It is a small limestone tunnel, located in the northwest corner of Niagra Fall, Ontario, Canada. Whilst cited as a railway tunnel it was built for drainage, it was for water to be removed from the farmlands. Farmers also used it to transport goods and animals safely underneath a busy road. The tunnel was also used in the Stephen King film, The Dead Zone (1983).
Local legends say it is haunted by a young girl; she escaped a burning farmhouse with her clothes ablaze, saying she died within its walls. Another variation also says an enraged father set her ablaze after loosing custody in a nasty divorce. More sinister ones say that a girl was raped and burnt to hide the evidence and all of them say that lighting a match in the tunnel will produce the sounds of dying screams.
Most likely this is an urban legend, what I could confirm is that there is a terrible smell from the flooding and natural decay. Near it is a natural sulphur spring that bubbles accounting for some more of the smells and probably the sounds. Most of the details don’t really lead me to think this is anything more than urban legend.
“Wiktionary – A reanimated corpse in Chinese legend, which moves around by hopping with its arms outstretched, and kills living creatures to absorb their life force.”
The “stiff corpse” is a vampiric monster from Chinese folklore, often attributed to having died a violent or unnatural death. They are more often depicted wearing the funerary robes of the Qing Dynasty. There are numerous articles about them recounting either similar details or going through slightly more in-depth looks, so I have decided that they are interesting enough for this blogger too.
How are they created?
It seems that whilst I popped a summary up top there are varying reasons or methods, so it seems that the most common are said to be a violent death, a sudden death, being struck by lightning or if an animal considered to be a black omen hopped over the dead body. There are also suggestions of a third party creating them, so I would assume some form of bad magic would be employed.
The18th Century scholar, Ji Xiaolan identified two types of Jiangshi and said that one of them is recently returned to life or those long buried but had not decomposed. Ji Xiaolan writes that violent death, suicide, spirit possession of a body, or an absorption of qi (life energy) may bring one back to life or if a funeral had taken place for them but the body for some reason was not buried.
How can you tell if you are in the presence of a Jiangshi?
They have pale skin, they hate the sun and only tend to appear at night, in some cases they might have green skin due to a fungus that grows on corpses.
They are said to be blind and detect the living from their breathing.
The body does not compose, the hair and nails continue to grow after death.
They can appear at first glance to look like a normal person, or they can be obviously rotting corpses.
The rumours of blood drinking may well be down to Western influence creeping in as they are said to feed on the life force (qi) of a person.
Being bitten by a Jiangshi will also lead to the inevitable turn of the victim into another one.
How can you defend against a Jiangshi?
Taoist Monks use various spells to work against them.
Writing a spell in chicken blood on yellow paper and putting it on the corpse’s forehead is said to stop one moving.
A Jiangshi is terrified of its own reflection.
They are afraid of mirrors. An 8-sided mirror is used, also know as a Feng Shui mirror. The Bagua is the sign of the eight triagrams and so a mirror with this used is thought to be very effective.
They are afraid of peach wood.
They are afraid of jujube seeds.
To banish on you can throw sticky rice at it, it will absorb the evil.
Where do they come from?
The origins appear to come from folklore and the practise of moving corpses/travelling corpses. This was(is?) known as Xiangxi ganshi because it seems it was most well used in the Xiangxi region. I’m going to put in some summary information and then give some other source information, but the gist is this:
In the post low-income families would not have been able to afford the cost of transporting a dead body from a place far away to their own region. They would in turn hire Taoist priests to transport the bodies home on their behest. The priests would move them at night and would ring bells to let the villagers know they were coming through. It was thought that the souls of those who died away from home would be homesick, so it was best to get them back and perform the correct funerary rites. The movement took place at night to avoid people coming into contact with the dead and the lower temperature was better for transporting the dead.
Depending on the source this seems to have happened in two ways:
On a bamboo stretcher where the body was laid out, where the canes would create a creaking nose and the body would jerk stiffly in time with the movements of the priests carrying them.
