Comicwell

Chinese Ghost Stories and Hungry Ghosts

Chinese ghost stories are tales about gui (鬼), the spirits of the dead. Early collections such as Gan Bao’s Soushen ji presented them as true reports, and later writers like Pu Songling turned them into fiction. Their ghosts may be hungry, vengeful or in love, and many communities still make offerings to wandering spirits at the yearly Hungry Ghost Festival.

Updated November 2, 2026

What is a gui in Chinese belief?

A gui is what a person becomes after death.

In the Book of Rites (禮記, Liji), Confucius tells his disciple Zai Wo that all living things must die, and in death return to the earth: “this is called gui” (此之謂鬼). The Han dictionary Shuowen jiezi (說文解字) puns on the same idea, defining 鬼 as “what people return to” (人所歸爲鬼), and calls a ghost yin energy that does harm.

In the Zuo zhuan (左傳), the statesman Zichan (子產) explains that a person has two souls: the po (魄) forms first at birth, and then the hun (魂). He adds that even an ordinary man or woman who dies a violent death can linger and cling to the living as a harmful spirit.

Zhiguai: ghost stories written as records

The first great Chinese ghost stories were zhiguai (志怪), “records of the strange”: short accounts in classical prose whose authors often believed them to be true.

The best known is the Soushen ji (搜神記, In Search of the Supernatural) by Gan Bao (干寶), a court historian of the Eastern Jin dynasty in the 4th century. The official History of Jin says two family events set him to work. His jealous mother had shut his father’s favourite maid alive in his father’s tomb. When it was opened more than ten years later, the maid revived and said his father had fed her. His brother stopped breathing for days, then woke describing ghosts and spirits. Gan Bao compiled 30 juan (scrolls) of such reports; the text read today has 20.

Two tales from its sixteenth juan:

  • Song Dingbo sells a ghost. A young man poses as a new ghost, learns that ghosts hate human spit, and carries a ghost to market. It turns into a sheep; he spits on it so it cannot change back, and sells it.
  • Scholar Tan’s wife. A lonely scholar marries a girl who forbids him to look at her by lamplight for three years. He looks too soon and sees flesh above her waist and only dry bones below.

Pu Songling and Ji Yun: the Qing masters

Tales of the strange had a last great flowering under the Qing dynasty.

Pu Songling’s Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (聊齋誌異, Liaozhai zhiyi) holds nearly 500 tales, and as the translator David Pollard notes, its most striking ones tell of bewitching ghosts or fairy maidens. In “Nie Xiaoqian” (聶小倩), a girl who died at eighteen is forced by a demon to lure men at a temple, until the scholar Ning reburies her bones. She later becomes his wife.

Ji Yun (紀昀, 1724–1805), one of the three chief editors of the Qianlong emperor’s great library, the Siku quanshu, wrote five volumes of notes between 1789 and 1798. His student Sheng Shiyan later combined them as the Yuewei caotang biji (閱微草堂筆記), about 1,200 entries. Ji noted where each story came from and saw himself as a recorder rather than an artist like Pu.

Types of Chinese ghosts

Two kinds of restless dead stand out in the old texts: the hungry and the vengeful.

  • Hungry ghosts (餓鬼, e gui). In Buddhist belief, a hungry ghost (Sanskrit preta) is reborn into endless hunger because of bad karma. They are pictured with swollen stomachs and tiny mouths.
  • Vengeful ghosts (厲, li). In the Zuo zhuan, the people of Zheng panic over the ghost of Boyou (伯有), a minister killed in a feud. In a dream he names the days two of his enemies will die, and both do. Zichan calms the ghost by making Boyou’s son an heir, so the family offerings continue, explaining that “when a ghost has somewhere to return, it does not become a li” (鬼有所歸，乃不為厲).

The Hungry Ghost Festival and Ghost Month

The Hungry Ghost Festival falls on the 15th day of the 7th lunar month, usually in August or early September. In 2026 it fell on August 27, with Ghost Month running from August 13 to September 10.

