Chinese Ghouls and Goblins

Gerald Willoughby-Meade’s Chinese Ghouls and Goblins (1928) is a delightfully erudite yet entertaining exploration of China’s supernatural imagination—a work that bridges scholarship and storytelling with wit and curiosity. Blending folklore, philosophy, and comparative mythology, Willoughby-Meade examines ghosts, demons, dragons, vampires, and the metaphysics of the soul as understood in Chinese thought, tracing their connections to Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucian ethics. His approach is at once academic and playful, drawing on ancient texts, local tales, and ethnographic anecdotes to reveal a world where metaphysics meets mischief, where dragons embody moral order and spirits test the boundaries between the living and the dead. The result is a rich, readable study that invites readers to see Chinese mythology not as superstition, but as a profound and imaginative reflection on human nature itself.