September 6, 2016 • 50 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, join Robert and Christian for an investigation into the practice, history and exploitation of ghost marriage.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Christian Seger.
Today's topic is something that sounds like it should be
(00:25):
like the plot of a horror movie. That is, maybe
maybe something that's been imported from Asia to America and
it's been remade, like The Ring or The Grudge or
something like that. But well, we were only able to
find one example. Um, and it seems like a relatively
small movie. H Yeah, there's a two thousand thirteen film
called Ghost Bride um from New Zealand director David Blythe.
(00:49):
So what we're talking about today, and this is real,
This isn't this isn't a movie, this isn't the plot
of a movie. In fact, it's a thousands year old
tradition ghost marriages. Uh. And primarily we're gonna be talking
about ghost marriages in China or Chinese cultures around the world,
but they happen in other places to like Sudan, France, uh,
(01:10):
and even here in America. Yeah. In China it's known
as the right of ming Hoon and it's it's pretty interesting.
We're we're gonna We're gonna get into it in this
podcast episode. This is not going to be a particularly
science the episode, but we are going to still apply
that same level of skeptical rationalism that we apply to
all our topics. And uh and and also a certain
(01:33):
demystification because I I feel that at the heart of
this we have something that is really It may may
seem weird, it may seem grotesque or alien too many viewers,
too many listeners here, but when you really break it down,
I think it is not that different from the sort
of thing that a lot of people across the world believe.
(01:53):
Oh yeah, no, I think, And that's why we should
probably start with just kind of defining sort of the
cultural philosophical religion, just ideas behind it. But um, it
seems very much in line with just the human belief
of trying to understand what the afterlife means for us
and for the living and for the dead. Yeah, and
that's uh, you know, we'll get into the details of
(02:15):
it in a bit, but that's the basic idea here
is it's some sort of a marriage ceremony is taking
place between two dead individuals, or between a living and
a dead individual. And uh, you know that that may
sound a little weird to a lot of people, but
it's a real thing. It's been around for a while.
And uh, well we'll we'll break down the reasons for
(02:35):
it as we progress here. The the inspiration for this
was there was an article in the BBC News section
over the weekend that I saw about this and I
just it immediately, Uh struck me as something that we'd
be interested in and that our listeners would be interested in.
So we did a deep dive into research over the
last well there's research over the last couple of thousand
(02:59):
years actually, but really last i'd say sixty years is
the major concentration. It seemed to have very much there
was like a post World War two boom and hand
of this um and also a certain amount of resurgence.
Who was we'll get into it like. It did not
appear in Japan until the post war period, where it
seemed to have sprung out of Chinese influences in Okinawa. Yeah, yeah,
(03:23):
So why don't we start off by sort of just
defining what the religious philosophical practices are behind this that
that lead to ghost marriage. All right, and uh and
and again we're gonna start with the Chinese model, and
then eventually we'll talk about some other cultural motifs as well.
So in order to engage with this topic in a
(03:43):
like a nonsensational manner, and certainly, um, I imagine people
familiar with this you may have encountered it in even
like a semi sensational headline, because you can't, I mean,
to a certain extent, it can't be helped. Right when
when one culture is looking in I another it's it's
something yeah, such a um sort of like we're better
than that. Look at that. That's weird kind of thing.
(04:04):
But when you really like drill down and read about
the people's lives, uh that this affects, it makes a
little bit more sense. Especially I can't wait till we
get to the French example. That's where it really rang
home for me. Yeah, I mean, but the things other
people believe those are always the weird things, never the
things that we've no, no, no, we're perfect all right.
