Folk Horror tales

Ghost Employee

Wang Dashan was an employee I made up.

By doing this, I could earn an extra few thousand yuan every month.

For three years, no one found out.

Until midnight that day, when something terrible happened at the company.

1

I’m a low-level HR clerk, but I hired a ghost employee who doesn’t exist.

This employee never comes to work, never clocks in.

Every month, I withdraw a base salary of 4,500 yuan plus full-attendance bonus from finance in his name.

I make the attendance sheets myself, I generate the payrolls, and even the copy of his ID card was photoshopped by someone I found online.

Even when the boss occasionally checks and asks about him, I can just say he’s on sick leave or out doing fieldwork.

I dared to do this because our food processing factory was extremely poorly managed. The boss was incredibly stingy, staff turnover was sky-high, and people in the workshop could barely even name each other.

Over three years, I saved more than 100,000 yuan through this ghost employee.

Every cent went to life-saving medicine for my daughter, who suffered from severe congenital heart disease.

I originally planned to resign the ghost employee and quit for good once I had enough money for my daughter’s surgery next month.

But late last night, an accident happened.

This ghost employee named Wang Dashan had an accident.

At three in the morning, I was woken up by my phone vibrating violently beside my pillow.

I checked the caller ID: it was Factory Director Zhao Xuming.

My heart skipped a beat. He never even sent me WeChat messages normally — why was he calling in the middle of the night?

I got up quietly, glanced at my sleeping daughter, walked to the balcony, and answered the call.

As soon as the line connected, Zhao Xuming’s furious, terrified roar exploded in my ear.

“Shen Yu! What kind of blind idiots have you been hiring?!”

“That guy Wang Dashan violated the rules operating the meat grinder on the night shift — the whole guy got pulled in!”

“When they fished him out, he was f*****g minced to pieces!”

My mind went blank, as if hit hard by a sledgehammer.

My legs gave way, and I collapsed straight onto the cold balcony tiles.

I’m done for.

That was the first thought in my head.

Wang Dashan was a person I invented. How could he have been working the night shift? Let alone get pulled into a meat grinder!

“Shen Yu? f*****g say something! Are you deaf?!”

Zhao Xuming raged on the other end. “Get your ass to the factory right now! We have to cover this up before dawn!”

I trembled all over, biting my lip hard to hold back a scream.

If Wang Dashan didn’t exist… then who was the one who died in the machine?!

But I could never tell this secret.

If I admitted Wang Dashan was fake, my salary fraud would be fully exposed.

I would face not only jail time for embezzlement but also the complete cutoff of my daughter’s follow-up medical expenses.

For my daughter, I had to act my way through this.

“Di… Director Zhao, I’ll be right there.”

2

The pre-dawn wind cut my face like a knife.

When I arrived at the factory, a simple police cordon had been set up outside the workshop.

Several night-shift workers squatted by the wall smoking, whispering among themselves.

I didn’t dare look inside the workshop. I went straight up to the factory director’s office on the second floor.

Pushing the door open, a thick cloud of smoke hit me.

Zhao Xuming was pacing anxiously in the office. When he saw me come in, he threw his cigarette butt right at my feet.

“Are you dead or something? Took you so long!”

Sitting on the sofa was someone else: Li Na from administration, my sworn rival.

Li Na loved making things difficult for me on a daily basis, and right now she was staring at me with a scrutinizing gaze.

“Shen Yu, with such a serious accident, you, the HR who hired him, can’t shirk responsibility,” Li Na said sarcastically.

I ignored her and forced myself to look calmly at Zhao Xuming.

“Director Zhao, what’s the situation now? Have you called the police?”

“Call the cops? My ass!” Zhao Xuming slammed the table hard, his eyes bloodshot.

“Next week is the big workplace safety inspection. If a death gets out now, is this factory even going to stay open?!”

“If the Work Safety Bureau targets us, we’ll face shutdowns, rectification, and fines — I’ll go bankrupt for sure!”

I swallowed hard and asked tentatively: “So what do you mean…”

“Settle it privately!” Zhao Xuming gritted out the two words.

He turned and stared daggers at me.

“Shen Yu, this man was hired by you, his files are with you.

