In rural Taiwan, during Ghost Month, elders still warn their children of an old taboo:
If the dead begin to count, do not help them finish.
Elders said the dead counted to remember themselves. Numbers kept them steady, the way names once did. If someone living answered, even once, the count no longer belonged to the dead alone.
The warning echoed others I had heard before—of mistakes that become invitations, where one extra offering, one miscounted step, quietly opens a door meant to stay sealed. Traditionally, and even now, the warning comes from a time when spirits were not merely remembered, but managed. At the time, I failed to understand its weight.
Unfortunately, as it turned out, I learned this too late.
Arrival & Unease
Eventually, I returned to my ancestral home in Yunlin County, a flat stretch of land where rice paddies meet fog and the nights feel unnaturally long. There, the house had stood abandoned for years, slowly surrendering to mildew and silence after my grandfather’s death. Consequently, as the eldest remaining descendant, it fell to me to prepare it for sale before the Hungry Ghost Festival began.
As I arrived, the villagers watched me unload my bags in silence.
At least, not hostile.
At the same time, not friendly.
Instead, expectant.
As if whatever happened next was no longer their responsibility.
At a glance, the house itself reflected the traditional Fujian style—low ceiling beams, a red-painted door god faded to pink, and a central ancestral hall with wooden tablets arranged like teeth in a jaw. Inside, the air smelled of dust, old paper, and a faint metallic scent.
That first evening, as a precaution, I swept the floors and burned mosquito coils. Soon after, without warning, when night settled, the countryside became unnaturally quiet—no insects, no frogs, no wind.
The Night the Counting Began at 3:17 a.m.
At exactly 3:17 a.m., I heard the sound of counting.
“Fourteen… fifteen… sixteen…”
At first, the voice came from beneath the floor. Notably, it was not threatening. Nor did it rush. Instead, each number was spoken with careful precision, as though mistakes were unacceptable.
Between each number, there was a pause—just long enough to feel deliberate. Long enough that, without thinking, I found myself anticipating the next count.
Instinctively, I held my breath and listened.
“Seventeen…”
The floor creaked softly beneath me. For a moment, I was certain the voice would continue.
Instead, without explanation, the counting stopped.
Only then did I realize my lips had parted, as if I had been about to answer.
After that, every attempt at sleep felt like an invitation.
The Village Elder’s Warning About the Keepers
The next morning, I asked the village elder about the sound. As he listened, his hands paused mid-motion while folding joss paper.
“You heard numbers?” he asked quietly.
I nodded.
He exhaled slowly and avoided my eyes. “Your family were keepers,” he said. “Not priests. Not mediums. Accountants.”
“Of what?” I asked.
The elder’s fingers tightened around the paper.
“Of what passed through,” he said. “And what was never meant to.”
He hesitated, then added, “Keepers don’t stop the counting. They make sure it never reaches the living.”
I waited, but he said nothing more.
Finally, he shook his head. “You should leave before the fifteenth day.”
Tally Marks Beneath the Ancestral Hall
That afternoon, I noticed something was wrong with the floor of the ancestral hall. Overnight, thin scratches had appeared, carved directly into the wood—straight lines grouped in neat clusters.
Tally marks.
The kind used when counting could not be trusted to remain spoken.
Clearly, by then, someone had been counting for a very long time.
Nevertheless, that night, the voice returned.
“Twenty-two… twenty-three… twenty-four…”
This time, it was closer.
Cautiously, I knelt and pressed my palm against the floorboards. Immediately, I felt how ice-cold they were.
“Who are you?” I whispered.
Abruptly, the counting stopped.
Then, almost gently, came the response:
“Still short,” as if the number itself mattered less than what it allowed.
The Ledger That Recorded the Dead
Sleep deprivation had begun to erode my reason. Each night ended the same way—counting, silence, and the feeling that something had been left unfinished. By the fifth night, I became convinced the house was not merely echoing the dead, but holding something in place.
