My college roommate’s dad drives a taxi in Chongqing. He’s been at it for over 20 years – a true veteran. He says the creepiest fare he ever had happened by the Jialing River.
It was nearly 11 PM when he picked up a man in a white shirt in Yuzhong District. The man looked about thirty or forty, pale-faced, and didn’t utter a word except three: “To the riverside.”
The driver asked which stretch, but the man just pointed ahead and gestured for him to keep driving. So he followed the riverside road, while the passenger kept his head down, hands folded on his knees, fingers trembling continuously.
After about twenty minutes, the man suddenly said, “Stop. Right here.” The driver pulled over, and the man handed him a 50-yuan note, waved off the change, opened the door and got out. From the rearview mirror, the driver watched him walk down the stone steps step by step, straight into the river water – first past his knees, then past his waist, and then his whole figure disappeared into the black surface.
Terrified, the driver was about to reverse and flee, but when he looked at the backup camera – the leather back seat was covered in a large wet patch, dripping. He touched it – it was definitely water. But that night, there had been no rain in Chongqing, and the riverbank was bone dry.
The next day, he couldn’t shake the unease and drove back to that spot. An old fisherman was sitting below the steps. The driver asked if he’d seen a man in a white shirt go into the water last night. The old man paused, then said: "A white shirt? More than ten years ago, there was a man who jumped right there. He’d lost his business, his family fell apart, and he ended it all. Funny thing – the date he jumped was today. "
The driver was so shaken that he went straight to a temple to burn incense. The water stain on his back seat never came off, no matter how hard he cleaned it – eventually he had to replace the entire seat cover.