Lore - Lore 274: Distant Relations
Episode Date: February 24, 2025Despite the oceans and centuries that separate various cultures, it is often the folklore that acts like a glue, uniting humanity in a shared world of terrifying legends. Narrated and produced by Aaro...n Mahnke, with writing by GennaRose Nethercott, research by Cassandra de Alba, and music by Chad Lawson. ————————— Lore Resources: Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources Official Lore Merchandise: lorepodcast.com/shop All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com ————————— Sponsors: BetterHelp: Lore is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/LORE, and get on your way to being your best self. MeUndies: Get insanely comfy-yet-sexy Undies and Loungewear, and score huge site-wide savings at MeUndies.com/lore, enter promo code LORE. Quince: Premium European clothing and accessories for 50% to 80% less than similar brands, at Quince.com/LORE for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. ————————— To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to ads@lorepodcast.com with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to sales@advertisecast.com, or visit our listing here. ©2025 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.
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Japan and China
When Japan and China went to war in 1937, an untold number of lives were lost.
Men, women, and children were blotted off the map, some vanishing without a trace.
But among the names that were mourned was someone who had already been dead for hundreds
of thousands of years.
His name was the Pei King Man, and he lived close to 780,000 years ago.
Or rather, they lived.
You see, the Pei King Man is the name of a collection of human bones discovered 30 miles
southwest of Beijing.
These bones, found by paleontologists in 1921, marked the first ancient human remains ever
discovered on mainland Asia, and provided all new information about our early human
ancestors.
In other words, these bones were a big deal.
So when the Japanese invaded over a decade later, the Chinese knew the Peking Man fossils
had to be protected at all costs.
In 1941, in an attempt to hide the coveted remains from their invaders, China tried to
smuggle them to the United States.
Tried being the operative word here.
The ship transporting the bones was attacked, and in the chaos of battle, the crates containing
the fossils disappeared.
For 80 years now, countless attempts have been made to find them.
Everyone from the CIA to psychics with divining rods have been brought in to hunt for the
priceless artifacts.
But to this day, not a single one of the missing bones has ever been found.
The humans who made up the Pei Qing Man remains might well have been the first legendary residents
of Beijing, but they certainly wouldn't be the last.
These days, the city boasts a population of 22 million people, and with thousands of years
of human history behind it and a countless lineage of human souls, it's no wonder that
some of them have stuck around. I'm Aaron Manke, and this is Lore.
It's been known by many names across the centuries.
First Ji, or Qi, all the way back in the 8th century BCE when the city was founded.
Then Yangjing, 1500 years later.
Chengdu a century after that, and then Dazhu, when Kublai Khan claimed it as his own royal
residence. Title after title, conqueror after conqueror, time passed by, and finally in 1421, during
the Ming dynasty, the city was given the name we know today.
Beijing.
A city, you see, is a little like a folktale.
It shifts and remakes itself, adapting to each new era and populace, almost as if it
were alive.
And like any living creature, it needs a heart.
For Beijing, that heart is called the Forbidden City.
The Forbidden City is located deep in Beijing's center.
Sealed off from the rest of the city by a deep moat, its name refers to the fact that
most citizens were forbidden from ever crossing
through the gates.
Sure, certain imperial family members and government officials might be permitted, but
this was truly the emperor's domain, and he alone had free reign on the grounds.
It was New Year's Day in 1421 when the Forbidden City first opened, at the command of an emperor
named Jud Di.
Since then, it has served as the royal residence for 24 consecutive rulers in China.
In fact, it remained the imperial headquarters for a whopping 500 years, until the Chinese
Revolution of 1911 to 1912.
It's said that it took over 200,000 workers to construct this beating heart of Beijing.
And believe me when I say it was no simple task.
Every element of the city within a city was carefully designed to send a very specific
message to those who were allowed within those walls.
That of the power and the grandeur of the emperor.
Picture in your mind wide treeless gardens and winding alleyways, brightly painted walls
all in the imperial colors, of course, swirling with dragons, a symbol of the emperor's
omnipotence.
Imagine, too, buildings adorned with ornate birds, flowers, and other animals, which,
some believed, came to life at night to sprint through the hallways.
Now, expand that mental image across nearly a thousand buildings,
with more than 9,000 total rooms.
Buildings with some pretty formidable names, mind you.
Places like the Hall of Literary Brilliance,
the Hall of Military Eminence,
and the Palace of Heavenly Purity, just to name a few.
