During that period, I was hitting a creative wall with my writing. To clear my head, I’d occasionally book a night at a hotel near Bitan Lake, wandering its shores or mountain trails by day—water’s edge, wooded paths, the works.
One time, I did something downright foolish there.
It was on a quiet path overlooking the lake, with the bridge and the “Bitan” sign carved into the hillside in view. Bored, I stood there, Ninth Uncle’s story drifting into my mind. “Wonder where he drowned…” I mused, staring at the rippling water.
That’s when the dumb move happened. After soaking in the lake and mountains, I muttered, “Anyone know about my Ninth Uncle? Come out, give me a hint—let’s play!”
Looking back, it’s peak childish nonsense. I can’t explain why I did it—maybe boredom took the wheel. Nothing weird happened then, no spooky vibes. Just a guy talking to himself by the lake. Since nothing followed, I forgot about it.
Even when I started “seeing” that drenched woman days later, I didn’t connect it to Bitan.
But after Master Xu’s comment—“Taken by water, a relative”—it clicked. I told him about my lake muttering. His psychic senses weren’t razor-sharp; he couldn’t peg her age, initially guessing young. After my story, we pieced it together: this spirit trailing me from Bitan was likely Ninth Uncle’s girlfriend—my “aunt-in-law.”
Curious, I called my mom from Xu’s place. To avoid freaking her out, I framed it casually: “Hey, for a story I’m writing—anything odd happen after Ninth Uncle died?”
She mentioned a rumor from the Taoist perist handling the rites: the couple’s deaths involved as “a replacement” water ghost. Then she dropped a chilling detail.
The girl’s body surfaced fast, but Ninth Uncle’s took days. During the soul-calling rites, his spirit returned quickly, but hers resisted—delaying the ceremonies for days. The outcome? Fuzzy family lore, unclear to this day. I’d never heard this before.
True or not, I enlisted Master Xu’s help. Through a familiar temple, we spent a few hundred bucks on offerings to guide this “aunt-in-law” spirit onward. After that, the wet woman vanished from my sight.
Substitute-Taking: A Folkloric Pitfall
“Substitute-taking”, “a replacement” is a staple in Taiwanese folklore—a “one carrot, one hole” theory. In places marked by accidental deaths, restless spirits allegedly can’t reincarnate until they snag a replacement to take their spot. Someone’s gotta fill the vacancy.
Back in Caotun, my hometown, a shocking case from my elementary school days became the poster child for this. A simple town then, it blended bustling streets with rural expanses—rice fields, streams, wild patches where kids roamed.
The incident unfolded by a trickle of a river—too shallow to call a stream, barely calf-deep. Compared to the notorious creeks and ponds that claimed lives, it was a safe haven, accident-free.
One sweltering summer afternoon, four brothers from a nearby family—eldest around junior high, youngest five or six—headed there to cool off. I vaguely knew one, maybe the second or third, just a name from school, not a friend.
Four kids, not helpless toddlers, splashing in ankle-deep water—nothing should’ve gone wrong. Yet the outcome was horrific: three drowned, only the eldest survived, half-mad and nearly dead himself.
Rescuers—farmers nearby—described a nightmarish scene. Spotting trouble, they raced over. The three younger boys lay face-down in the water, lifeless. The eldest was wading in, about to join them.
The first adults couldn’t restrain him—he fought like a man possessed, desperate to dunk his head. More arrived, hauling the boys out. No one recalls CPR attempts—by the time they were pulled, the three youngest were gone. Hospital efforts failed.
The surviving elder brother, the junior high kid, emerged dazed and deranged for days. When he stabilized, his memory was a fog, just shards of terror.
They’d been playing normally, he said, until the youngest shouted, “Look, a beautiful flower!” Following his gaze, they all saw it—a huge red bloom, basin-sized, in the river’s center.
The littlest one waded in to pick it—never returned. Another brother chimed, “Wow, so pretty!” and followed—gone too. In a trance, they felt no alarm as each sibling vanished, fixated on that flower, yearning to pluck it. The eldest trailed them, drawn in, but recalled nothing of the adults’ struggle to save him—just his brothers sinking and that stunning red bloom.
The rescuers saw no flower, no nothing—just a bare, shallow stream. Town gossip pinned it on a substitute-taking water ghost.
The Lure of the “Flower Maiden”
Water ghosts and hanging ghosts are top on substitute-taking list, but there’s a creepier breed: spirits fresh from accidents, latching onto anyone who utters pity. Known as “Flower Maidens” for women, they’re folkloric boogeymen.
My “aunt-in-law” from Bitan fits this mold. My mom once saw it firsthand. As a young bank clerk, she knew a boisterous merchant client.
He vanished for a stretch; word was he’d nearly died, shriveled and haunted. Turns out, passing a factory fire site where women perished, he’d cracked a crass joke: “What a shame, these pretty girls burned to a crisp—smells like barbecue!” That quip hooked a Flower Maiden. He unraveled—dazed, vacant, unable to function.
These tales often snare young folks who, seeing a comely corpse, jest, “Too bad—she’d have been a great girlfriend!” If the vibe aligns, the ghost tags along. Exorcising them will be a slog.
This ties to a deeper truth about substitute-taking, per my spiritual expert pal. It’s not standard reincarnation—more a freak glitch. The “proper” spirit world, or “righteous gods,” don’t intervene.
Why? “You made a promise, a deal—it’s between you and them.” Just like my careless Bitan muttering. A pact I didn’t clock until she showed up, dripping in my shower.
As mentioned earlier, the most common spirits associated with substitute-taking in folklore are water ghosts and hanging ghosts. Their methods, though, differ in legend.
Water ghosts typically operate on a one-for-one basis—snag a replacement, and they’re free. Hanging ghosts, however, are said to be far more vicious, often triggering a chain reaction of deaths rather than settling for a single substitute.
In Lukang, a folk tradition called “sacrificing to the hanging ghost” stems from this. In ancient times, a single hanging on a street could spark a plague-like wave of suicides, mostly among women.
The ritual to appease them is intricate and notoriously tricky—failure is common, and the hangings persist despite efforts. A distant granduncle once shared his firsthand brush with this, courtesy of his wife’s encounter. He didn’t delve into specifics, like how to deal with the rope or cloth used in the hanging—maybe someone in the comments can fill in those blanks.
This granduncle was young then, in his twenties, living with his family on a Lukang street. Word spread that a hanging ghost was prowling again; within months, several women on their block had taken their lives by rope.
One afternoon, dozing in the family’s shrine room, he glimpsed a figure glide past the doorway toward the bedroom. Half-asleep, he jolted awake—strangers didn’t just wander into their modest home. Hair on end, he bolted after it.
In the bedroom, his wife stood on a stool, a rope looped over a beam, moments from hanging herself. He yanked her down. She was dazed, clueless about what had happened. Once lucid, she recalled only a sudden drowsiness overtaking her in the room—then nothing.
That’s my closest firsthand account of a hanging ghost’s substitute-taking. From a scientific lens, you could argue repressed emotions in women of that era, triggered by a suggestive cascade of suicides, fueled the phenomenon.
It sidesteps the supernatural, sure. But I’d counter that legends enduring this long must hold some kernel of truth—outlasting skeptics who scoff at them. Ghostly or not, these events carry an inexplicable weight science can’t fully dismiss.
True TAIWAN Horror story 
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