Liao Yiwu’s book The Corpse Walker has oral accounts and one of them is of how there would be a two man team to move the body. One man would have the body on his back and adorn a large robe to cover them both with a mourners masks on. The other would walk ahead with a lantern to warn the carrier of obstacles ahead.
Did they ever exist?
Well according to “Split Words and Interesting Poems”, Hu Yanhong and subsequent speculation maybe they were never really true? The practise of moving corpses is visited and describes an ancient story where soldiers and villagers watched two sorcerers of the ‘Chenjou Talisman’s’ who led a procession of shuffling corpses. The scene of this method of transportation was so unnerving that soldiers and civilians alike screamed and retreated. However, what if this was just a clever way of using people to hide contraband? The idea that they would do this and then use bits of decaying flesh from other soldiers would indeed make the sight and smell of the dead men walking rather unnerving to say the least!
What about the Jiangshi in the modern era?
Well the practise of corpse walking/travelling was not seen as a good thing in the modern China and it’s move to communism. At the end of the Chinese Civil War, 1949, many of those who were employed in the trade found their livelihoods (and lives) under threat. Attachment to the dead may well be seen as a bourgeois decadency for the weak and the poor.
In the 1980’s a move to make the Jiangshi a more comical creature appears to have moved through the cinema scene. In 1985, “Mr Zombie” directed by Liu Guanwei was released, it made 20 million HKD and ranked 7th in the charts that year.
A more modern film about them is Rigor Mortis, 2014, a Hong Kong horror movie but doesn’t hold the same sort of overall silly vibe of Mr Zombie or Mr Vampire.
What do you think about the story of Jiangshi? I found this very interesting indeed.
Myself as Chisune with my friend on the now defunct Sword of Legends online – Edgar is taking down the Jiangshi 🙂
Example of the mirror.
Sources – maayot.com
Wikipedia
Libowen.tripod/history/t-cadavar.htm
En.chinaculture.org
Historydefined.net
Liao Yiwu’s book The Corpse Walker (Amazon sells translated copies)
This creature is generally described as looking like a wolf as large as a calf, with red fur and a streak of black down its back. The head is like that of a dog with small ears and a large mouth with big teeth.
The first recorded attack came in 1764, a young woman in a forest near Langogne saw the beast coming for her, the bulls in the herd around her chased it off. The first victim is recorded as Janne Boulet, she was fourteen years old and was killed in the village of Les Hubacs, also near Langogne. Throughout the year more attacks were reported, the victims were all alone and the beast aimed at the neck or head on each occasion.
2nd January, 1765 Jacques Portefaix along with several friends were attacked by the beast. They drove it back after it made several attacks and the encounter came to Louis XV, he decreed that the French State would find and kill the beast.
Two professional wolf hunters and eight bloodhounds were sent out on the case and for four months the two men hunted for Eurasian wolves, but the attacks continued. In June 1765 the king sent his bear hunter, Francois Antoine, he located and killed a 3rd large grey wolf on 20th September 1765.
With the beast dead he went back home, the large wolf was stuffed and sent to Versailles, he was paid handsomely for the kill. It did not end there though, 2nd December 1765 the beast was said to kill again. This time a dozen more attacked supposedly followed. The death was finally credited to a local hunter, Jean Chastel, who shot the creature with a blessed silver bullet and once opened the creatures stomach contained human remains.
Harry Dresden fans might remember that in the book Foul Moon, the story is used, it says the loup-garou rampage occurred in Gévaudan, France.
This was originally hidden away on my fiction account, as I sort of wanted to document it but I was worried about how it might sound. I have decided to re-visit and to also say hello, I am sort of here still, when I first wrote about it my mother was also still alive, so this is a pretty old recounting.
My mother was never one to be easily deterred or frightened; so, I guess that is why I took her coming through the door in a panic seriously. It was a winter night, freezing cold and I worked on a very early morning shift so would sleep in the afternoon and then stay up at night to watch my younger brother, feed our horses and prepare for mum coming home around 9-10pm.