Yes, it wouldn't take long for any visitor
walking through this urban marvel to stop
viewing the emperor as a man and start viewing him as a god.
Of course, the era of emperors has long since ended, and these days the Forbidden City isn't
quite so, well, forbidden.
Today it's open to the public as one of the world's most popular tourist attractions,
housing exhibits on China's culture and history.
But although governments may change, some things stay the same.
The Forbidden City's grandeur remains, of course, as does its history.
And with that history comes the ghosts.
The oldest ghosts whispered of within that ancient fortress stretch all the way back
to the foundations.
That is, to the very emperor who commissioned the compound in the first place, the Yangla
Emperor Zhu Di.
Now, it was well known that the Emperor Zhu Di had a penchant for Korean women, and so
when he settled into his new palace within the Forbidden City, he naturally needed a
Korean harem on site.
His concubines lived in gilded cages.
Parties and festivals were thrown in their honor.
They were provided bathhouses of steaming water, and a team of eunuchs catered to their
every whim.
And yet the women were still prisoners, unable to leave the palace walls with every move
they made closely watched.
And legend has it, just after the Forbidden City's opening ceremony, one of Emperor
Zhu Di's favorite concubines was caught in the arms of a eunuch, and then she took
her own life.
Worried that a scandal would weaken his power in the eyes of foreign dignitaries, Zhu Di
resolved to keep the whole thing hush-hush by murdering absolutely everyone who might
possibly know about the
affair.
Definitely a chill guy.
So the emperor rounded up his concubines, their eunuch guards, and the servants who
tended to them, and massacred all of them.
It's said that up to 2,800 people were killed in the process.
Thankfully, this dark deed might be more fiction than fact. You see, there are no official records detailing the process. Thankfully, this dark deed might be more fiction than fact.
You see, there are no official records detailing the event, only a dubiously sourced diary
entry from a supposed surviving concubine.
Honestly, we may never know the truth of Judy's massacre, but that hasn't stopped the hauntings.
The signs begin at nightfall.
First, women's wails echo through the rooms where the concubines once lived.
Once during an exhibition of Imperial concubine jewelry, startled museum-goers heard a voice
crying out, It's mine, it's mine.
And in 1992, visitors even claimed to have captured a harem of white-clad ghosts on camera.
Disembodied flute music has been heard wafting through the Forbidden City deep into the night.
Some visitors have even seen shadowy figures or felt cold hands drag against their skin.
Emperor Judi himself is said to haunt the grounds as well, his spectral footsteps reverberating
through the halls and a shadowy form flickering upon his former throne. But it
isn't only Judi and his concubines that haunt the Forbidden City. After all, the
compound has over 500 years of Imperial drama under its belt. It's bound to have
collected a few phantoms along the way. There's the young girl who haunts the
Imperial Garden, for example, and the woman in a maid's uniform who carries a
lantern through the exhibition hall.
And then there's another murdered concubine, an unfortunate theme, I know.
Her name was Zhen, and she was a favorite of the Chinese Emperor who ruled from the 1870s until 1908.
But favoritism can be a dangerous thing. And when the Emperor's bride,
can be a dangerous thing. And when the Emperor's bride,
CG, essentially yanked control of the government
from her husband in 1898,
she didn't look too kindly
on that husband's favorite mistress.
Empress CG locked Jen in a small room,
isolating her from the world
and feeding her on mere scraps
through a small crevice in the door.
In 1900, during the Boxer Rebellion,
CG took the Emperor and fled the city.
But rather than let Jen go, she ordered the girl to be thrown down a well and drowned.
When her family was finally able to drag the murdered woman from the well a year later,
her body was said to be uncannily supple and lifelike, as if ready to awaken at any moment
and seek revenge.
While Zhen's well is now dry, legend says that it fills up at night, and those who gaze
deep into its waters will see none other than her face staring back at them.
Yes, the Forbidden City may be Beijing's heart, but here's the thing about hearts.
They pump blood all throughout the body. And you better believe every last limb and fingertip of this massive city has another dark story to tell.
The year was 1937, and everyone in Beijing had heard the rumors about the Watchtower. It was, they said, very haunted.
Specifically, it was filled with mischievous spirits scurrying along the upturned eaves
and over the cobbled walls.
Oh, and it was dangerous to visit the place after dark.
The tall, imposing structure stood at the edge of Beijing, part of a massive fortifying wall
that had once surrounded the city. By the 1930s, it had already been long abandoned. Bat colonies
and packs of feral dogs were the only tenants now. Plus, of course, those beings that everyone was so afraid of. That is, the spirits. Specifically,
fox spirits. The legends began in the 1800s, centuries after the tower was constructed.
