毛骨悚然

Origin and story

Hong Mai's Yijian Zhi, a Song collection of strange tales, tells of Wenren Xingzu dreaming that his dead friend Lou Ju takes him to an otherworldly government office. There he recognizes a child he had lost years before. Lou tells him to return home and await another invitation. After waking, Xingzu passes Lou's house and is seized by terror; the tale says he falls ill and dies shortly afterward.

The passage describes his hair and bones as shuddering together, an older wording associated with the later idiom. This is a supernatural tale, not verified evidence about ghosts. Its bodily image survives in the expression for an experience that chills someone to the bone.