Lingguizhi 靈鬼志

Lingguizhi 靈鬼志 "Stories of souls and demons" was an early collection of stories compiled by a Jin-period 晉 (265-420) master with the family name Xun 荀. The only fact known of him is that he served as a gentleman of interior (langzhong 郎中) in the household of the Prince of Nanping 南平 during the Eastern Jin period 東晉 (317-420).

The imperial bibliography Jingji zhi 經籍志 in the official dynastic history Suishu 隋書 lists the Lingguizhi as a 3-juan-long "miscellaneous history" (zashi 雜史). Later bibliographies qualify it as a collection of stories (xiaoshuo 小說).

The book must have been lost during the Northern Song period 北宋 (960-1126), but fragments of an information on it appear in quotations in other books, like the Shishuo xinyu 世說新語, which states that the Lingguizhi was divided into several chapters talking about specific types of literary genres, such as "Anecdotes" (Yaozheng 謠証).

The content of the Lingguizhi dealt with apocryphal matters (divination about the future), the appearance of ghosts and the spirits of the dead, and the problem of retribution for deeds in an earlier life, as it is believed in Buddhism.

The surviving parts of the Lingguizhi are included in the series Shuofu 說郛, yet the most complete collection of fragments is to be found in Lu Xun's 魯迅 (1881-1936) Gu xiaoshuo gouchen 古小說鉤沉 from the Republican period.