(04:25):
So UM, to properly engagement, we have to we have
to really break down the importance of ancestor veneration in
um in Chinese tradition and to a certain extent in
Asian tradition. As a whole um. This is known as
xiao or filial piety. So it's a concept that's grounded
in Dallas philosophy and in Confucian family values, and it
(04:49):
concerns the the undying nature of the human soul, something
that you find in religions around the world. Um, the
dead live on in the afterlife, and uh then this, uh,
this will own resonates equally well in Western families steeped
in Christian traditions, or even many mainstream or New Age
supernatural belief systems. Right, yeah, you know, it's interesting like
(05:10):
reading about this and then thinking about like Western ghost
stories from like I don't know, like a century, a
hundred and fifty years ago, you know, like I'm thinking
of like m R James stuff like that, ghost stories
of the antiquity. They're not really all that different, right,
The general idea that like, uh, if somebody dies unhappy,
that their spirit lingers on and like sort of causes
(05:31):
problems for the living. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, there
are a lot of crossovers. And and it's important to
note too that when we talk about our beliefs personal
beliefs in the afterlife, we're certainly all capable of holding
multiple ones at once, you know, because you might have
you might have a little bit of influence from your
pop culture, from your religious upbringing, from your sort of
(05:51):
scientific understanding of the world, and all these can sort
of layer on top of each other, and so at
the at one time you might say, oh, well, let's
to see east loved one uh is gone. They don't
exist anymore. But on the other hand, you still might
view it at least partially in these other motifs as well. Right,
that's the thing, as I imagine, and maybe that's where
the sort of like uh um laughter factor, the or
(06:14):
the hysterical headlines come from. Is like something like I
don't know, like a modern movie like The Woman in
Black or something like that, Right, Like see that and
that's that's a horror movie, and you go, okay, that
basically it's a similar plot to what we're going to
describe here today. But there's a there's a reason why
that movie has that plot, right, Like it springs out
(06:37):
of cultural taboos and traditions and sort of fears that
every human being has. Uh But then we we we
want to laugh at the fact that we sort of
believe those things too. Yeah. So, Uh. Where you see
this major difference though between many of these Western models
and the Chinese model here is that uh in xiao Uh.
(07:00):
There's also this importance on continuing to honor, to cease
family members, and to care for them, to tend to
their desires, to curry their favor, um, you know, after
their debt, in order to you know, avoid catastrophe, maintain
balance and happiness for both the living and the debt.
So there's this continued spirit lineage for a given of family.
There's a continued back and forth between the world of
(07:24):
the living in the world of the dead, and you
have to maintain that bond. It's um. You could probably
think of it in certain terms as being comparable to
aspects of Catholicism, where one is, you know, say, praying
to a saint in order to uh curry favor in
the afterlife. Well, I think the general idea here is
(07:45):
behind ancestor worship is essentially like we all pass away, right,
and we want someone to remember us, We want someone
to pay us homage after we're gone, And so this
seems to very neatly encapsulate that. Yeah, I was reading
I think we both read this article by Diana Martin
titled Chinese Ghost Marriage, and she she has a wonderful
(08:08):
section in that where she compares all of this to
the Chinese notion of yuan or structural completeness. So in
this you have, you know, a family that consists of
a father and a mother. You have sons who marry
and bring women into the family, uh and offspring into
the home. You have daughters who are merely temporary members
of the family, destined for a simulation assimilation into another family.
(08:31):
So um, you know, Chinese culture is is what you
would call a paternal clan culture, and that gets into
some of the just sort of I guess we could
call it criminal activities that that that might surround this
practice well, or at least there's some of the more
extreme manifestations of it at the French I guess you
would say. But but anyway, within this idea of structural completeness,
(08:54):
it even it even breaks down into like the traditional
um Chinese household where you would have you know, originally
you would have a central room in the family home
where you'd have this ancestral altar, so you'd have wooden table,
what's that bear the names of the deceased. Uh you
know the important dates in this room ideally is also
where elderly members of the family would physically die. So
(09:17):
you have this idea that you know, the there's this
perfect form for what the family is, both in this
life and as it as it extends into the past
and the future. And and there's a lot of effort,
energy and ultimately, as we'll discuss, anxiety going into maintaining
that perfect form. And I think we can we can
(09:37):
all relate to this because we all grow up with
certain certain expectations and models imposed on us for what
a what a family is, what our family is, and
what it should be like in the future. So um So,
even though many cultures don't have that same level of
veneration of of actually sort of reaching out continually to
uh loved ones who have died, I think that the
(10:00):
energy of it is comparable. And in many others, yeah,
I agree, there's societal practices that are designed to, you know,
make us feel uh loved and and that we belong
right and and who doesn't want that? Um Now, it's
worth recognizing to that the this tradition, this in this tradition,
(10:21):
the sun is very important in the family model. Uh.
And their most important duty is to continue on the
patrol line. Uh. They need to provide a descendant so
that this practice will be able to continue. They'll be
descendants who can worship the ancestors, right. Um, So that
tends to lead to what we were just talking about earlier,
(10:42):
with the minimization of the girl's role. This the daughters
in these situations right now. In a in a perfect world,
of course, this structure would be maintained right all the
marriage all these marriages would be arranged perfectly. Uh, there
would be offspring and the line continues in the ancestors
or police. But of course life doesn't always work like that. Um.
