Story 2: Three Days Lost in the Bamboo Mountain
The second protagonist is another relative, an elderly man in his 70s I’d call my “uncle-in-law.” He lives in Zhushan (Bamboo Mountain), and this incident happened on a mountain behind his house. He’d gone bamboo shoot picking with his older brother when he suddenly went missing.
He was lost in the mountain for three days. His family reported it to the police, and search parties scoured the area, but they couldn’t find him. Given his age, everyone assumed he couldn’t survive that long out there. By day three, they were bracing for the worst, thinking he’d perished.
But then, miraculously, good news came from the other side of the mountain. A mother and son were out picking mushrooms when they heard faint cries for help from above. At first, they thought it might be a mountain spirit and hesitated to respond. But the son looked up—and there, perched high in a tree, was an old man. How he’d gotten up there, no one knew.
That old man was my uncle-in-law. The fire department was called to rescue him. When they brought him down, he’d been without food for three days and was weak, but alive.
Once he’d recovered enough to talk, his story left everyone dumbfounded.
I was so intrigued by what happened that I made a special trip to Zhushan to hear it straight from him. What follows is his firsthand account. That said, I suspect he was hallucinating or disoriented at times during the ordeal, so some details might be fuzzy. Still, the overall narrative suggests some inexplicable force was at play.
According to him, he got separated from his brother because he heard his brother call out from a distance:
“[My Uncle in law’s name], I’m heading up ahead to dig. Let’s meet back up in two hours.”
But his brother later swore he’d never said that. In fact, before they started, he’d insisted they stick together because of their age—splitting up was too risky. Yet my uncle-in-law was certain he’d heard the call, so he wandered deeper into the mountain. By the time he realized he was lost, it was too late.
I suspect this is when some external force—whatever it was—took hold. A mountain he’d known like the back of his hand since childhood suddenly felt alien. He found himself trudging through tall grass higher than his head, something he’d never seen there before.
He described getting stuck in the grass, only to suddenly stumble into clearings where he thought he was on a busy Hong Kong street one moment, then in Taipei the next.
Luckily, the weather stayed warm during those three days, and he’d brought matches. When it got cold, he’d light a small fire to keep warm. But with no food or water, his strength faded. By the third day, he said he’d crouched down in what he thought was an open spot to rest. Then he heard voices and mustered his last bit of energy to call for help—unaware he was actually perched on a tree branch.
He vaguely recalled someone offering him food during his ordeal, but he instinctively refused. Growing up in the mountains, he knew the taboos: don’t answer if someone calls your name, and don’t accept food from strangers. Unfortunately, he’d already broken the first rule—when he “heard” his brother call his name, he’d responded without thinking. That might’ve been what drew him into the trap.
After the incident, aside from the initial shock, he didn’t suffer any lasting effects. A few days later, he was back in the mountains digging bamboo shoots with his brother. When I asked how he felt about it all, his response was short and sweet:
“Eh, I just ran into a Mo-sin-a. No big deal.”
Story 3: The Girl in the Mound
The third story is short but carries a touch of the uncanny—perfect, I think, to wrap up this piece.
This one goes back a bit further in time. If the person involved were still alive today, they’d probably be in their 80s or 90s. It happened in the fields near my family’s ancestral home. Back then, there was a farming household with a daughter, probably in her teens—around middle or high school age by today’s standards.
One day, she vanished without a trace.
In that era, when information didn’t travel fast, a girl going missing could mean a lot of things. Maybe she’d been abducted, or perhaps she’d grown tired of the hard rural life and run off to the city to find a better path. Some even speculated she’d eloped with someone.
The possibilities were endless—far more than we’d consider today. But despite all the theories, her disappearance was so sudden and clue-less that after a few days of searching, her family gave up.
About ten days later, something strange happened. The girl’s uncle was out working in the fields under the blazing sun. As he labored, his vision blurred for a moment, and he froze mid-task. He thought he’d seen something zip past him.
Shaking it off, he tried to focus, but the more he thought about it, the weirder it seemed. Whatever had flown by looked like… a palm-sized piece of raw pork.
Puzzled, the uncle scratched his head and kept working. But the oddity gnawed at him. He replayed the image of that “flying pork” in his mind, and a sudden chill hit him. Following his gut, he walked in the direction the meat had gone.
There wasn’t much to see—just an empty patch beside the field. The only thing that stood out was a small grassy mound, barely half a person’s height. Curiosity piqued, the uncle approached it. As he studied the mound, he noticed a palm-sized hole about halfway up its side.
Being the inquisitive type, he bent down to peer into the hole—and nearly jumped out of his skin. Staring back at him from inside that tiny opening was a pair of wide, rolling eyes!
Heart pounding, he didn’t hesitate. He started digging at the hole with his hands. The soil wasn’t hard, and after a few scoops, he uncovered a small hollow inside the mound. There, curled up in a tight ball and covered in mud, was a girl. It was his niece—the one who’d been missing for over ten days. In her mouth, she was clutching half a piece of raw pork.
Once they pulled her out, she was surprisingly healthy—actually, she’d even gained a little weight. When asked what happened, her memory was hazy. She vaguely recalled walking along a path by the field when she suddenly felt dazed and blacked out. She’d drift in and out of consciousness, and it seemed like someone—or something—kept bringing her food to eat.
The strangest part? That little mound she’d been in was soft enough to dig through, but its surface was covered in thick grass. How she’d gotten inside that cramped space was anyone’s guess. And what—or who—had put her there and kept her fed? That’s a mystery no one could crack.
But, as always, the older folks in the family had a ready answer whenever they heard a tale like this:
“Oh, that’s just the Mo-sin-a…”
Closing Thoughts
And there you have it—three family stories, each brushing up against the enigmatic Mo-sin-a. From a vanishing hiker to a treetop rescue to a girl tucked away in a grassy mound, these tales blur the line between the real and the surreal. Maybe it’s just folklore doing its work, or maybe there’s something out there in the mountains and fields we can’t quite explain.
True TAIWAN Horror story 
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