The year was 1989 and Toronto, Canada had a busy and crowded area known as Chinatown. A young Chinese man named Chan Ohan lived in this area. He was 17 years old and earned a meager amount of money cleaning rooms and making beds at the American Hotel.
Nearby, in a narrow alleyway called Fan Tan Alley, lived a beautiful young Chinese girl named Yao. She was very poor and had to earn her living by working in an infamous house. The first time Chan laid eyes on her, he immediately fell in love with her. When she sat at her window in the evening, the young man came several times to talk to her.
One day, he musters up the courage to propose to her. She thought he was joking and laughed at him. When she realized that he really wanted to marry her, he told her that she could not leave her employer. She said that her boss was a mean and violent man. If she leaves, he will hunt her down and kill her.
Chan was determined and returned the next day with a vial of poison. He passed it to her through the window and told her to use it to kill her master.
"Put it on his food," Chan said. "Kill him and his wife. Then we can be together."
The girl was shocked at this and when she realized he was serious, she wanted nothing to do with him. After all he was poor. What kind of husband would he make? What kind of life could they live together? Plus, she knew what the punishment was for murder. He told her to go away and never come back again.
She rejected him so rudely that the young man was humiliated. As he was walking through the streets, he felt that everyone was laughing at him. He did stay away for some time, but after a few days he came back and he had a friend with him.
Chan and his friend crawl around the building avoiding the shadows so that Yao cannot see them. The friend approached the window and grabbed Yao by the hair. He pulled the poor girl out halfway and held her there. She was crying and struggling. She didn't know what was going on.
Then he saw Chan walking. She looked on in horror as he reached into her jacket and pulled out a large meat knife. Yao let out a high-pitched scream as Yao lifted the meat cleaver into the air and slammed it down with all his might.
In one fell swoop, it went straight across his neck and his head rolled over the stones!
It was uproar. There was blood everywhere. Chan escapes, running through a maze of back alleys and narrow streets. People saw him running towards them. He was covered in blood and held a meat knife to his head. They got out of his way, convinced that he was an escaped lunatic.
Police offered a reward for his capture and put up posters throughout Chinatown: "A reward of $1500 for information leading to the arrest of a young man wanted for murder in Chinatown."
Acting on a tip, police searched the American Hotel and found Chan hiding in a coal bin in the basement. He was arrested and put in jail. Exactly two days later, the young man took his shirt, wrapped it around his neck and hanged himself in his closet.
They say that his ghost still haunts the back streets and alleys of Chinatown at night. People hear footsteps. Then suddenly a Chinese youth emerges from the shadows. He comes right up to them, covered in blood and wielding a butcher's meat cleaver. He pushes them out of the way and then disappears into the night.
Many people in Toronto claim to have encountered this eerie haunting apparition and he is often seen in Fan Tan Alley.
