Eerie tales from old Korea / compiled by Brother Anthony of Taizé.

Part I --  A Beggar's Wages  15 --  A Hunter's Mistake  22 --  The Donkey Maker  24 --  A Submarine Adventure  27 --  Necessity, the Mother of Invention  33 --  The Essence of Life  41 --  The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg  44 --  An Aesculapian Episode  48 --  Cats and the Dead  57 --  A Korean Jonah  60 --  A Brave Governor  63 --  Hen Versus Centipede  67 --  A Tiger Hunter's Revenge  74 --  How Jin Outwitted the Devils  82 --  The Ghost of a Ghost  90 --  The Tenth Scion  96 --  Part II --  The Story of Jang Doryeong  105 --  Yun Se-Pueong, The Wizard  112 --  The Literary Man of Imsil  115 --  The Man on the Road  118 --  The Man Who Became a Pig  121 --  The Grateful Ghost  124 --  Ten Thousand Devils  127 --  The Home of the Fairies  133 --  The Snake's Revenge  146 --  The Brave Magistrate  149 --  The King of Hell  152 --  Hong's Experiences in Hades  157 --  Ta-Hong  163.

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Fiction. Northeast Asia Studies. Homer B. Hulbert and James S. Gale, two of the most famous North American missionaries to come to Korea in the 1880s, were very fond of ghost stories, but for years the Korean scholars they met swore that no such stories existed in Korea. Eventually, they discovered that Korea, too, had a plentiful supply of ghosts and spirits, celebrated in many eerie tales. However, because the stories had seemed too frivolous or were connected with shamanism and Buddhism, the scholars had been ashamed to talk about them.

A main source of these stories were collections of yadam. These were a form of short tale, especially popular in the Joseon period. Whereas Confucian classics were the gateway to officialdom, yadam offered an escape valve, dealing with things much closer to daily life. The stories told there were about individuals who were not always admirable paragons of Confucian virtue; rather, they were often artful dodgers who managed to escape from tricky situations; survive traps; deal with ghosts, spirits, and nine-tailed foxes; and even get rich in the process.

As we celebrate the one hundred-fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Hulbert and Gale, the present selection of Korean ghost stories—nostalgic for their echoes of the lost world of old Korea and its many ghosts—is offered for the pleasure of readers in the twenty-first century, one hundred years after their original publication. -- Publisher description for Eerie tales from old Korea / compiled by Brother Anthony of Taize.