The Haunted School and the Red Lady

In Hong Kong, superstition is an integral part of life. From burning incense to bring good fortune to businesses, to displaying pictures of Choi San (財神), the Money God, or strictly observing feng shui principles when designing new buildings, superstition is everywhere. Over the decades, Hong Kong has collected dozens of stories of haunted locations, including the infamous Tat Tak School in Ping Shan, Yuen Long.

Tat Tak School was founded in 1931 to provide an education to the children of the nearby Tang Clan village. It originally operated from the Yu Kiu Ancestral Hall (愈喬二公祠) before relocating to a purpose-built campus in 1965. The school eventually closed in 1998.

Since then, numerous tales of supernatural apparitions have emerged, most notably the legend of the Red Lady. Local lore claims that a former schoolmistress hanged herself in a bathroom stall while wearing a vibrant red dress. In Chinese folklore, it is believed that a person who dies wearing red clothing will return as an exceptionally powerful and vengeful spirit.

Countless urban explorers have claimed to encounter a shadowy figure wandering down the corridors or to hear sinister cries for help. These stories culminated in 2011 when twelve teenagers decided to explore the abandoned building. Several students claimed they heard the disembodied cries of the Red Lady, devolving into a case of extreme mass hysteria that required emergency services and medical hospitalisations.

Beyond the Red Lady, locals frequently mention the gruesome history of the area, stating that the school grounds sit on mass burial sites stemming from the Six-Day War of 1899 and the Japanese Occupation from 1941 to 1945.