(11:02):
You know, stuff happens, and death happens, and uh, and
you end up having to have these different fixes to occur,
like how do you how do you maintain order and
structure for the family, both in the physical and in
this uh, in in the supernatural sense. And the belief
here too is that if one when you die, you
(11:23):
either become an ancestor and you're part of this structure,
or you become a ghost. And if you're a ghost
that's the then then you're a disruptive anxiety inducing UM,
you know, sort of rogue spirit. So instead of finding
that that place in the afterlife where you're supposed to be,
you're sort of roaming free, causing problems, and it's up
to the living to figure out a way to pacify
(11:46):
the debt. And in there, I want to say to
their other there are other ways that are that are
not supernatural and ritual oriented UM to to fix issues
that occur. I mean certainly UM, they're they're examples of
of of adoption to can place UM in these models
where that where this would make up for uh an
inability to conceive U. Martin talks about the adoption at length,
(12:10):
as well as UM as having a daughter who's UM
who's married off to another family. But then those children,
or at least some of the children she has are
are kind of like added back to her original family
as a way to maintain that family line UM and
connecting to the ghost topic, which is you know, pretty
central point to this episode, Martin. My favorite part in
(12:34):
Martin's articles. She says, so let's define who gets to
be a ghost and what are their powers and proceeds
to sort of you know, explain and basically by powers,
I guess what we're talking about here is the ability
to cause illness and misfortune. Yeah, and just this overall
sense too that it's just like things are out of
(12:56):
order with with life, both in this world and beyond.
So like something something has occurred and everything is just
out of whack and you've got to you've got to
realign you know, the energy of it all. Yeah, that's
a nice way to put it. And that's where we
get to this, this idea of ghost marriage of ghost wives,
ghost husbands and uh, the right of Minghun. Okay, so
(13:19):
the right of ming Hun is the official, uh, ritualistic
title of what we're referring to here as ghost marriage, right, Yeah,
and uh, it's it's been around for for quite a
while now. The earliest possible evidence of this, uh, and
I believe this comes, according to to Martin, is that
(13:40):
the Rights of show a guide book of appropriate confusion
behavior written around the third century BC that may include
some mention of it in the in the form of
disapproval of the practice by the educated elite. Despite the
fact that confusism and later blended with Buddhist the mentalism provide,
(14:01):
you know, some of the backbone for the practice but
even even at this point there may have been some
ghost marriage going on, it seems, and it was looked
down on by the elite. Yeah. In fact, one of
the things that I read was was that around two
hundred CE, I think it was um that the practice
was getting so out of hands that there were a
(14:22):
lot of grave robberies occurring. So even that far back
they ended up legislating against this. Yeah, around two that
is when you would, um, you would see examples of
just sort of the sort of the the more typical
version of this, where you have you have a son
who dies without marrying, all right, that's it's out of balance, right,
(14:44):
And then you have there's another family in town and
their daughter dies without marriage. Uh, So you have these
two pieces that are out of alignment. What makes more
sense than bearing them together and pronouncing them man and
wife in the afterlife, and then everything is is back
on a righted course. Yeah. I want to make it
(15:05):
clear to these weddings were originally only for the dead. Um.
The ritual would be conducted by the living to where
the two single deceased people, and they would typically use
those wooden tablets we're talking about it, So it's not
a situation where you would have two corpses lined up
in a for a ceremony. Now it would be I mean, really,
(15:26):
it's it's It makes a lot of sense to me
if you're gonna put this much effort and thought into
what's happening in an afterlife. This is just the equivalent
of sort of like checking off a couple of things
in a couple of boxes for the afterlife and saying,
all right, everything sorted. Yeah, I mean. The idea here
is that you're providing emotional compensation for the bereaved relative.
(15:47):
But also it's especially important in the case where a
son was working to support their family right like they
were providing financial income, but then they died, um, so
they wanted to sure that that son wasn't alone in
the afterlife. The other idea here, too, is that by
hosting these ghost weddings, it can pacify the dead. So
(16:09):
if people believe that misfortune is falling upon them when
their wishes weren't fulfilled, the deceased will continue on in
the afterlife. Uh, in a marriage like this will possibly
calm their spirit so restless spirits. The idea here is
that they would wreck havoc on their family. They might
cause illness that won't respond to conventional treatments, or maybe
(16:30):
they'll start appearing in the living's dreams, or they'll be
general misfortune. Uh. So the idea is if you are
able to conduct a ghost wedding, that will appease them
and they will be able to eventually after a certain
period of time. I think it's thirty years. Um, move
on to the next stage of the afterlife. Yeah, and
and yeah, you can really look at this as much
of a as a bereavement process for grieving parents that
(16:53):
as anything, you know. I mean, this is a like
like most of our our funeral customs. It's a it's
about the living, it's not about the dead, right yeah. Uh,
and it's especially important in families where the older son.
