What happened
The two-storey Western-style brick mansion on Chaonei Street, not far from the Forbidden City, was probably built around 1910; its history is murky. According to various accounts it housed a language school, a college and offices, and today it belongs to the Archdiocese of Beijing. For decades it stood empty and decaying, until it became ‘Beijing's most famous haunted house’. The story told most often is that in 1949 an officer of the Kuomintang fled to Taiwan, leaving behind his wife or mistress, who hanged herself in the house – and has haunted it ever since. Other tales tell of Red Guards who occupied the house during the Cultural Revolution but soon left, frightened; of a British clergyman, its supposed builder, who vanished without trace, and a tunnel running all the way to the Dashanzi district; and of three workmen who dug into the house from a neighbouring basement and were never seen again. In 2014 the 3D horror film The House That Never Dies, inspired by the legends, drew crowds to the house; at the diocese's request its Chinese title was changed. The building was renovated in 2017.
Witnesses
Local residents, visitors and thrill-seekers; stories repeated in Chinese media and online.
Explanations and hypotheses
The archdiocese calls the story of the Kuomintang officer's wife completely false – no record has been found of such an officer living in the house. Reporters for The New York Times found that the building had many ordinary occupants in the 20th century, and that its long years of emptiness were due to property disputes and neglect, not ghosts. An abandoned Western mansion in the heart of the capital was simply the perfect backdrop for urban legends.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
- The New York Times – Amy Qin, Dilapidated Mansion Has Had Many Occupants, Maybe Even a Ghost (2013)
- The New York Times (Sinosphere) – Amy Qin, Film Has Crowds Swarming to Beijing House, Haunted or Not (2014)
More: Wikipedia (en)