The Forbidden Ritual Book My Grandmother Left Me

March 3

The book was never meant to be mine. Even now, I’m certain of that. It should have gone into the coffin with her, buried beneath layers of soil and silence, sealed away with whatever secrets she had carried all her life. But instead, on the last night she was still breathing, my grandmother placed it into my hands, and from that moment on, everything in my life began to unravel in ways I still struggle to explain.

She had always been an unusual woman, though growing up, I never questioned it. In the village, people called her Qingfu Granny—a name spoken with equal parts respect and fear. They said she could cure illnesses that doctors couldn’t touch, and drive away things that had no name. I used to think it was all superstition, the kind old villagers clung to when they had nothing else. I believed in science. I believed in logic. I believed the world was exactly what it appeared to be.

That belief didn’t survive long after she died.

It was the summer of 2011 when my parents brought her from the countryside to our house in town. By then, everyone knew she didn’t have much time left. I rushed back to see her, not expecting anything more than a final goodbye. That night, she asked my parents to leave the room and told me to stay. Her voice was weak, but her eyes were clearer than I had ever seen them.

She reached beneath her pillow and pulled out a bundle wrapped in red plastic. It was tied carefully, almost ritualistically, as if it contained something far more valuable than money or jewelry. For a brief, foolish moment, I thought it might actually be some kind of inheritance. I was young, just stepping into adulthood, still naive enough to imagine life would be kind to me.

But when she placed it in my hands, I realized it was just a book.

Not just any book, though. The cover was worn and yellowed, the pages thick and soft with age. It didn’t look printed—every character, every diagram, was handwritten. Even at a glance, there was something unsettling about it, like it didn’t belong in the modern world.

She told me it was called The Thirty-Seven Methods of Rice Mysticism, compiled by someone from her lineage—women, she said, who practiced things most people could never understand. The original text, she explained, had been divided into two volumes: one for the living, and one for darker uses. The one she gave me was the “yang” volume, meant for proper use, though even then, she hesitated before letting go of it.

She made me promise never to sell it. Not for money, not for anything. “Even if someone offers you mountains of gold,” she said, gripping my wrist with surprising strength, “you do not give this away.”

Then she said something else that I didn’t fully understand at the time.

“If you ever find yourself truly desperate,” she whispered, “go find the woman I once called my sister. She knows more than I ever did.”

She tore a page from a small notebook and pressed it into my palm. An address. Nothing more.

The next morning, she was gone.

Some of the elders in the village later claimed that, on the night she died, a faint purple light had hovered above the roof of our house. I didn’t believe them. I didn’t want to believe them. It sounded like something out of a story, not something that could happen in real life.

A few weeks later, I left home to start working in Hangzhou. I took the book with me, mostly because I was afraid it might get thrown out accidentally if I left it behind. At the time, it was nothing more than a strange keepsake—something I didn’t intend to touch.

And for a while, I didn’t.

Months passed. Work consumed most of my time, and life settled into a dull routine. The book stayed buried at the bottom of my suitcase, forgotten.

Until one weekend, when I finally decided to take it out.

I don’t know what made me do it. Maybe it was boredom. Maybe it was curiosity. Or maybe, deep down, something else was already pulling me toward it.

The red plastic wrapping was still intact. When I opened it, the faint smell of old paper drifted out, dry and slightly sour, like something that had been sealed away for decades. The pages were yellow but intact, surprisingly well-preserved.

I flipped to the first page.

What I found there made my chest tighten.

It wasn’t a story. It wasn’t even written like a normal book. It was a set of instructions—detailed, deliberate, and disturbingly specific. The first section described something called a “spirit mediation ritual,” a method for communicating with the dead.

I remember feeling a chill run through me as I read it. Not because I believed it, but because of how seriously it was written. There was no hesitation in the language, no suggestion that it might not work. It read like a manual—like something meant to be followed.

I closed the book almost immediately.

It was ridiculous. There was no such thing as spirits, no such thing as communication with the dead. It was probably just some old collection of folk practices, exaggerated over time.

Still, the room felt colder than it should have.

I told myself I was imagining it. I put the book under my pillow and tried to sleep it off. I ended up sleeping through most of the afternoon and woke up sometime after nine in the evening. I went out to grab something to eat, trying to shake off the uneasy feeling that had settled in my chest.

When I came back, that’s when things started to change.

The first thing I noticed was the wall behind my door.

There was a large patch of dampness spreading across it, almost as tall as a person. At first, I thought it was just humidity—old buildings often had that problem. But the shape bothered me. It wasn’t random. It was too… defined.

It looked like a silhouette.

I reached out and touched it.

Cold. Unnaturally cold, like pressing my hand against ice.

I checked the ceiling, thinking maybe there was a leak. There wasn’t. No water stains, no dripping, nothing that could explain it. When I looked back at the wall, the shape seemed even more pronounced.

For a moment, I stood there, staring at it, trying to come up with a rational explanation.

Eventually, I convinced myself it was just dampness.

It had to be.

By the time I turned away, the patch had already started to fade.

Later that night, lying in bed, I couldn’t stop thinking about the book. About the ritual. About the possibility—however absurd—that it might actually do something.

I should have ignored it.

Instead, I reached for it again.

The instructions were clear. There were two versions of the ritual—one complex, one simpler. The simpler one required specific items: five pieces of colored paper, a bowl of water, two red candles, a metal spoon, and a sheet of yellow paper with a drawn figure.

It sounded like nonsense.

But the more I read, the more a strange thought began to take hold.

What if it worked?

What if there really was something in this apartment?

I had just moved in. I didn’t know who had lived there before me. I didn’t know what had happened in that space.

And suddenly, I wanted to know.

Not because I believed it—but because I wanted to prove that it wasn’t real.

That was the logic I used to justify what I did next.

The next day, I gathered everything the book required. It wasn’t difficult—most of the items were ordinary things you could find anywhere. By evening, everything was ready.

The ritual had to be performed at midnight.

I remember sitting there, waiting for the time to come, feeling both ridiculous and strangely excited. Outside, the night was quiet, the air heavy and still. I turned off my phone, muted my computer—anything that might interrupt the process.

When the clock finally struck twelve, I began.

At first, nothing happened.

I followed each step exactly as written—burning the papers one by one, placing the ashes into the bowl, watching carefully for any sign of movement.

Five minutes passed.

Nothing.

I almost laughed at myself.

Of course it didn’t work. Of course it was all nonsense.

I reached out to clean everything up.

And then—

A sudden chill ran through my entire body.

Not a gradual cold, but a sharp, violent drop in temperature that made me shiver uncontrollably. The candles flickered, their flames dimming as if something unseen had passed through them.

Then I heard it.

A faint, metallic tapping.

I froze.

The sound was coming from the bowl.

I looked down.

The spoon… was moving.