This is an important thing to understand about the cultural
tradition here. Older sons are supposed to marry before their
(17:14):
younger brothers. So what happens if the older brother dies unmarried, Well,
then the younger brother can't get married until uh there's
a ghost marriage in place, right, So the solution is
ghost marriage. The older brother his ghost is married to
the ghost of a of a you know, young woman
that maybe they didn't even know. But this allows the
(17:35):
younger brother to continue on with his life, and again
the importance being continuing on the lineage of the family. Um.
Now here's the thing. I mentioned that there was legislation
against us in two hundred a d. Now it's even
more recent than that. All of this practice is technically
illegal in modern day China. Ghost marriage was actually outlawed
(17:56):
under Chairman Mao, but the practice still remains, especially in
northern parts of China. So uh, you know, I mean
it occurs in different communities around and as we'll find out,
like it occurs in Chinese pocket communities and in other
nations as well. Yeah, my understanding is that you'll find
remnants of this in various parts of mainland China and
(18:19):
other Chinese communities, with an emphasis on rural communities. And
certainly in modern times, the Chinese government hasn't been in
strict on traditional practices. Yeah. I can't imagine that it's
that easy to I don't know, discipline. Yeah, most of
these my understandings that they're taking place, you know, very
privately between one party and another. If so, it's not
(18:39):
the kind of thing where you're going to a local
magistrate's office, and you know, applying paperwork for this marriage.
This is not about it as much about a legal
situation as it is about the afterlife and personal um uh,
you know, personal brief. Yeah, we're we should mention this.
We were talking about it before we went on air.
(19:01):
But I grew up in I lived in Singapore for
four years when I was a kid, and at through
the research we found out that this is actually a
practice that goes on in the Chinese community in Singapore.
And I said to Robert, I was like, I'd never
heard or saw anything about this the whole time that
I lived there, And you had a smart answer, which was, well,
of course you wouldn't. You know, this is obviously not
(19:21):
something they're gonna talk about with foreigners. But really it's
it's a private ceremony. They're gonna keep it within the family. Yeah.
A lot of the sources I was reading for this
pointed out that, you know, within it's not the kind
of thing that's necessarily openly talked about even among um,
you know, in Chinese communities. It's going to be the
kind of thing that might have have a sense of
supernaturalism or or silliness even to it, but it's kind
(19:45):
of but it's kind of like a lot of supernatural
things in in Western civilization. I imagine, Um, if you've
ever known anybody who's lost somebody and then they turned
to a spiritualist, they you know, want to somehow reach out,
you know, have a seance or anything like that, or
perhaps they they turned to to certain aspects of the
(20:06):
religion that they you know, previously did not engage with.
I mean, you know, death and breath mint kind of
can kind of change the way you view these, uh,
these these rights and these beliefs. Yes, certainly. And and
so I think that begs the question too, which is
at what point, like how how old does the sun
have to be? At what point do they reach the
(20:28):
age even if they've passed away that they can be
part of this ghost marriage ceremony. Um. I've read that
it's like as as early as twelve um or or
you know, twelve or older when they die. But that's
that's another thing to keep in mind is that it's
not necessarily immediately right after that they say, oh well,
we gotta get this ghost married off. Years may pass it.
(20:53):
There was a one instant sighted in the Dinah Martin
paper where it was the the second oldest son one
like the middle child. He gets to the point where
he's about to marry and then he has an episode
where the ghost speaks through it and so, yeah, I
remember that one. He says, Oh, well, the oldest brother
needs to be married first. And you know this is
some years after his death that they end up checking
(21:14):
that off the list. He possessed by the spirit of
his older brother in this example, uh, and speaks with
the voice that this is what they said, that he
sounded like the older brother and said, you know, no,
he can't be married before I'm married. Yeah, and uh
and and there are other cases to where the ghost
of the male ghost appears to the mother years after
(21:36):
the death and says, you know, I'm unhappy in the afterlife.