Buddhists call it Yulanpen (盂蘭盆, Ullambana), after a sutra in which Mulian (Maudgalyayana), a disciple of the Buddha, finds his dead mother reborn as a hungry ghost who cannot eat the food he brings. The Buddha tells him to make offerings to the monks on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, and their merit frees her. Britannica notes evidence of the festival in China from 538 CE. Daoists call it Zhongyuan (中元節), and in Daoist and folk belief the gates of the underworld open for the month.

Many families set out food, burn joss paper and float lanterns on water to guide the spirits. Many also put off weddings and moving house, and stay away from the sea and rivers, where the drowned are said to pull people under.

How Chinese ghost stories travelled overseas

Chinese communities abroad took the ghosts, and the festival, with them.

In Singapore, Zhong Yuan Jie brings offerings at home, at temples and by the roadside, and open-air getai concerts where the front row is left empty for the spirits, politely called “good brothers” (好兄弟). In Bukit Mertajam, in the Malaysian state of Penang, devotees pray for 15 days before a towering paper-and-bamboo effigy of Da Shi Ye (大士爺), the Guardian God of Ghosts, then burn it to send him back to the spirit world. In Phuket, Thailand, the festival is called Por Tor, and families of Chinese descent make red cakes shaped like turtles.

The tales travelled in print too: Herbert Giles’s English selection from Pu Songling appeared in 1880, and David Pollard calls its welcome warm and lasting.

Chinese ghosts vs Western ghosts: the festivals compared

The Hungry Ghost Festival is often compared to Halloween and All Souls’ Day, but its roots and customs are its own.

Hungry Ghost FestivalHalloweenAll Souls’ Day
Date15th day of the 7th lunar month (usually August or early September)October 31November 2
RootsBuddhist Yulanpen sutra and Daoist ZhongyuanThe Celtic festival of Samhain and the eve of All Saints’ DayInstituted on November 2 by Odilo, abbot of Cluny (died 1048)
Who returnsAncestors visiting, and wandering ghosts let out of the underworldAt Samhain, souls of the dead were held to return to their homesCommemorates the faithful departed believed to be in purgatory
What the living doOffer food, burn spirit money, float lanterns, stage operaMostly secular today: costumes, jack-o’-lanterns, trick or treatPrayers, Masses and visits to graves

Read it as a story

The Unquiet City is a Comicwell ghost story. Callum Rourke, a contractor who quietly clears the dead out of San Francisco’s old buildings, is bound by a job to Yip Sau-lin, a ghost who died in the 1870s. The first 20 comic chapters are free. The novel is The Dead Must Be Disclosed, and the first 10 novel chapters are free.

A Debt of Foxes, drawn from tales by Pu Songling, follows Lin Ming, the only living clerk in the Bureau of the Unrecorded, an office of the dead.

More legends: The nine-tailed fox in Chinese mythology, The Legend of the White Snake, Wuxia vs xianxia, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, Chinese ghost marriage.

Questions about Chinese ghosts

What is a Chinese ghost called?
A ghost is a gui (鬼). The Book of Rites defines it as what every living thing becomes when it dies and returns to the earth. In the Zuo zhuan, a ghost with no descendants to make offerings to it is the kind that can do harm.
What is a hungry ghost?
In Buddhist belief a hungry ghost (餓鬼, e gui; Sanskrit preta) is a being reborn into constant hunger because of bad karma. It is pictured with a swollen stomach and a tiny mouth.
When is the Hungry Ghost Festival?
On the 15th day of the 7th month of the Chinese lunar calendar, usually in August or early September. In 2026 it fell on August 27. The whole seventh month is known as Ghost Month.
Why do some people avoid swimming during Ghost Month?
Many believe the spirits of the drowned may pull people into the water, so they keep away from the sea and rivers. Weddings and moving house are often put off until the month ends too.
What are the classic collections of Chinese ghost stories?
Three of the best known are Gan Bao’s Soushen ji from the 4th century, Pu Songling’s Liaozhai zhiyi from the late 1600s, and Ji Yun’s Yuewei caotang biji, written between 1789 and 1798.

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