Ghosts Mean Bad Luck (见鬼衰)

Some Chinese believe when a person sees a ghost, then he/she would suffer a three-year bad luck. Maybe now Todd believes the saying has some truth too following his past experiences.

During the turn of millennium, Todd was sent to Pudong, Shanghai to help the setting up of a technology based company as an expatriate. He was given a hostel to stay somewhere outskirt of Shanghai metropolitan city. Since it was not advisable for foreigners to drive in China, Todd was given a personal driver to ease his travelling from the hostel to his workplace every day; and also for Todd to do shopping during weekends.

Everything went well for the first few months until one winter night when Todd flipped and turned in his bed thinking of his already behind schedule project work, suddenly he felt someone was sitting on his chest caused him to feel difficulty in breathing. Though Todd felt his body was seized by some invisible force, he could still open his eyes to see the surrounding. As Todd kept watching, he saw a long haired lady in white sat on his chest.

This mysterious lady started to use her skinny fingers to force open Todd’s jaws and started to blow her cold breaths into his lungs as if performing CPRs. After the lady in white performed her air blowing exercises on Todd for a while she then lifted herself into the air and flew out through the room window and disappeared in to the dark sky leaving disembodied shrieks lingered for quite some time. Todd felt extremely lethargic and cold and he said that he felt his lungs were as if frozen solid and it took him quite a while and after a few does of whiskey to bring his body temperature up again.

At first Todd thought the lady in white was just his imagination due to his work pressure and he soon forgot about his ghostly encounter. A few days later, one of the scaffoldings in the factory construction site suddenly collapses and caused a few casualties. Two workers died in the accidents and Todd’s construction project was ordered to stop by local safety authority pending on an investigation. That was not a good news for Todd who already worried about his belated project progress.

Other than worry and kept his fingers crossed, there were not much one could do but to wait for the authority’s permission to resume work. On the other hand, Todd’s company paid a hefty amount of compensation to the dependants of the deceased to settle the case being brought to court of law. After some delayed and a lot of public relations and assurances, the factory construction project resumed. This hiccup caused the project manager Todd to be in extremely low morale and tensed.  His local clerk-of-works, Jenny suggested Todd to pray in a local temple so that he could seek the protection of local spirits but Todd doesn’t believe in supernatural things.

A few weeks later, another bad news hit Todd. News from his US headquarter that his construction project might be scrapped because of customer preference has changed. Now instead of Pudong, the direction was to look at Chengdu, Sichuan instead. This was another blow to Todd as his company already has a potential candidate for the Chengdu project. That means that Todd might lost his job if the Chengdu project kicked off. Thought unhappy, there was nothing Todd could do as the direction from US headquarter was to wait and see.

Then, another week passed, Todd experienced another hag-ride during his sleep again, this time the mysterious lady in white sat on Todd’s chest and repeated her CPRs. Todd remained as helpless and just as if the ghostly lady was about to finish her CPRs, another creepy man-in-white flew in and sat beside the lady and perform the same CPR exercise on Todd. Todd was tortured for another rounds until he became unconscious and only woke up by the knockings on his door way past noon.

It was Jenny came to visit Todd. She thought something might have gone wrong as Todd didn’t come to work as usual. Todd was to discuss the work progress report with Jenny and in the preparation of the coming visit of his company’s vice president the following Monday. The first sentence Jenny said after seeing Todd was: “Your face is as black as charcoal!”

The vice president visited Todd’s worksite as planned. While the vice president praised the project team for their dedications, he passed Todd a stack of letters and told Todd to distribute them to everyone. And, the vice president also gave Todd another letter asked Todd to open the letter after the vice president himself has left.

So, as instructed, Todd gave all his fellow workers the letters and he returned to his office and opened his. The gist of the letter meant: “You are fired!”

Old folks believe that if a person inhaled a cold breath of a ghost, he/she would be experiencing one year of poverty. And if he/she saw a ghost, then this person will have a bad luck of 3 years. If the belief is true, then Todd would have bad luck for a very long time! However, I have lost touch with Todd and don’t know his whereabouts after he was ‘terminated’.