Go check his emergency contact right now and get hold of his family immediately!

Bring the family here before dawn. No matter how much it costs, make them sign a letter of understanding and get the body cremated right away!”

The moment I heard “emergency contact”, cold sweat broke out all over my back.

Because the emergency contact number on Wang Dashan’s file was my own spare phone number!

3

“Why are you still standing there? Go check!” Zhao Xuming urged impatiently when he saw me freeze.

Li Na also stepped closer, wearing a fake smile.

“Yeah, Shen Yu, hurry up. I remember you handled Wang Dashan’s hiring personally. I haven’t matched his name to a face in three years — you must know him pretty well, right?”

Li Na’s words struck right at my weak spot.

She had suspected me for a long time. Wang Dashan never clocked in, and I manually signed his attendance every month.

I took a deep breath, struggling to steady my trembling voice.

“Alright, I’ll go back to my desk and check right now.”

I turned and walked out of the office. The second I closed the door behind me, I almost collapsed.

What should I do?

If I pretended I couldn’t reach that spare number, Zhao Xuming would definitely demand the police to find the family.

Once the police got involved and verified the victim’s identity, they would not only discover the dead man wasn’t Wang Dashan but also trace the evidence back to me forging files and embezzling salaries.

But if I did call… who would pretend to be the family?

In a split second, a crazy idea flashed through my mind.

Zhao Xuming was desperate to cover this up, which was why he said “no matter the cost, make them sign the understanding letter”.

For unreported work-related deaths like this, the private settlement payout would be at least 1 to 1.5 million yuan at current rates.

Since the man who died in the machine had an unknown identity.

Since Wang Dashan was a fake person I created entirely on my own.

Then why couldn’t I find someone to pretend to be Wang Dashan’s family and take that million-yuan compensation directly?

That way, the victim’s identity would be completely buried, Zhao Xuming would get the silence he wanted, and I would get the money to save my daughter’s life!

My heart pounded wildly as I thought about it, blood rushing to my head.

This was an all-or-nothing gamble.

Win, and my daughter lived and I escaped unscathed.

Lose, and I would be doomed forever.

4

I returned to my desk and pulled up my cousin’s number from my hometown in the contacts.

My cousin had run with the wrong crowd when she was young — she was bold, sharp, and most importantly, she was drowning in loan sharks and needed money even more desperately than I did.

The phone rang for a long time before she answered.

“Hello? You summoning ghosts in the middle of the night?” my cousin snapped impatiently.

I lowered my voice and quickly explained the plan to her.

“Cousin, if you pretend to be Wang Dashan’s rural wife and hold out for 1.2 million in cash compensation, I’ll split 400,000 with you after it’s done.”

There was a full 30 seconds of silence on the other end. Only heavy breathing.

“Shen Yu, are you crazy? That’s a dead person! If we get caught scamming, both of us are going to jail!”

My cousin’s voice trembled.

“Cousin, do you have money to pay those loan sharks?” I gritted my teeth, my tone cold. “If you don’t, the collectors will chop your hands off!”

“The factory owner is way more scared of calling the cops than we are. He won’t dare investigate thoroughly. As long as you act the part well, take the money and leave overnight — who’ll ever track you down?”

A suffocating silence followed.

Finally, my cousin let out a sharp breath.

“I’m in! Send me Wang Dashan’s info — I’m on my way now!”

I hung up the phone, my back completely soaked through.

I went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on my face, and slapped my cheeks hard to look normal.

Then I went back to the director’s office and gave Zhao Xuming the line I’d prepared.

“Director Zhao, I reached them.

The deceased’s wife is in the countryside. We just spoke, and she’s on her way here. She should arrive around seven.”

Zhao Xuming sighed in relief and collapsed weakly into his executive chair.

“Good, good. When she gets here, bring her straight to the first-floor meeting room — don’t let her cause a scene at the workshop!”

Li Na glanced at me coldly from the side.

“Working pretty fast, aren’t you?”

My heart tightened, but my face remained calm.

“Someone died — how could I not hurry? If Supervisor Li thinks I’m handling this badly, why don’t you negotiate with the family when she arrives?”

Li Na snorted and fell silent.