In the main, ghosts are said to be forlorn and generally miserable, if not downright depressed. The jolly ghost is rare.
– Dick Cavett, American TV personality
Do you believe in ghosts and spirits? Whichever culture we are from we have to accept that we do believe in some form of non-physical essence of life.
The only difference is that various cultures define and describe ghosts and spirits in different ways.
Let’s go straight to the point. This is the month of the Ghost Festival or the Hungry Ghost Festival. Or if you wish, just call it Ghost Month.
According to Taoist belief, the yearly festival falls on the seventh lunar month. This year’s month-long festival started on Aug 19.
A good friend (let’s just call her Peggy), a staunch Taoist, says this is the period when the gates of hell open for one month for the hungry spirits to roam the mortal world in search of food and entertainment.
I asked Peggy, a fourth generation Taoist, the difference between Qingming and Ghost Festivals.
She explained it clearly: “Qingming or Tomb Festival is when living descendants remember and pay homage to their ancestors, whereas during the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts the ghosts, including spirits of ancestors, come out from the lower realm to roam the world.
“In short, the dead visit the living. Now you understand, Raj?”
Understood Peggy! You couldn’t have explained it better. Thank you.
Peggy, a journalist turned public relations practitioner, is aware of my working hours as a journalist and advised me to be extra careful during this month.
Her advice: “Don’t go home late at night. Finish early and always reach home before midnight. Doublecheck your work. Don’t drive fast. If you see a woman in white don’t bother to stop. Always say a prayer before you travel. Avoid taking risks this whole month, etc, etc.”
Her advice went in one ear and out the other. Throughout my entire life, I did the opposite of what she told me. But out of courtesy to a long-time pal, I thanked her for the advice.
Nevertheless, I have to take one bit of her advice seriously though — that we have to be extra careful in our editing and proofreading!
I am not sure if anyone has noticed that journalists tend to make more mistakes and blunders during the Ghost Month. Seriously, in my four decades as a newsman, I came across a lot of blunders in newspapers and publications during this month.
Perhaps the ghosts and spirits of the deceased are at work too. Some of the mistakes make you laugh. A paper I worked for many years ago in the 90s made a mistake in a page lead.
The heading went something like this: ‘God tells Singaporeans to prepare for polls’. The story was about Goh Chok Tong, the second prime minister of Singapore calling on the people to get ready for election. I am not sure if the sub-editor and proof reader were awake or half asleep.
Perhaps the ghosts were at work too that night. Anyway, we received a mouthful from our lady boss. I remember she deducted RM100 from the sub’s September salary as a penalty.
Then there was an occasion when a wedding congratulatory advert which for no reason appeared as a ‘condolence’ advert the next day — also in the month of September. Management ended up giving free adverts for two weeks to the aggrieved couple.
The proof-reader was given the boot. Poor fella! Some mischievous spirit must have played a trick on her.
Another editorial blunder by the editors was a minister being ‘given’ the ‘datukship’. Fortunately, the minister laughed it off. But surprisingly he was made a ‘Datuk’ the following year. Guess this time the ghosts must have known it all along!
Well, even my paper now is also guilty of a few boo-boos during this Ghost Month. Hopefully, the subs will appease the roaming ghosts or spirits with some food or entertainment to avoid bigger blunders!
I would like to end my column with my own experience during the Ghost Month. When I was a tertiary student in the late seventies, I remember visiting a cemetery in Setapak, Kuala Lumpur with a Chinese friend hoping to strike it rich with a 4-D lottery number. It was past midnight.
We bought some joss sticks, a slaughtered white cockerel with blood still dripping from the neck, some slips of red paper with the figures 0 to 9 written on them and a red glass container.
My friend did some rites and somehow, he managed to derive a set of numbers — 2-4-1-6! We bought the number in Magnum but we had no luck despite buying it religiously for many years.
But the number eventually appeared as the third prize on Dec 24, 1987. Believe it or not, something told me to buy it that day and I struck a cool RM10,500!
The ghosts didn’t fail me after all!
Anyway, be extra careful until Sept 19.
