The Forbidden City (紫禁城, Zijin Cheng) in central Beijing — formal residence of the Ming and Qing emperors from 1420 to 1912 — is the world's largest continuous palace complex, containing 980 surviving buildings across 720,000 square metres. During its 492 years of imperial occupation, the palace witnessed the deaths, executions, suicides, and political murders of thousands of emperors, empresses, concubines, eunuchs, servants, and courtiers. Since the palace's 1925 opening as the Palace Museum, night-watch staff, security personnel, and researchers have maintained a continuous log of anomalous phenomena throughout the complex.
The most-reported ghost in modern Beijing urban tradition is the 'Weeping Woman in White' reported at the palace's western stair. In 1992, Palace Museum security staff formally reported photographing what appeared to be a woman in Qing-era dress standing at the end of the Chuxiu Palace corridor; the photograph, developed from standard security film, shows a clearly-defined female figure in a location confirmed to have been empty. The Palace Museum initially denied the report and later acknowledged it as one of several 'cannot be explained' incidents. The specific corridor has produced similar reports since 1937, when the Japanese occupation of Beijing stationed soldiers in the palace.
Other hotspots include the Cold Palace (Lengong), where out-of-favour concubines were sent to die; the Well of Concubine Zhen, where the Empress Dowager Cixi had Consort Zhen drowned in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion; the Gate of Divine Prowess, where eunuchs and servants who had offended the imperial family were executed; and the Meridian Gate execution yard. The 2011 renovation of the Hall of Mental Cultivation was suspended for three days when workers refused to continue after an apparition was reported in the chamber where the Tongzhi Emperor died of smallpox in 1874. The Forbidden City's combined scale, historical trauma, and preserved Qing-era architecture have made it the most thoroughly-documented haunted palace in the world.