Water-Ghost Folklore, Drowned-Ghost Belief, and Rural Water Landscapes in China: A Jiepai Oral Tradition Record from Jiangsu

This record is a primary-source archival item about water-ghost folklore, drowned-ghost belief, water-monkey belief, childhood water fear, rural water landscapes, and local lexicon in Jiepai, Jiangsu, curated for research use in Chinese ghost folklore, water-spirit folklore, oral tradition, rural China studies, Jiangnan folklore, childhood studies, vernacular risk narratives, and emic documentation. It is released as the OA_V1 item-level record for “Drowned Ghosts,” a Chinese narrative text within the Jiepai Jianghu section of the Chuanyue Archive. The text documents a Jiepai oral tradition concerning drowned ghosts said to inhabit ponds, ditches, and waterways, dragging swimmers or children underwater. It also records a related local explanation in which such beings are understood not as ghosts but as “water monkeys.” The narrative connects childhood water fear, swimming practices, old ponds, ditches, local drownings, water bridges, and fishing-related speech. The record’s value lies in water ghost folklore, drowned-ghost belief, Shui Gui, water-monkey belief, Chinese ghost folklore, water-spirit folklore, childhood water fear, rural water landscape, oral tradition, and local lexicon. The text is not presented as evidence for the supernatural reality of drowned ghosts or water monkeys. It is preserved as an emic record of local danger narratives, childhood memory, vernacular explanation, and water-related rural life. Methodologically, this item combines the Archive Author’s childhood memory, the father’s oral account, a recorded oral video retained privately, remembered peer experience, author annotations, and provenance notes. The annotations distinguish the father’s account, the Archive Author’s own clear memory, local lexical distinctions, excluded concepts from fuller versions, and provenance boundaries. A key feature of the record is the semantic range of “淹死鬼.” It refers not only to a drowned ghost or water ghost in local belief, but also to certain people who enter water to catch fish by hand. The item therefore preserves a local lexical overlap between supernatural danger, drowning memory, water labor, and embodied water practice. The record also preserves local terms and distinctions, including “水鬼,” “水猴子,” “洗澡” as a local term covering both bathing and swimming, and “水桥” as a water-edge structure referenced elsewhere in the archive. It marks “山头下” as a cultural concept present in a fuller version but not included in this OA version. This item belongs to the Jiepai Jianghu Legends and Beliefs Series. The series-level record has been published on Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20834123. This item-level record has DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20966819. The item is also part of the broader Chuanyue Archive, a native-insider emic vernacular multimodal archive. Related records will be released on a rolling basis over the next few months. This public OA_V1 release includes the public narrative text, author annotations, and contextual metadata. It does not include the father’s oral video, precise pond or ditch locations, location maps, private videos, raw spatial materials, or unreleased provenance materials. Those materials are retained in the Author Private Master Archive. Authorship and upload roles are separate. The Archive Author, The Jiepai Archivist, is the creator, archive owner, rights holder, and public contact person. Any uploader, depositor, or curatorial assistant provides deposit and formatting assistance only and is not the author, creator, archive owner, rights holder, or public contact for this archive.