Anyone traveling for long periods in Asia is bound to come across superstitious beliefs with a special emphasis on ghosts. Ghosts, of course, as anyone who has read Shakespeare will know, are the spirits of dead people. In Thai and Burmese cultures, they are the spirits of wrongfully killed people who seek vengeance. Here in the West, there are still vestiges of this when we knock on wood or throw salt over our shoulders to ward off bad luck or evil spirits.
The widespread belief in ghosts is understood to have begun in China with ancestor worship and through Taoism and later Buddhism. So, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Burma, and other countries have a belief system that is truly haunted by ghosts. It was believed that the spirits of the dead could be contacted through a medium and that the spirits of the dead. This culminates in the Hungry Ghost Festival, which is a festival celebrating the departed, much like Mexico’s Day (which was highlighted in the opening scenes of the James Bond film Quantum of Solace) of the Dead. On this day, ghosts come out from the Underworld, shoulders, and friends and family honor them with gifts of food and drink. It sounds a bit macabre and creepy, but it’s not hard to imagine how this could be therapeutic for loved ones. Instead of ruminating endlessly with an analyst, family and in friends can commune with the departed and celebrate their life in a spirit of joy and thanksgiving. The festival is celebrated in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and elsewhere in Asia with large Chinese ethnic populations, including Thailand.
It is said that ghosts won’t harm you unless you let them. In that way, it’s like the aboriginal pointing of the bone or the West Indian use of voodoo dolls and black magic, much depends on your point mindset of view and even your sense of guilt. In terms of mindset, if you believe it you can make it happen. Shakespeare explored both aspects of ghosts. There were the genuine apparitions of the departed and the swirling visions of a madman or madwoman and look no further than the Macbeths who were doomed by a crushing consuming guilt. Hemmingway often spoke of ghosts in the sense of the haunting memory of departed souls. It appears as though these ghosts got inside his head with tragic results. Maybe ghosts are there to remind us of our own mortality, or perhaps as in Mexico and China and greater Asia. They allow us to honor the dead and embrace passing over to the other side. Me? I like to keep my ghosts friendly.
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