Driven by that certainty, I began to search. Not carefully at first, but desperately—tearing through old documents, opening cabinets my grandfather had sealed, prying at drawers that resisted as if they had been waiting to be disturbed.
The ancestral hall felt heavier the longer I stayed there. The floorboards creaked beneath my steps, not in protest, but in warning.
Eventually—almost reluctantly—behind the ancestral altar and beneath a loose floor panel, I found a ledger.
It was heavier than it should have been, bound in cracked black leather, its pages warped by humidity and age. Inside, columns written in traditional Chinese script filled every page:
Name.
Date.
Number.
Status.
Some entries, marked in red ink, were completed.
A Record Spanning Occupation, Famine, and Disaster
At a glance, the earliest dates stretched back to the Japanese occupation. Later entries referenced years of famine, epidemics, typhoons, and political unrest.
The handwriting changed over time, but the format never did.
In this book, people were not recorded as having died.
Instead, they were counted—each number added only after someone living had heard them, noticed them, or answered without realizing what they were doing.
The ledger did not mark endings. It marked progress.
At the very end, I found an unfinished entry.
Name: blank
Number Required: 108
Current Count: 64
Only then did I understand why the house kept listening.
Immediately, my throat went dry.
When the Dead Are Used to Balance the Living
That night, once again, the counting resumed—faster than before.
“Sixty-five… sixty-six…”
With each number, the air thickened. The smell of rot mixed with incense ash, and the ancestral portraits on the wall seemed to darken, their eyes sinking deeper into shadow.
By seventy, I could hear breathing beneath the floor.
Just three numbers later, whispers crept beneath the counting—names spoken without voices, begging without sound.
Only then, at last, did I finally understand.
This ledger was not superstition. Rather, it was population control. Some communities offered lives; others offered movement—where people are shifted out of records, paths shorten, and distances between the living and the dead quietly collapse.
Movement did not mean relocation. It meant displacement. Names were removed. Households thinned. Certain lives were shortened just enough to be counted, then sealed away before they could be missed.
When the village could no longer sustain itself, elders chose certain families—mine included—not to die for the community, but to absorb what the community could not carry.
The dead, however, were not angry.
Instead, they were unfinished.
And so the counting continued. Now, during Ghost Month—when the boundary between worlds thinned—they were no longer waiting. They were collecting what remained owed.
One Hundred Eight and the End of the Count
On the thirteenth night, the floorboards split open on their own.
Cold air surged upward, carrying the scent of stagnant water and long-forgotten graves. Below, pale shapes pressed against the gap, faces barely human, mouths stitched shut with red thread.
Even then, the counting continued.
“Ninety-nine… one hundred…”
In my hands, the ledger burned hot.
“One hundred one…”
At last, I understood the truth.
The final number was never meant to be reached. If it was, the debt did not vanish. It moved.
Someone would need to take responsibility.
Someone would need to be recorded.
At 3:17 a.m., as the Hungry Ghost Festival reached its peak, the count reached one hundred seven.
The house trembled.
“One hundred eight.”
Silence.
The ledger snapped shut on its own. The whispers faded. The breathing stopped.
By morning, everything appeared normal—no scratches, no gaps, no evidence.
Only then did I notice the final page.
Status: Active.
Once again, the village was peaceful. Children played nearby. Shops opened. Incense burned as it did every other year.
Becoming the One Who Must Remain
They thanked me for “settling things.”
Not with relief, but with the quiet certainty of people who knew what the signs meant—the silence at night, the ledger no longer changing, the house staying still.
According to them, my family line had always been responsible.
In their view, the house no longer needed to be sold.
They were right.
Someone must remain.
Ultimately, that person must listen.
Most importantly, the counting must never start again.
Now, from then on, every night at 3:17, I sit in the ancestral hall with the ledger open.
Carefully, I do not let the numbers move.
Deliberately, I do not let them count.
And still, I pray no one ever asks what happens if I stop.