My brother was around 14 to 15 years old and leaving in a rural area it meant that my mother liked me in at nights. She felt, that although at that age, he was mature it was always better to be safe than sorry and I might have moaned at the time but in retrospect I would have to agree. I was in the kitchen, in my god-awful boxer shorts that had been washed enough times to go grey, slippers on and a shirt that was likely some metal band. I was the epitome of the lazy ass student at the time… I wonder if anything has changed there.
I was single, working nights between a kitchen and then a morgue. NO, the two are not related before you ask but most of my spare time was spent on music, wargaming miniatures and reading. When I wasn’t doing that, I was either working or helping with the horses, animals or generally hanging around with friends. Some of which might read this, and I have since left that area, but they know who they are!
Anyway yeah back to the situation right? My mum came through the door, me in boxers and the dogs that had been asleep jumped up and started wagging their tails and getting excited. Dear Lord, mum took a look at me, I was expecting some form of lecture. She hated that I wandered around like that. It was bad for my brothers’ friends, I was setting a bad example, yada yada…
“Get your bloody coat on and dive in the car…” She says holding the keys. I’m looking at her. The car door is wide open and she’s not even moaning just looking concerned.
“Err can I get dressed?” I hear myself asking though finding it rhetorical, as she hastily shoves my long coat at me. My messy hair is hastily tied back, and the dogs are shut in the kitchen. I head out behind her. “What’s wrong?”
“There was a girl, she was… she was trying to hitch a ride. She was in her nightclothes, red coat over the nightie, running and I was scared to stop on my own, but she looked like she needed something. I figured we could go back, it’s just a couple of miles. We’ll find her easy enough.” She gave me the 101 on the situation.
“Sure.” I mutter as I steal one of her cigarettes (things were different back then, no I don’t smoke now). I notice now that there is heavy rain. My feet are cold. I light up and watch as we pull off.
And now a little geography for you: We live in England, United Kingdom and more specifically we lived in Exton, Rutland in England. There are a lot of villages and small towns, it’s a county and our nearest city is like 30-40 miles. Not far but darned far if you were say hitching a ride or whatever. Anyway, we drove about a mile out, passed some big farm that had sheep. All the lights were off, we headed past that, last local place for I think another two miles. Now we’re into the area where ploughed fields and trees are your scenery. For the more discerning rural spotter we of course have random animals that run in your path, such as deer, rabbits and the like.
Okay so you get the idea, it’s dark, raining and I’m already slightly peeved. Mum is driving, on a mission, she’s heading to this road. It’s quite a badly kept country one and it’s dangerous if you don’t know where you are and break down. You know you need are going to need a mobile or good walking shoes. So, we drive to where this woman was, and she starts to slow down to look for her.
“Okay she looked about twenty-ish and she was,” she lights a cigarette, “running down the road. There isn’t another road off, and I am sure in this time unless she has been picked up, we would have seen her.” My mum was looking and I’m thinking ‘don’t you make me get out this car’ and she looks to me. “She had a nightie and a red coat. She was running really fast.”
“Mum maybe someone else got her?” She looks to me like I am talking another language, which on this occasion I am not.
“No one really comes down here. No, she should be here.” My mother, who I am convinced now may need sectioning, finishes her cigarette. “Damn it.” She pulls to turn around and we head back home. I am now cold and firmly awake; the weather has eased so I get dressed and take the dogs out and think nothing more of it. The next day I finish work and head home and I have all but forgotten it as one of those silly things you can bring up as a guilt trip for a free pint at the local. The mum tells me that she told someone in the local shop about it and that person in the shop described the woman perfectly; naturally this led to my mother asking how of course.
“So?” I try to sound interested, expecting it to be a local person well-known to the villagers for this sort of shenanigan.
“The girl was called {I forget the name} and her boyfriend was killed three or four years ago at the crossroads when a Range Rover hit him. She was waiting for him to arrive, and he never did but she heard the noise. She went running to find him in her nightie and when she got there the Range Rover was speeding towards her. She never had the time to move out of the way. She was killed twenty feet away from him.” I looked at my mum and she looks back incredulous she’s even telling me it at all. In all the years after that if my mother had to drive that way it was only during the day, or if she had someone in the car with her.
