diff --git a/src/xml_tokenizer.ml b/src/xml_tokenizer.ml
index fd3a64f..298e0da 100644
--- a/src/xml_tokenizer.ml
+++ b/src/xml_tokenizer.ml
@@ -97,7 +97,10 @@ let tokenize report resolve_reference (input, get_location) =
                   (Printf.sprintf "&#%s%s;" reference_prefix s, "reference",
                    "number out of range")) !throw unresolved
 
-              | Some n -> k (char n)
+              | Some n ->
+                let utf_8_encoded = Buffer.create 8 in
+                add_utf_8 utf_8_encoded n;
+                k (Buffer.contents utf_8_encoded)
               end
 
           | _, c when filter c ->
diff --git a/test/test_xml_tokenizer.ml b/test/test_xml_tokenizer.ml
index 9d56713..bdca7d2 100644
--- a/test/test_xml_tokenizer.ml
+++ b/test/test_xml_tokenizer.ml
@@ -311,7 +311,11 @@ let tests = [
   ("xml.tokenizer.reference" >:: fun _ ->
     expect "foo<bar>&"'baz01quux"
       [ 1,  1, S (`Chars ["foo<bar>&\"'baz01quux"]);
-        1, 50, S  `EOF]);
+        1, 50, S  `EOF];
+
+    expect "&#955;"
+      [ 1,  1, S (`Chars ["λ"]);
+        1,  7, S  `EOF]);
 
   ("xml.tokenizer.bad-reference" >:: fun _ ->
     expect "&"