Live In Serenity

The Hungry Ghost Festival falls on 26th of August this year. Gather round, friends, and listen to these local legends of ghostly madness...

The Girl with Braided Hair
In the 70s, it was a lot harder to get into Hong Kong. If you were an illegal immigrant, you either swum across the South China Sea or you sneaked onto a train and jumped off across the border. The story goes that a boy from the mainland and his girlfriend stowed away on a train to Kowloon, meaning to start a new life in Hong Kong. When they reached the Chinese University in Sha Tin the boy jumped, shouting at the girl to follow. She jumped, but her braided hair caught in the train door. It ripped her face from her skull.
Fast forward to one fine night at the Chung Chi College campus in Chinese University. A wandering student sees a girl with braided hair sitting alone in a public square, with her back to him. Thinking she's crying, he taps her on the shoulder: she turns around, and a flayed, skinless face stares back at him. It's crying blood. A loose flap of skin - nostrils, ears, eyelids, lips - hangs down from her head by a single braid of hair. The student is found unconscious in the square the next morning, and the area becomes known as "One-braid Road."

Femme Fatale
Late one night in 1982, a policeman is catching up on some paperwork alone in Tsuen Wan Police Station when a beautiful woman rushes in, her red dress filthy and scratched. She shouts, "There's a car accident on Castle Peak Road. You've got to go." The policeman scrawls down the address, but when he looks up to ask for details the woman has disappeared. Surprised, the officer thinks it might be a prank but files the emergency report nonetheless.
When the officer's shift is over, he heads home via Castle Peak Road, but he's held up by a car accident - and the only casualty is a beautiful and familiar woman wearing a ripped red dress, lying with a snapped neck in the middle of the road. Tsuen Wan Police Station was later relocated, and the building is now home to the transport police.

Three Sticks of Incense
Over on Lockhart Road in Wan Chai is the East Town Shopping Arcade, now home to a Pacific Coffee. Many decades ago, it was the East Town Cinema. Rumor has it that each night, after selling only five or six tickets for the late-night shows, staff would look in and see the cinema packed full of people. Afterwards, no cinema in the city would sell all the tickets to an evening show - three rows of seats were always reserved for any "one" that might want to watch. But there's another, more horrifying story:
Two friends go to watch a movie at the East Town Cinema. Sitting down in the full house, one of the men notices that everyone else in the room has three sticks of incense floating above their heads - three sticks of incense are used to show respect to the dead. He turns to tell his friend - above whose heads floats the same three sticks of incense. Spooked, the man runs to the washrooms, and can see nothing above his own head in the mirror. Then he hears a blood-curdling scream: "Fire!!!" This is in the days when the cinemas locked their doors to stop people from sneaking in quietly. Desperate, the man climbs into the sewage cistern and hides, listening to the screams of the entire cinema burning to death. He is found amongst the debris hours later, the only survivor.

Race till the Death
A similar tale took place at the Happy Valley racecourse. On February 26, 1918 a man decides to take his young son to the racecourse. The child bursts into tears outside the entrance and refuses to go in, despite coaxing and threats. The next day the father reads about a now-famous fire at the Jockey Club, in which 600 people perished, still the highest number of casualties of a fire in Hong Kong. His son tells him that he was too frightened to go in the night before, because everyone entering the racecourse had a lit candle floating just above their heads.

The Seven Sisters

On July 17, 1913, the Chinese Mail newspaper publishes a front-page story about a man found inexplicably trapped in a tiny space between massive boulders on Tsat Tsz Mui (Seven Sisters) Road, in North Point. The man is unwilling to come out: he claims that he's having a great time. The police try to pull him out, but he bites their hands; they try to sedate him, but he snaps the needles. After 30 hours, the British army uses rock-boring equipment to get him out. The man is hospitalized and the to a mental asylum. The story goes that the man had been working at a sugar factory, where Taikoo Place is now. Walking home along the waterfront, two beautiful girls came up and let him to five other women just as beautiful as the first two, all offering him food and drink. When the man awoke, he was waist-deep in water and trapped between the rocks.
This could be the ramblings of an insane man - if you don't know about the seven sisters: Tsat Tsz Mui. Long ago seven Hakka girls pledged to be sisters: they would remain virgins and die on the same day. The day before one was forced into marriage, the seven sisters committed suicide together by the sea. The story of the man trapped in the rock on Seven Sisters Road was reported on the seventeenth day of the seventh month of the year. The man was found dead in a asylum soon afterwards, his stomach crawling with worms.

The Last Congee
It's 9pm on a cold night in 1953. A cha chan teng receives a phone call requesting congee, to be delivered to a flat in an old building in Yau Ma Tei. The deliveryman arrives at the flat, knocks on the door, and a wizened arm reaches out holding the money and takes the delivery. The deliveryman returns to the cha chan teng, where he realized that the money in his hands is actually made of Hell's bank notes, the paper money burnt ceremonially for the dead. He thinks it's a prank.
The next day at 9pm, the same order arrives. The owner sends his other deliveryman to the flat, and the same thing happens: he arrives, knocks on the door, and a pale arm holding money reaches out and takes the delivery. This deliveryman is smart enough to check the money, and yes, they're in HK dollars. But as soon as he reaches the store, the money has turned into Hell notes again. The owner suspects a trick.
At 9pm on the third day, the same order comes again. This time, the owner makes the delivery himself. Again, the same thing happens: he arrives at the flat, knocks on the door , and an arm clutching money slides out and takes the congee. The owner checks the money scrupulously - it's definitely genuine. But when he gets back to the cha chan teng, the money has turned back into the worthless Hell notes.
The owner files a police report, and takes an officer to the flat in Yau Ma Tei, hoping to catch the con artists in the act. They arrive; they knock; but this time no arm appears. The two mean break down the door, and there inside the tiny flat are four headless bodies sitting around a mahjong table, a game of mahjong still in progress. The game is being played with Hell notes.