There is something almost cinematic about the Hungry Ghost Festival.
Streets fill with incense smoke, tables are covered with fruit, rice, sweets and other offerings, paper money and even elaborate paper objects are burned and sent, according to tradition, to another world.
And tonight, August 27, is the most important night of all.
The Hungry Ghost Festival, known as the Zhongyuan Festival in Taoist tradition and the Yulanpen Festival in Buddhism, falls on the 15th day of the seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar.
The entire seventh lunar month is traditionally regarded as the “Ghost Month”, but the 15th day is its peak.
According to popular belief, the gates of the underworld open at the beginning of the month, allowing spirits to return to the world of the living.
Some are welcomed ancestors, returning to visit their families, while others are believed to be wandering or “hungry” ghosts: spirits who have no descendants to remember them, or who died without receiving the proper rites.
And they are not necessarily imagined as terrifying monsters.
The hungry ghost is, above all, a restless and unsatisfied being.
In Buddhist tradition, the idea is connected to the preta, a spirit condemned by an insatiable hunger and thirst.
The festival therefore becomes an attempt to offer comfort to those who, in life or death, have been left without it.
That is why food is so important.
Families prepare offerings for deceased relatives and, in many communities, food is also placed outside homes or in public spaces for wandering spirits. Incense is burned, prayers are recited and paper money is offered to the dead. In traditional belief, these paper objects can cross into the spirit world and provide the deceased with things they might need there.
The tradition is not the product of a single ancient religion.
Instead, it is the result of centuries of interaction between Buddhism, Taoism and Chinese folk beliefs.
One of its most famous stories comes from Buddhist tradition and tells of Mulian, a disciple of the Buddha, who discovers that his mother has fallen into the realm of the hungry ghosts.
He tries to feed her, but the food is consumed or destroyed before she can eat it.
Desperate, Mulian turns to the Buddha, who instructs him to make offerings and perform the appropriate rituals.
Through his devotion and filial love, his mother is eventually saved.
The story became one of the great narratives associated with the festival because it connected Buddhist ideas about suffering and salvation with one of the deepest values of traditional Chinese culture: filial piety.
The earliest known official Yulanpen ceremony was recorded in China in the sixth century, during the Liang dynasty, and the tradition subsequently developed into a major religious and cultural observance.
But perhaps the most fascinating part of the Hungry Ghost Festival is what happens beyond the family altar.
In places such as Hong Kong and Singapore, communities can organize elaborate public ceremonies and getai performances — temporary stages featuring music, singing and entertainment.
And there is a curious detail: the front rows may be deliberately left empty.
Those seats are traditionally considered reserved for the invisible guests.
It is one of the clearest examples of how the festival blends the everyday world with the supernatural: people organize a show, leave seats for spirits and carry on with their evening as though an unseen audience were sitting among them.
There are also plenty of taboos.
During Ghost Month, some people traditionally avoid swimming, major life events such as weddings or moving house, disturbing offerings left on the streets, or wandering alone late at night.
One particularly widespread belief concerns water: spirits associated with people who died by drowning are sometimes thought to remain near the place where they died, waiting for another person to take their place. These are folklore and cultural beliefs, of course, rather than established facts.
And then there are the lanterns.
In some traditions, lotus-shaped lanterns are floated on rivers or other bodies of water. Their light is said to help guide wandering spirits on their journey — ultimately showing them the way back to the world of the dead when the festival comes to an end.
That image perhaps captures the true spirit of the festival better than anything else.
The Hungry Ghost Festival may sound like a celebration built around fear, but at its heart is something much more human: the refusal to forget the dead.
You feed them because you remember them.
You light incense because they are still part of the family.
You leave offerings for unknown spirits because, in this tradition, even the forgotten deserve compassion.
For thousands of years, the festival has transformed ideas about death, memory and the afterlife into something visible: food on a table, smoke rising into the night, paper offerings turning to ash and lanterns drifting across dark water.
Tonight, millions of people across East and Southeast Asia will observe a tradition in which the living make room for the dead.
And for one night, at least according to the ancient stories, the other side is not so far away.
Images from web – Google Research