The Tat Tak School incident: twelve teenagers, a woman in red and three collapses at Ping Shan, 2011

Tat Tak School stands in Hang Tau Tsuen, Ping Shan, in Hong Kong's New Territories. The Tang clan of Ping Shan and local donors founded it in February 1931. In 1965 it moved into a purpose-built two-storey U-shaped campus, and by 1975 it was the largest primary school in Yuen Long District. Then the pupils ran out. It closed in 1998 and has stood empty ever since.

Empty buildings gather legends. This one gathered several. Dead from the 1899 Six-Day War, a Japanese-era mass grave, a headmistress said to have hanged herself in a toilet. None of it has been verified. Villagers knew of no ghost stories, and police have no records supporting them.

Monday 19 September 2011. Around 3 p.m., twelve young people set out from Ping Shan Nam Pak Road. Eight girls and four boys, junior secondary students from a school in Tin Shui Wai, all very interested in ghosts and spirits. A boy called Ah Cheung led the trip. They carried incense and candles, and lit the incense to lead the way along the winding paths, as instructions found online had told them.

As they drew close to the school, one after another said they saw ghosts at the graves nearby or heard strange sounds. A girl known as Ah Bing saw a woman in red on the stairs. Two other girls saw a faceless female ghost and a jumping figure. In a later retelling, the girl stopped beside the hillside graves, pointed and cried out. A long-haired woman in red was lying on a grave, and her companions saw nothing.

The more they talked, the more frightened they became. They gave up and ran. A walk of about 4 minutes took 30.

At Ping Shan station, three girls fainted, though accounts differ on whether it was the MTR or the light rail stop. When Ah Bing came round, she was agitated and out of control. She bit Ah Cheung's arm and gripped her own neck with both hands. Ah Cheung threw water on her, and she grew more alert. Friends held her down and called the police.

Ambulances took the girls to hospital, two in most reports, three in one. They were confirmed to have no serious problems. Ah Bing told reporters she was certain of one thing. While unconscious, she kept seeing scenes of suicide and murder. Very terrifying, she said.

Dr Lee Sing, a psychiatry professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, offered his reading the next day. Under stress or fear, he said, ordinary people can suffer a temporary mental disturbance. They believe their thoughts are real and see hallucinations. It can last hours or days, and fades once they leave the frightening setting.

A City University dean warned the young against too much ghost content. The director of a Taoist feng shui association blamed the girl's nervous temperament. Psychiatrists quoted by Oriental Daily later spoke of mass hysteria, a chain reaction among susceptible teenagers. Nobody alleged a hoax.

At year's end an am730 columnist called it a collective ghost sighting in broad daylight, born of inner demons. In 2013 CNN put Tat Tak at number 1 among Asia's 10 scariest places, and the National Geographic series I Wouldn't Go in There came looking. The story kept drifting, and one modern guide sets it in the bathroom of the Lady in Red legend, a detail no 2011 report contains. Film crews have used the ruins, including for Infernal Affairs. In July 2025 a middle-aged man was found hanged there.