I decided with a slightly clearer head to dig around. It’s pretty hard to know what to search for in order to try and help validate my mother’s claim and now it seems that the village has undergone changes from when I was there. In 2016 the Civil Parish of Exton was abolished and is know merged with Horn, (which has three properties by the way) and so I think the records of things like death’s etc all go to the Leicester offices. I did fine one thing about a roadside crash, a bit further away however at Manton Hall, this is situated on the other side of the large body of water known as the Rutland Water Nature Reserve but in “The Villages of Rutland (Vol 1, part II) the old had reports of noises when it was empty in 1942 and another report mentions Stocks Hill, Manton, was witness to a phantom passenger killed in a coach crash in 1973. Now just like so many places there are tales about the local historic hauntings but they are more campfire and undocumented. Can I verify it? No… do I believe my mothers conviction about what she saw? Yes. Any tales of your own you want to share but don’t want to put your name to? Or just comments in general you can mail me at silentthrillblog@gmail.com
Exton Church Graveyard, the Dovehouse is visible in the background.
norwayhertiage.com, https://www.thedarkpictures.com/, wikpedia (English and German versions), Fortean Times monthly magazine, Proceedings of the Merchant Maritime Council, The Mammoth Book of Unexplained Phenomena by Roy Bainton (2013), Ripleys.com, de173.com, strangeremains.com, skittishlibrary.co.uk
Back in 2014 I visited this mystery with a quick overview. This mystery ship was meant to have burnt down, a fire breaking out on board and the sole witness was there, he took photos and then he and his crew watched from their own ship as it burnt and sank, down into the bottom of the ocean. I thought it would be interesting to revisit this with a little more detail, and an interest revived having skimmed a recent copy of Fortean Times.
January 1948, ‘Mystery Demise of the Ourang Medan’ was an article in the Elseviers Weekblad, a Dutch Weekly newspaper. It had two photographs, a ship on its side and a crewman dead on the floor with no face showing, as the evidence, along with the witness report. The English report was in 1952 as a handed down rumour. The author has claimed, in the Dutch Paper, to have been 400 nautical miles southeast of the Marshall Islands, in mid Jine 1947. The author, Silvio Scherli, said their vessel got a radio message and an SOS Signal from Ourang Medan. The dramatic description says that the morse code seemed very confusing, but they managed to make out “I am dying” from the garbled words and letters.
The next day they got there and the ship was drifting with no signs of life on bard. A small group of sailors boarded and were confronted with dead corpses, fear on their faces from some terror they had witnessed as they died. There were no signs of blood, or any violence and then they located the radio operator, still wearing his headset, the wires moving along with the rocking ship and his fists clenched, all adding to the dramatic tale.
Suddenly, a fire broke out and the crew that had boarded were forced to abandon it. The author says that no one on their ship could sleep that night so they stood and watched the burning ship until it finally sank into the Pacific Ocean.
So after this, two more instalments came, it mentioned a survivor, a Franciscan missionary from Taongi Atoll, reported that a man had washed ashore, dying a few days later, he had apparently relayed to a clergyman his story about the events on the Ourang Medan. He told them about a dodgy port, about mystery cargo and about a Chinese Port. It was sounds very creepy doesn’t it as the monk says that 15 days into the journey the disaster struck and the crew dropped dead in terror.
In the third instalment they gave up more of this odd tale, with 15,000 cases of sulphuric acid, nitro-glycerine in liquid form and other chemicals that had all been stored onboard. The swaying of the vessel has caused ruptures and vapours around the ship. The author said they were not allowed to release the man’s real name, he was a German buried by the old palm in the cemetery at the mission.
After this the story got repeated around, and there were a lot of questions!