I need to be married off. See that that gets
taken care of or can you help me with that? Mom? Man?
If only it was that easy, right in any society. Well,
it's also important to remember that in some Chinese cultures,
if you're female and you're unmarried by the age of thirty,
(21:56):
you're considered to be what is called quote a leftover woman.
So if you're a deceased woman. In this case, the
ghost marriage offers you social and spiritual advantage advantages in
this patriarchal society. It allows these women to have their
memory still be worshiped and to have their spirit tended
to in the same way that we're talking about in
(22:18):
this familial sense. Traditionally, dead women can't be memorialized in
their family home where they grew up because the place
where they grew up is forbidden for their spirit tablet
to be placed. So, uh, you can put it in
their husband's home though, So why not marry the deceased
woman to the ghost of a deceased man. Yeah, it's
(22:40):
basically like balancing out a spreadsheet. Really. Yeah, And it
includes situations where a heterosexual couple are already engaged but
the man dies before their wed So in these types
of weddings, what happens is a white rooster stands in
for the groom. This rooster thereafter a company is the
bride to any formal dealings with the groom's family, and
(23:04):
she is expected to move in with her dead husband's
family and take a vow of celibacy. Now, it's interesting
for the most part when when you have a situation
that where the ghost is appearing and saying, hey, mom,
we need to set up this ghost wedding. Generally it's
the male ghost, but in Taiwan, apparently traditions dictate that
the female ghost is always the one to make first
(23:24):
contact and initiate the matchmaker. Yeah, and the way that
the rituals are just slightly different in these different areas
around Southeast Asia. In Taiwan, if an unmarried woman passes away,
her family will place packets filled with cash and paper money,
not not real money, fake money, uh, a lock of
her hair and a fingernail, just out in the open.
(23:48):
And if a man picks it up and doesn't marry
the ghost bride, it's considered bad luck. So it's kind
of this weird like I don't know trap, but but
I guess, like it's so culturally known that if you're
just a guy walking along and you see such a packet,
you're going to say, well, I don't want to pick
that up because I'm not interested in ghost marriage right now. Yeah. Well,
(24:08):
I mean you could probably say the same about marriage
between a living like someone. Some people would say, hey,
this normal marriage is the trap, right. The difference the
yes they put. The difference in Taiwan, though, is that
the bones aren't actually dug up, and the groom can
still marry a living woman later on, as long as
his dead wife is considered his primary wife. Uh. And yes,
(24:32):
as I mentioned earlier, it also occurs in Singapore. There's
a significant Chinese population there um Singaporean Chinese. The the
best record I could find of this was from nineteen
fifty five, so that goes to show you just how
kind of um secretive it is. But the idea this
was This is written by Marjorie totally back in nine.
(24:55):
The ritual there is called in chi uh. It's similar
to the modern Chinese actual, but it's more common among
Cantonese Chinese than it is among other dialect groups that
might be part of it too, is a lot of
the Chinese. Because I was in high school at the time,
a lot of the Chinese that I was interacting with
were part of the Mandarin dialect group. So maybe I
just I wasn't interacting with the right communities. But the
(25:17):
reason to conduct this maybe you need to acquire a
grandson after the death of a son of a family,
or you need to acquire a living daughter in law
after the death of an unmarried son, when a younger
son wishes to marry and the elder brother had died,
just like we talked about earlier, that's another reason to
do it. So back in ninety five, the process was
(25:37):
they would get these priests and they would pay them
to conduct the arrangements. And the one that they observed
for this particular study was from a Cantonese branch of
Jenese school of Taoism, and these guys earned their living
performing funeral ceremonies and Cantonese rites. Now the actual ghost
marriage ceremonies. These were held in a temple that was
(25:59):
referred to as the dying House. You know, I'm glad
that you you you brought brought this up because it
reminds me that another way for Westerners to think about
this looking in on this tradition is to like, don't
just think of it as a wedding. Think of it
as a wedding slash funeral. It's it's essentially a funeral rite.
It's it's aiming into the afterlife. It's aiming into life
(26:24):
without continued life without these people. Yes, certainly, And I
think one thing that like we should clarify to I,
just like sort of casually talked about it. There's lots
of money involved in this. UM, Like any funeral or
wedding service. You you you pay for these services to be done,
and you need experts to conduct them, and it's kind
of just a combination of some of the methods we've
(26:45):
we've discussed already. So Martin actually found a case from
ninety one. It was five years after a ghost wedding.
