This happened when I was little. One day, my older brother came home with a lot of rhinoceros beetle larvae. I wanted some too and asked him where he got them, but he wouldn't tell me.
Figuring it had to be the hill behind our house, the next day a friend and I went there. Being kids, we had no idea where beetle larvae actually lived. We just started digging around randomly, and of course, we didn't find any. We just kept going deeper and deeper into the mountain.
Then, we noticed a spot where the soil color was a little different. "This has got to be it!" we cheered happily, and started digging.
Suddenly, a voice called out from behind us, "What are you kids doing?" When I turned around, a strange man was standing there. We told him, "We're looking for rhinoceros beetle larvae." The man smiled kindly and said, "They aren't in a place like that. You should look somewhere else." But we insisted, "There are marks from where someone dug, they've gotta be here," and kept right on digging.
...After a short pause, the man said in a sudden, quiet voice: "If you dig any more than that, you'll turn into a ghost."
Terrified by the word "ghost," we stopped digging. The man smiled, took us by the hand, and led us to a place where we could actually catch beetle larvae. I remember his hand was shaking.
Looking back now... what on earth was buried there? And instead of saying, "A ghost's gonna pop out!", was saying "You're gonna *become* a ghost" just a slip of the tongue?
Everything is still buried deep inside that hill...
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