From: s907459@minyos.xx.rmit.OZ.AU (Ka Wo Anthony Liu)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.hongkong
Subject: Re: Why Chinese aura (or ghost) is used to be evil and disgusting?
Date: 22 Nov 1992 08:33:21 GMT
Organization: RMIT Computer Centre
NNTP-Posting-Host: minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au
Keywords: NOT FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED!

hpang@engin.umich.edu (Ho Sun Pang) writes:

>What an exciting and scary story about that KCR commerical!  Just wonder:
>How come the real-life Chinese ghost stories are used to be so disgusting and
>evil?  I mean, a kid puking blood in a forest?????

The KCR rumor remind me another one : "The Fox devil".  It was about
the pattern on the marble wall of the Windsor Palace restaurant in
Causeway Bay about six to seven years ago.  Exciting story indeed...

>How come we used to describe (and think of) Chinese ghosts are disgustingly
>disfigured macabre fooling around for their next prey?  I mean, if there is
>an afterlife, why it has to be that scary?  Why it is so evil?

Ha. You must have missed the movie "The Exocist", "Poltergeist",
"Nightmare on ELM street...", "NightBreed", "The First Power"...these
are the scary one (some old woman got heart attack and died in the
cinema in HK when she was watching "The Exocist", remember the news?).
The comedy one like "Ghost Dad" - Bill Cosby, "Ghost", 
"The Heavenly Kid", "Heart Condition" are not hard to find.
The Chinese version of those two types of movies are not unheard.

>It is quite a contrast to the Westerners, who describe the afterlife is 
>full of peace and comfort.  Most Westerners' stories about encounters with 
>ghosts are very transquil:  Just a faint white cloud of image floating in the 
>air, no blood, no slim, etc.  But Chinese!  My gosh!  Spagetti, anyone?

Those "faint white cloud of image..." is not termed as poltergeist.
I have seen many photos of those claimed spiritual photos.  Most of
these photos are very real and hard to believe they are fake.  Most
of the "ghost" in the photos appears to be very human, some of them
just transpearance, some are just white cloud floating around the room
where people sitting and have diner. A large percentage of these
photos happens to be group photo like school excursion: a group of
Japanese school kid took photo with Fuji Yama in the background, you
can observed that girls were couching and the guys were standing
behind.  If you look hard enough, you can see an extra hand between
two couching girls.  It couldn't be a naught boy: they are all standing
up, it couldn't be a naught girl: she has to couch behind the guy and
extend her hand to the front and appear to be the same length as the
two girls on both sides.  Unless it was a special effect. Another one
is a baby hand protrude from a girl shoulder as if she was carrying a
baby on her back.

Another famous one which doesn't haunt that much is a sequence of
six infra-red photos.  The photo was filmed with purpose and was 
published in many books before.  A woman sit inside a small tent in the
dark with her assistant pull open one side of the tent to review her
presence.  The first photo showed nothing but two person. The second one
showed some mist coming out from the woman's feet when she was summoning
a spirit. The third one showed the mist become larger growing upwards.
The fourth one showed the mist was forming a human shape.
The fifth one has the mist became a girl with her face clearly be seen.
The sixth photo show the girl with both hands up in the air and 
started moving.

>Is it because the way we see ghosts are really depend on our inner minds, that
>most Chinese are disturbed (by supersitutions? stress?) deep under?  Is it 
>because of our religion..
Agreed.

From: yuk@hpopd.pwd.hp.com (Yuk Lun Chan)
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 08:57:52 GMT
Subject: Re: Re: Questions on obtaining British National Citizenship
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, CCSY Messaging Centre, UK.