Story 7
The Frog’s Curse
This is a story I heard from my uncle (my mother’s older sister’s husband). He said he, too, had heard it from his own great-grandfather.
Apparently, my uncle’s great-grandfather once lived in Manchuria, though I don’t know the details. In a certain part of Manchuria where he lived, the land was said to be cursed by frogs.
That curse didn’t usually cause anything noticeable in everyday life.
However, when someone from that land was about to die, they would die in a way that looked as if they had become a frog.
My uncle’s great-grandfather once witnessed such a death.
The person lay on their back, thrashing their arms and legs in a breaststroke-like motion, as though a frog were swimming, their eyes rolled back in their head, continuing the movement for hours without stopping.
It wasn’t exactly that they looked to be in pain; rather, they simply maintained that steady motion in a detached, mechanical way.
From time to time, their mouth would open and close like a fish, while from their throat came a sound: “Ngeei, Ngeei, Ngee.”
And then, all at once, their limbs stopped moving, and they died frozen in that strange breaststroke-like posture, just like a frog mid-swim.
That is the incredible and hard-to-believe story of the Frog’s Curse—passed down about a certain part of Manchuria, and told to me by my uncle.
