8.2.08

The Faithful Wife

Kaidan Six: The Faithful Wife

A mean husband didn't appreciate his sweet young wife. He soon dumped her to marry a rich woman, who was also mean. After 10 years, he realized he had made a drastic mistake, as riches had not brought him happiness. The face of his sweet young wife kept appearing to him in dreams. His scolding rich wife continued to make him miserable, until he burned down the house with her in it.

As he left to find his young wife of 10 years ago, he vowed he would still love her--no matter how old and how ughly she may have become. To his extreme surprise, he found her in the same house, as sweet and as lovely as ever. She was not vengeful or jealous, but ran to meet him with tears of joy. "At last you have come back! Now I can rest in peace!" Oddly enough, even the room remained as it had 10 years ago; nothing had changed.

They spent a happy night together just talking, until at last they both crawled into bed exhausted. Her long black hair like the raven's feathers lay soft and shiny on the pillow.

In the morning, he was awakened by an icy wind blasting through the room. As he snuggled to his wife for extra warmth, something hard and bony jabbed him. When he opened his eyes, he found to his horror that he was snuggled next to a bleached, whitened skeleton with long, black matted hair. Worms crawled out of the eye sockets. The room had changed drastically. No longer was it cozy and comfortable. Bare walls were splintering and unkept. The broken shutters flapped in the wind. Cobwebs hung everywhere. It was as if the place had not been lived in for many years.

He ran screaming from the house. A huge shaggy bear with baleful eyes waited to gobble him up. Only his shoes were left. The wind blew them into the pond.

That night a passing villager heard a man and a woman's laughter coming from the decaying house. He fled past it, as he knew that the young woman who had once lived there died 10 years ago, wasting away from grief when her husband left. The following morning two skeletons, instead of one, lay in the bed on the floor. And the two ghosts lived happily ever after.




if you have a ghoulish tale, stories from your local village or perhaps a personal experience to share, please do email it to me at xniquet@gmail.com and I hope i can published it in my blog and add to my Kaidan collection and i hope that i can gather enough before the next Hungry Ghost Festival.