Wailing Ghosts

Fourteen short stories in this penguin Little Black Classic, and be aware some are very short - like 2-3 pages long. This book is an excerpt or selection taken from “Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio” by Pu Songling (1640 - 1715).
They are readable, and descriptive, and all deal with some aspect of the supernatural, but for me they don't really qualify as stories... they are more, I don't really know, like a statement of description...
What I am trying to say, is they don't follow traditional lines, they throw the reader straight in with little description of the scene, describes an event, and that is the end. They generally end really abruptly, without a resolution or a morale as expected in a fable.

There are a couple of stories which were a little more ‘normal', and I enjoyed more - these were Butterfly, Growing Pears and The Golden Goblet.

This is the shortest story, as I cannot be arsed typing a longer one! Hopefully this explains what I am on about above!

A Prank
A certain fellow of my home district, a well-known prankster and libertine, was out one day strolling in the countryside when he saw a young girl approaching on a pony.“I'll get a laugh out of her, see if I don't!” he called out to his companions.They were sceptical of his chances of success and wagered a banquet on it, even as he hurried forward in front of the girl's pony and cried out loudly, “I want to die! I want to die...“He took hold of a tall millet stalk that was growing over a nearby wall and, bending it so that it projected a foot into the road, untied the sash of his gown and threw it over the stalk, making a noose in it and slipping it round his neck, as if to hang himself. As she came closer, the girl laughed at him, and by now his friends were also in fits. The girl then rode on into the distance, but the man still did not move, which caused his friends to laugh all the more. Presently they went up and looked at him: his tongue was protruding from his mouth, his eyes were closed. He was quite lifeless.Strange that a man could succeed in hanging himself from a millet stalk. Let this be a warning to libertines and pranksters.