A taxi driver surnamed Liang, in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, has been kept awake at night by an eerie experience she had at work.

Liang picked up two young men around 8 pm on August 2. Peng, one of the two men, sat in the front passenger seat while the other man, Hong, sat in the rear seat.

Twenty minutes into the drive, Hong, who had gotten into the back seat, had disappeared. The door was closed and no sound had been heard.

Having failed to locate Hong or connect with him via his phone, Liang and Peng called the police. The police found that the video on the car's monitoring system was blank from 7:49 pm to 9:10 pm, spanning the time when Hong disappeared.

After this weird experience was posted on Sina Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, it was forwarded thousands of times. Net users were thrilled, regarding the case as a rare, mysterious one.

It's not. On the night of August 4, the police declared that Hong did not in fact disappear. He was left on the curb when the taxi pulled away, with Liang and Peng assuming he was inside. Hong's mobile phone happened to be broken that night.

Police are now investigating why the taxi's monitoring system failed to record the events.

Zhejiang Online