As the story goes, there was once a watchman at the tower who had passed the long hours at his post
in the company of a good friend, a fellow old man who happened to be a master storyteller.
a good friend, a fellow old man who happened to be a master storyteller. According to the legend, one lunar new year, the watchman and his friend spent the night
drinking rice wine and enjoying the night air.
Eventually, the storyteller fell asleep.
Nice guy that he was, the watchman went over to cover his friend with his jacket, only
to watch in awe as the sleeping man transformed into a fox before fading from sight.
The following night, the friend returned with an explanation.
He had actually been the king of the fox spirits all along, and in return for the watchman's
kindness, he assured that the man's wages would increase a little bit every day for
the rest of his life.
Now, this is just one of the many tales about fox spirits inhabiting the Old Tower.
Foxes are an integral part of Chinese folklore, particularly magical foxes.
They can shape-shift and act as either guardians or tricksters.
Some behave like Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.
Others in the Taoist tradition serve as mediators between the mortal and the spirit
realms. They might help you, they might hurt you. They might show up disguised as an old man and get
drunk with you on New Year's Eve. In other words, Fox spirits are a lot like a box of chocolates.
You never know what you're going to get. All of which is to say, Fox Tower was infamous for its
vulpine visitations.
And so, when a young woman's mutilated body was discovered at the foot of that very tower
on January 8th of 1937, some believed the Fox spirits were to blame.
Her name was Pamela Warner, and she was the 19-year-old adopted daughter of E.T.C. Warner,
a British scholar and retired diplomat living in Beijing.
According to witnesses,
the girl had gone out ice skating with a friend the night before and never returned home.
Now, I will spare you the genuinely horrific physical details, but the murder was incredibly
grisly and immediately the case became a media sensation. The case and the Fox spirits associated
with it. That's right, the very same year that the electric guitar was invented.
Ancient Fox spirits were on the front news page in one of the most advanced cities in
the world.
Calls poured in, some insisting that Pamela had been killed by the Fox spirits.
Others falsely confessed to her murder, including one person who claimed they had killed Pamela
because she was a Fox Spirit.
But the police recognized her location as the clue that it was.
You see, they knew immediately that whoever had murdered her must have been a foreigner.
After all, locals knew better than to approach Fox Tower in the dead of night.
Why?
Well, that, you see, was when the Fox spirits awoke. Locals' belief in the tower's
haunted reputation was just that strong. Sadly, despite that initial clue, Pamela's murder was
never solved. The search for her killer was soon overshadowed by the invasion of Japanese forces
and the start of World War II. In fact, during the war, Pamela's father was sent to an internment camp
for foreigners, alongside one of the men that he suspected was responsible for his daughter's
death.
Warner had never given up the fight for justice, and though the law never listened to him,
he believed the blame lay with a prominent American dentist and his cronies. According
to Warner, as well as historian Paul French, who wrote a book about the case, this dentist had lured Pamela to a brothel and attempted to assault her, at which point
she fought back and paid with her life.
Now, I know what you're thinking.
If Pamela had been murdered at a brothel, how did her body end up at the tower?
Well, some believe her killers placed her there specifically because of the spirit legends,
in an attempt to use the public superstition to their advantage.
After all, why not use the power of folklore to shoulder the blame off onto a magical,
shape-shifting animal?
That would certainly be one way to outfox the law. The graffiti splashed across the brick and stone building was impossible to ignore. Please it read in wet, slopping letters.
Do not believe the lies.
There are no ghosts.
Now I don't know about you, but if I saw something like that spray painted onto the side of a
building my first thought would be, yep, there are 100% ghosts in there, and most people
who visit Chaone No. 81 are inclined to agree.
Less than two miles from the Fox Tower stands a three-story French Baroque building.
It looks strangely out of place among the modern Soviet-style apartments and glitzy
wealth that makes up the rest of the block, because this place is nothing like its neighbors.
The house is built of fading brickwork, its windows encircled in toothy stone.
Two great columns flank the front door, while a dark, mansard roof squats on top.
In other words, it looks a heck of a lot like a haunted house.
And let me tell you, it lives up to the hype.
Referred to by its street address, Chaonei No. 81 is known as one of Beijing's most
haunted houses.
But even still, no one knows fully why it even exists.
Some say the Qing imperial family built it as a church for British Beijingers in the
year 1900.
