Voted the nation’s best haunted mansion in a poll on Yahoo Taiwan, the Liu family mansion in Chiayi County has had even more visitors this month, the seventh month of the lunar calendar, or Ghost Month.
According to traditional Chinese beliefs, spirits of the dead are released into the mortal realm during Ghost Month. Every day, offerings to these spirits can be observed on almost any street.
The Liu mansion in Minsyong Township (民雄) was built during the Japanese colonial era, but it was abandoned shortly after being completed, making way for many ghost stories.
Photo: Tsai Tsung-hsun, Taipei Times
According to a local myth, the owner had an affair with a maid, who, after being abused by the wife, drowned herself in the mansion’s well.
Another tale says that a Japanese soldier killed himself when staying the night, while others say there were “unmistakable” occult disturbances when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) army set up camp near the mansion.
A visitor, surnamed Ho (何), said that he was starting off Ghost Month — which this year began on Thursday last week — by visiting haunted houses, and that he traveled from Taichung to Minsyong because the Liu mansion is the most famous.
Ho said that the overgrown Baroque-style ruins have an eeriness to them, but he did not feel scared.
“But it might be because I visited in the morning,” he added.
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
IN FULL SWING: Recall drives against lawmakers in Hualien, Taoyuan and Hsinchu have reached the second-stage threshold, the campaigners said Campaigners in a recall petition against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) in Taichung yesterday said their signature target is within sight, and that they need a big push to collect about 500 more signatures from locals to reach the second-stage threshold. Recall campaigns against KMT lawmakers Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) and Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) are also close to the 10 percent threshold, and campaigners are mounting a final push this week. They need about 800 signatures against Chiang and about 2,000 against Yang. Campaigners seeking to recall Lo said they had reached the threshold figure over the
RSS