption. The stories jump from eerie to poignant to oddly funny, all grounded in the social world of late imperial China.

Why You Should Read It

What grabbed me was how human it all feels. These aren't just monster stories. The ghosts are often wronged souls, and the supernatural events usually highlight very real flaws like greed, lust, or broken promises. It shows what people truly feared and valued. Reading it, you get this incredible double vision: you're being entertained by a ghost story while also getting a raw, unfiltered peek into the hopes, anxieties, and imagination of everyday people from another time.

Final Verdict

Perfect for anyone who loves folklore, The Twilight Zone, or historical deep dives that aren't about kings and wars. If you enjoy seeing how people across cultures try to explain the unexplainable, you'll devour this. It's a short, fascinating trip into the collective dreamlife of 18th-century China.