Others say that it was built in 1910 as a language school for foreign missionaries,
or in 1922 to be a private residence.
And still others claim that a British priest built it to be a church only to mysteriously
vanish before construction was completed.
What we do know for sure though is that by the 1970s, the property had been abandoned.
For years it sat in disrepair.
Its windows were broken, it was overgrown with ivy, and while nearby buildings easily sold for several million dollars, Chow Ney No. 81 sat on the market for years, with buyers
refusing to even touch it.
After all, no one wanted to buy a house full of ghosts.
The local children all knew that it was haunted.
In the words of one man who grew up nearby, we would play hide and seek in the house,
but we didn't dare come in by ourselves.
And perhaps that was for the best, because if the stories are true, not everyone who
went into that house came back out.
The most famous ghost story associated with Chaonei No. 81 takes place in 1949.
According to the legend, a high-ranking member of the Nationalist Party had moved into the old brick house, but soon the communists took control and the man fled Beijing for Taiwan.
But here's the thing.
This man didn't live alone.
He had a wife, or in some versions of the story, a concubine, who he left behind, deserted
in the opulent home.
They say that in A Swirl of Heartbreak and fear for the approaching communists, the
woman took her own life by hanging herself from the rafters of that very house. Ever since,
her spirit is believed to have haunted the place. It's said that at night, when thunderstorms shake
the city, she can be heard crying and screaming through the rain. And then there are the vanishings.
There was, of course, the rumor about that missing
priest, but he wasn't the only person said to have gone missing there, never to be seen again.
In one story, the house had been occupied by a French railway company manager. After his death
in 1930, his wife remained there alone until 30 years later when she disappeared under mysterious
circumstances. And in another legend from the late 1990s or early 2000s, a construction crew was working
at the house next door.
Well, next door is a bit of an overstatement.
The only thing separating the two was a shoddy basement wall.
One night the construction workers were bored and perhaps a little tipsy, and they decided
that heck, why not punch a hole in
the wall and go explore that allegedly haunted mansion they had heard so much about.
So together, the men tore a gap, and then they crawled through.
But none of them, they say, were ever seen again. Belief is a powerful thing.
For example, is there any real record of these vanishings actually historically taking place
in Chaone No. 81?
No.
But like Fox Tower, the belief in their
veracity was enough to keep the story circulating. Ghosts, you see, are a major
part of Chinese folklore. In fact, two of China's biggest festivals involve
burning paper money, known as hell money, to placate ancestors and ghosts. But
despite the nation's obvious love of a good haunting, the
Chinese Communist Party or CCP has spent decades attempting to eradicate the
superstition for good. In 1961, the CCP published a book titled Stories About
Not Being Afraid of Ghosts. And these aren't your average ghost stories.
They're all about brave men who aren't afraid of ghosts pointing out the foolishness of those who do.
In some cases, they use their superior intelligence
to scare away or kill the ghosts.
In others, they simply prove that what had been interpreted
as a ghost was actually just the wind
or an overactive imagination.
Here, I'll give you a glimpse of the book's introduction.
"'There are no ghosts, the opening paragraph insists.
Belief in ghosts is a backward idea, a superstition, and a sign of cowardice.
This is a matter of common sense today among the people.
It goes on to insist that the former ruling class of China, and I quote,
fooled and frightened the people with ghosts and
gods so as to strengthen their rule.
And while it might sound silly, to be honest, the CCP may have a point.
Because you see, superstition does, to this very day, impact daily life in Beijing.
Take Chaonei No. 81.
Despite the lack of historical evidence that the vanishings ever happened, the house was so reviled and feared that it sat abandoned all the way until 1990, when it was finally
acquired by the Catholic Diocese.
By then, though, it was in total disrepair, and the Church couldn't afford to renovate
it.
The house only grew more and more dilapidated, and the more desolate it looked, the more
its haunted reputation grew. In 2014, a 3D horror movie called The House That Never Dies was released, inspired by
the legends about Chao Nei No. 81.
The movie spurred new interest in its ghostly legends, and suddenly upwards of 500 people
a day were flooding the street to catch a glimpse of the infamous house.
And with fans swarming the property, hopes for renovation became even more complicated,
magical belief impacting the physical bureaucratic world, just as the Communist Party had feared.
Ultimately, it took until 2016 for the diocese to restore the house,
with the help of a municipal grant. Although the whispers remain,
the house that never dies
is simply now a house.
And although the identity
of the current tenant is unknown,
I think we can assume one thing about them.
