“The traditional view of death in China is different from the traditional view of death in the West,” says Nick Tackett, an historian from University of California, Berkeley, who studies traditional Chinese death rituals, especially those from Song and Liao periods. The spirit of the deceased separates into two parts, which one might call two souls. One of which resides—and ideally remains—in the tomb, and one of which resides in the ancestral tablet,” a plaque kept in shrines in homes or temples. After burial, souls need to be fed constantly, Tackett explains. “Regular offerings at the ancestral altar and periodic offerings at the grave helped satiate the souls of the deceased.”
But if something goes awry—forgetful relatives who neglect their feeding duties, an improper burial, or some unfinished business on Earth—a dead person’s soul can wander out of the tomb, hungry. These ghosts rarely meddle in the affairs of the living, but starting on the 15th day of the seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar—roughly sometime in July/August—the gates of the underworld unlock, allowing flocks of hungry ghosts to roam freely for a month, the appropriately titled Ghost Month, also known as the Yulan or Zhongyuan Festival. (LINK)
BTW, in the West, the two novels (neither of them mysteries, but...) I know of that are based on hungry ghost legends (The Hungry Ghost by H. S. Norup and Peony in Love by Lisa See), both have hungry ghosts that are beautiful young girls. In Asia, not so. They're ugly, they're frightening, they're starving, even if they are your mother:
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| Mulian confronts his hungry ghost mother in the Kyoto Ghosts Scroll late 12th century. (public domain) |
This is why one of my characters, Professor John Franklin says, repeatedly, that “European and Asian vampires are predators, pure and simple. American vampires are children who like to play with their food...”
Now there's a laundry list of things to not do during Ghost Month, for fear of attracting the hungry ghost:
- Whistling
- Staying up late
- Buying a home or apartment
- Leaving clothes out to dry
But to appease the hungry ghost, you can burn
- Paper money
- Paper goods (from clothing to an automobile)
- Servants
- Houses
- Children
- Mistresses or wives
But how does one become a hungry ghost?
- Suffer a violent or unhappy death
- Neglect or desertion by one's living relatives
- Evil deeds: killing, stealing, sexual misconduct
- Evil desires: lust, greed, anger and ignorance
Especially greed, because greed is insatiable in life, and even more insatiable in death, because there's no way to satisfy it as a ghost. They are all mouth and stomach, nothing else.
Speaking of greed, Japan has its version of hungry ghosts as well:
Gaki are the spirits of jealous or greedy people who, as punishment for their mortal vices, have been cursed with an insatiable hunger for a particular substance or object.
Jikininki ("people-eating ghosts") are the spirits of greedy, selfish or impious individuals who are cursed after death to seek out and eat human corpses. They do this at night, scavenging for newly dead bodies and food offerings left for the dead. But jikininki lament their condition and hate their repugnant cravings for dead human flesh. (Sort of like Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Diaries, True Blood and others.)
MY NOTE: The Japanese also believe in the possibility of turning into a hungry ghost while alive because of jealousy and greed. This happens at least three times in The Tale of Genji when Rokujo a former lover of Genji the Shining Prince, sees Genji's pregnant wife Aoi, and her jealous spirit roars out of her body and becomes a Shiro, who possesses Aoi, makes Aoi extremely ill and in the end kills Aoi. Before that, Rokujo's Shiro might also have killed one of Genji's first loves, Yugao. And after Rokujo herself dies, her Shiro possesses and almost kills the love of Genji's life, Murasaki.
And then there's zombies and/or vampires. These go all the way back to Neolithic times. In Neolithic Greece they used to put millstones or heavy pottery shards on the neck or chest and then a heavy stone on top of the grave to keep the body in the grave and away from the living. No revenants allowed, thank you. They believed in werewolves as well, and knew that werewolves could turn into vampires. In fact, blood drinking demons are everywhere in ancient mythology, probably because it made sense. I mean, if all the gods needed blood sacrifices, why wouldn't the demons as well?
Anyway, one way my household has dealt with things that slither and slide and go bump in the night was to use one of Allan's sculptures as the guardian of our threshold. Life sized, folks. You're breaking in. You have a small flashlight. You look around, and this comes lunging at you out of the darkness.
Very effective. Happy Halloween!
