Hungry ghost month, a little flavor for your Hong Kong setti Options

[mallet]

Hey all,


Just saw this news article and thought it might be of intrest to some shadowrunners out there:

[Samaels Ghost]

I see this being all the time. Spirits are everywhere, and many mundanes would be interested in appeasing spirits just in case they happen to be in the area when one goes free and starts rampaging.

[Arab_One]

While spirits would be around all the time, I imagine Hungry Ghost Months would result in a large increase in the amount of spontaneously manifesting spirits, especially of ancestor spirits and ghosts.

[PBTHHHHT]

Hehe, I just saw a cheezy Discovery show called A Haunting or something like that and they focused on the Hungry Ghosts. This one was an American family that was renting a house in Taiwan (basically a high up corporate exec who's renting an estate).

The premise is that the house is built with bad feng shui and a pig farm or something used to be built on the land and the owner and his wife had died in a fire and their bodies are probably somewhere on the property. The family hired a taoist priest and he does some exorcism thing which would only temporarily please the spirits.

Kinda intersting and hilarious viewing. Anyway, just to say though I've heard and read about other stories and such. Hell, I've done the offerings before for my ancestors. The paper models ranges from paper money (spirit money) to more elaborate items such as paper car models, houses, servants, etc... The food offerings ranges from fruit such as oranges, pears, maybe a bowl of rice, sometimes they put meat and other dishes out too.

The other interesting thing in terms of culture that my mom taught me, when eating rice with chopsticks, don't leave the chopsticks sticking in the rice straight up, it's too similar to incense sticks being stuck up as offerings to the spirits. You don't want that. :P

[SL James]

Plus it seems like really bad manners.

Anyway, as fascinating as it is, it's not much different in theme as the Day of the Dead (well, except that it's for a month). Ah, good times. One of the more amusing parts about Catholic school was having an altar set up for Dia de los Muertos in the library.

[PBTHHHHT]

Indeed it is bad manners. But I like the other reasoning for it too.

Ah yes, Day of the Dead. Oh geez, I've just remembered a bad tv movie from Scifi channel with that name. Heh. Anyway, yeah, I learned about that in my spanish class. Kinda interesting.

Lol, that is funny that y'all got to do that.

[Crusher Bob]

Yep. Basically, you burn paper representations of the stuff you want to send to your ancestors (houses, cars money, whatever). As an example, they sell the 'hell money' in the grocery stores.

[hyzmarca]

I imagine that the Sixth World will have real hungry ghosts and I imagine that they wouldn't be satasfied with burnt paper.

Why accept a paper car when you can steal a real one?

[PBTHHHHT]

Heh. I see them hungering more for a person's karma/essence than material goods to satisfy themselves... unless the material goods can be taken back with them to whatever planes they reside. The ghosts 'hunger' for the items that they lack in the spirit world, etc.

Well, I guess they could theoretically open a 'gate' and move somethings over into the astral or whatever plane. Uhm, maybe I should read up on this again in the rulebooks, I forget what the rules.

[SL James]

[PBTHHHHT]

See, I don't remember doing any fun projects like that in school. Then again, I'm forgetting a lot of what I did back then for classes. Well, other than the senior slack course where we covered American wars in which we also got to play wargames in class.

[Demonseed Elite]

It is also mentioned in Runner Havens that Hong Kong has a high number of spirits that have gone free, often because of the astral manipulations common in the city. So there would definitely be reason to try to keep spirits appeased.

[Fresno Bob]

A coworker today mentioned this as the reason that we kept dropping stuff today.

[lorechaser]

See, here in Austin we have Day of the Dead celebrations.

And in New Mexico, it was a huge deal.

[SL James]

Southern Arizona and California, too.

[Fresno Bob]