Gan Bao was one of the first Chinese writers to record tales of the supernatural. He was known to live from some time before 315 AD to about 336 AD. One of his best-known works is Records of an Inquest into the Spirit-Realm, which contains many ghost stories. But more than the stories themselves, it's the inspiration behind them that will make your skin crawl: when Gan Bao's father died, his mother secretly buried a maid with whom her husband was having an affair alive in his tomb, sealing the two together forever, and, she thought, conscripting the maid to death. The family knew nothing of her plot.
Years later, when Gan Bao's mother died, they opened up the tomb to lay her to rest next to her husband. What they found was the maid, weakened but very much alive. She said that the ghost of Gan Bao's father had brought her food and water for ten years, .