They are, in fact, very much alive. I hope you've enjoyed this tour through one of the most haunted cities in the East.
I think it demonstrates a powerful, encouraging truth that despite the oceans and centuries
that separate people, our stories keep us remarkably linked.
And there's more to the tale.
I have one final Beijing legend to share with you, although it's one that might feel eerily close to home.
Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.
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Quince dot com slash lor. It's one of the world's most famous urban legends.
A driver picks up a young woman in need of a ride, only for her to disappear into thin
air when they reach her intended destination.
Maybe she borrows the driver's coat, which he
later finds draped over a tombstone, burying the woman's name. Maybe he returns to the once
glowing home where he had dropped her off the night before, only to find an abandoned building
or a fog-laden cemetery. And often the story ends with that scene that we all know where the
old woman tells the driver, Jane Doe, you say?
Why, she's been dead for 100 years.
Now look, this kind of tale is so ubiquitous that the inventor of the term urban legend
himself, folklorist Jan-Herald Brunvand, even wrote a seminal book about it called The Vanishing
Hitchhiker.
In his own words, the Vanishingishing hitchhiker always retains the same
basic plot and powerful core of wonder, about the strangers we see along the highways and
about the fate of those who die young and tragically.
It's basically synonymous with American highway legends at this point, which makes it all
the more surprising that a version of this exists in Beijing. And here's the thing, Beijing's vanishing hitchhiker is no anonymous phantom woman.
Oh no, it's the infamous historical figure known as China's Helen of Troy.
Her real name was Chen Yuan Yuan, and life hadn't been easy on her.
When she was still young, her uncle sold her to an opera troupe in order to make ends meet,
and although she gained great fame and renown on the stage, she was essentially little more
than property.
Eventually a 17th century general named Wu Seng-wei purchased Chen to be his concubine,
and so she left her life in the theater.
And as the story goes, the two quickly fell in love.
Now this particular general basically had
one job, to guard the Great Wall against the Manchu army. But when a different
rebel army kidnapped Chen in 1644, this guy threw his national duty right out
the window. He immediately brokered a deal with the Manchu prince, agreeing to
let him take power if the Manchus helped him rescue his one true love. Which is exactly what happened.
The Manchu army defeated the rebels and seized control of China, marking the start of the
Qing dynasty.
Today, General Wu Seng-wei is remembered as little more than an opportunistic traitor.
And okay, to be fair, he did later on try to rebel against the Manchus in an effort
to make up for the snafu, but the rebellion was a failure.
The Qing dynasty was here and here to stay.
As for our Chinese Helen of Troy, well, this is where she begins to slip from history into
mystery.
It's believed that after literally selling out all of China for her, the general grew
bored of Chen Yuan Yuan.
Loyalty really wasn't this guy's strong suit.
And so, Chen fled.
Some believe that she became a nun or started a new life in a small village.
Others say that she didn't escape at all, but starved herself to death or drowned herself
in a lotus pond.
And others believe that she hung herself right there in the home that she shared with her
once beloved general. The Qing dynasty reigned for 267 years, all the way up until the year 1911.
And it's then, just after the fall of the very dynasty she helped usher in,
that our leading lady starts thumbing for a lift.
According to the legend, in the 1910s, a rickshaw driver was out on the job one day
when he picked up a young woman.
She climbed in and requested a ride to Beijing's Songpo Library. In the 1910s, a rickshaw driver was out on the job one day when he picked up a young woman.
She climbed in and requested a ride to Beijing's Songpo Library.
The journey there was ordinary enough, wending through alleyways and bouncing through the
crowded city streets.
But when they arrived, the woman got out of the rickshaw, paid her fare, and then vanished
right before the shocked driver's eyes.
The only thing that remained of her was a single peacock feather floating in the air.
A feather, mind you, identical to the ones the former Qing officials would have worn
in their hats.
Understandably, the driver balked in confusion, which only increased when he looked down at
the fair the woman had placed in his hand.
While a moment before it had been shiny and new, the coin he held was now old
and made of tarnished copper. And most perplexing of all, rather than the markings of modern
currency, it bore the name of a 17th-century Qing emperor.
Oh, and by the way, the Songpo Library? It hadn't always been a home for books. Centuries
earlier it had been the residence to something, or rather someone,
else. That's right, General Wu Sang-wei and his true love, Chen Yuan Yuan. This episode of Lore was produced by me, Aaron Manke, and was written by Jenna Rose Nethercott
with research by Cassandra De Alba and music by Chad Lawson.
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