Silvio Scherli, in Trieste, persisted in the story’s validity. This seems such a fantastical tale, but the red flags didn’t deter reporters. An American publication “apparently told by an Italian officer, on a ship that had answered the Ourang Medan’s distress call,” said the editor couldn’t help any further, they had brought the story and that was the end of that.
In 1952 the US Coastguard visited the mystery and in 1954 German author, Otto Mielke, published a 32-page booklet on the matter, giving his own retelling of the version. Let’s look at “Das Totenschiff in der Südsee” – The Death Ship of the South Sea. The story as built up from the three-part series in the Dutch Easter Indian Daily, but it relays that the Ourang Medan sent an SOS call and a radio call to a doctor at the same time, the call was relayed by both the City of Baltimore and American steamer, Silver Star, giving co-ordinates and announced their position. The connection to the radio died, they reconnected and that’s where they got “I’m dying”, the City of Baltimore vessel had a doctor onboard and carried on that way also.
28th June 1947 the Ourang Medan was spotted, no flag set and no sign of smoke from her chimney. This is when the Silver Star crew go aboard, and find all the crew to be dead, in Mielke’s version all the bodies were of Asian people. It once again is about the terror of the deceased, visible on their faces and in this re-telling there are several explosives forcing the crew off their mystery find.
12th July, 1947 a lifeboat washed ashore on Taongi Island, where 6 of the 7 passengers had died. The survivor he calls Jerry Rabbit, who goes on to describe various transport information to various places for the dubious cargo. The chemical angle is used once again for the whole thing.
So the booklet became part of the ‘truth’ for information in retelling it all. UFO’s were then also brought forwards for explanation, and CH March Jnr wrote to the CIA in 1959, “something from the unknown” might be involved.
So what can be established?
Roy Banton (The Mammoth book of Unexplained Phenomena, 2013) searched through Llyod’s Shipping Register, he visited the shipping registers in Amsterdam and came up empty handed. He also came across a German researcher, Theodor Siersdorfer, who had found no mention of the vessel in 45 years. Also depending on the source it is either a steamer or a freighter, two very different uses.
This story has been used for varying fictional works, including a Russian version by Lev Skyragin called Voice of the Sea in 1973. So what else? 7 Jours, French magazine, made a conclusion of its own, the death ship was not from 1947 but from a decade before that. 13th November 1939 it was found by an American Destroyer but there seems to still be no mention of the ship’s name there to confirm this.
Another suggestion notes the vessel may have been registered in Sumatra as “man from Medan”, I found nothing concrete about that. The Silver Star is a registered vessel – Grace Line Ship List – Santa Cecilia #3, it was renamed Santa Juana in 1947, then scrapped later.
January 20th, 1855, SS City of Baltimore, Inman Line, was launched and was sold in 1874 and renamed “Fivaller” and scrapped in 1885. City of Baltimore ships after that? I found the SS City of Baltimore and she beached in the Upper Cheapsake Bay on 29th July 1937 but she was later broken up, she had been set on fire a decade before.
Theo Paijman’s, Dutch writer, summarised that it seems more likely Silvio Scherl-Scherli had a template to sell to various newspapers and magazines. The publications and submissions all lasted 8 years and if anyone sounded sceptical, he would just double down with his reassurances. As he rightfully points out the photograph of the dead man could have been easily staged and photos of a listing ship would not be that hard to get hold of during the period.
To support this theory I also think skittish library has found another great point about this, Yorkshire Evening Post 21st November 1940 and other newspapers. If it was 1947 when it happened either everyone was psychic or the original version just didn’t sell well enough? They also list it as Solomon Islands but the same ship name, and then in the newest version the same ship name but at Marshall Islands, quite a way off from one another and in both tales, both era’s the Trieste report came in. So there we have it?
“All officers including captain dead, lying in chartroom and on bridge, probably whole crew.”
Was it inspired by the Mary Celeste? It seems that Paijman’s visit into this matter and the skittish library finds, mean it really is a good and reasonable summary, but it’s a shame as I rather like the mystery going unsolved.
Investigations into the unknown and weird 