In a way it is like celebrating the Ghost Festival: procure an outlet and dispel fears with carnivalesque spectacles. From early to mid-80s, Hong Kong’s silver screen was haunted by modern ghost films and vampire movies, many of which are a hybrid of horror movies, action flicks and comedies. Many critics ascribe the boom in ghost films during the 80s to the sense of doom related to Hong Kong’s future in face of the impending change of sovereignty in 1997.

Interestingly, the most prosperous era in Hong Kong film history for ghost films is the 1980s. Ghosts and spirits continue to haunt our cultural imaginary in the 20th century as technology helps us to visualize phantoms and spectres on screen. The deities, ghosts, spirits and monsters in Strange Records have also entered into our everyday repertoire, the most notable example is the derogatory term “fox spirits” which refers to foxy women who steal other women’s men, a clear reference to the mass of alluring and seductive fox spirits in Strange Records (though some of the fox spirits in these stories are male, hardly surprisingly in a predominantly patriarchal culture, this label is only used in denigration of the female sex). Stories from the collection have been repeatedly translated into the vernacular, rewritten by other authors and adapted into films. One of the best-known and widely read classics is the mid-18th century Strange Records from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling, a collection of nearly five hundred supernatural tales. Ghosts and spirits figure prominently in the collective consciousness of the Chinese. The Ghost Festival celebrated in the mid-month honors deceased ancestors and pacifies wandering spirits with street operas and sacrificial offerings.

The traditional belief is that ghosts and spirits will emerge from the underworld and roam the earth during this month. Since at the time of writing it is the seventh month in the lunar calendar (and this year, being a leap year, has two seventh months), I think I will talk about ghosts: for the seventh month in the Chinese calendar is called the “Ghost Month”. Such is a typical scene in a ghost movie. A gust of wind extinguishes the lonely candle in the room, a gush of fear rises in your gut as a shadow appears…

A chinese ghost story 2012