The ghost wife's mother adopted her son in law's brother's
child on behalf of the couple. The child was reared
by his own birth parents. He was intended to dutifully
worship the ghost parents. So this ties in again with
(27:09):
other efforts to maintain some level of of of luan
through adoption and or the splitting of a daughter's offspring
between her family and her husband's in terms of of
their responsibility to ancestors. This isn't that doesn't seem that
alien to me. Um. You know what it makes me
think of? Do you ever watched Deadwood? Um? And it
(27:29):
never watched all of it? Okay, there, Well, there's one
of the characters and that eventually I think it's in
one of the last seasons. He marries his brother, his
dead brother's wife, because she doesn't have someone to take
care of her and her son. And he he literally
steps in and fills the role as both husband and father.
And and and yes, they still revere the the the
(27:53):
original father who was his brother. This is all in
the context of America in the late nineteenth century. One
other thing that I wanted to mention about the the
sort of money involved here. So gifts are exchanged and
we're not just talking about those tablets that we mentioned. Traditionally,
the bride's family demands a price. Uh, they also have
(28:16):
a dowry and that includes jewelry, sometimes even servants in
a home. It could be a mansion in some cases.
But here's the thing. They're all made of paper. So
the servants, the jewelry, the mansion, all this stuff, it's
it's paper. It's it's symbols of these things. Are not
actually giving servants to uh, these ghosts couples. Yeah, and
(28:39):
this and this just ties in with a lot of
you know, ancestor of generation that you see in in
Asian cultures. Want the example, I we think over the
ghost houses in Thai culture, where you have the the
little wooden houses that you'll see out in front of
homes but businesses, and they'll be little offerings sometimes in
the forum of say like a soda that the sea
(29:00):
joy life. You know. It's like here in America we've
got those um little neighborhood libraries, you know what I'm
talking about. But like there's a little like houses that
are filled with books. Uh, And I just have to
imagine that, like somebody else would see those and be like,
what's going on with that? That's weird, you know, But
it's it's just culture. Well, I think the the closest
thing we probably have, you know, in terms of like
(29:21):
mainstream American culture, would be the leaving of objects at
a grave, which which is similar. But there are times
where I wish we had something a little more like
like a spirit house like or ancestors altar, like some
way to to you know, symbolically venerate the dead without
having to you know, drive out to a field somewhere
(29:42):
and leave something in the middle of nowhere. Well, it's interesting.
I'm actually working on another project for How Stuff Works
right now that is about the American cultural practices surrounding burial.
And we've become very distanced from that aspect of it,
uh in modern day burial. But you go back not
even a hundred and fifty years, people used to have
(30:03):
picnics on the graves of their family members uh and
up and did all the upkeep of their grave sites
on their own. It wasn't expected to be part of
the cemeteries job. So you know, there was a point
where we had similar practices surrounding this one other thing
that I wanted to mention to which I couldn't find
anything about. But um, so you're digging up the bones
(30:27):
or the body of these brides, right, and then you're
putting them inside the groom's grave. Again, from the research
that I've done on burial practices, man, disinterment is uh
can be a hideous practice, right, It can be very difficult.
So I have to imagine there must be some kind
of protocols in place for how they deal with the bodies.
(30:50):
And yeah, but at the same time we have to
realize that, like the I the idea of burying a
body in one place and stays there forever, it is
not necessarily uniform around the world. I mean that go
down to New Orleans and you will encounter a different
model and weighs a drastically different model than the mainstream
American idea of bearing the dead, the idea that that
(31:13):
the dead will be in in this place temporarily or
in the case of you know, the raised graves, their
body is going to um essentially bake in there and
then you're gonna push the bones back out into a
chamber in the rear of the in the rear of
the mausoleum. Yeah, I guess I'm more thinking along the
lines of just the biological process that a dead body
(31:35):
goes through it, right, and and and what like how
grizzly that might end up being, depending on how the body,
I guess, is prepared for burial, Yeah, and and to
what extent, to what extent is prepared and over prepared,
because as we've touched under our momification absolutely episodes and
discussing even modern funeral rights, the you know, sometimes we
go a bit overboard in our attempts to keep the
(31:57):
natural process from occurring and in a way really prolong
the the weirdness and ickiness of death. I guess all
of this depends on how soon after the death of
either the bride or the groom that they're disinterred um.
Like we said, like sometimes it's a long time. It's all.
They're digging up our bones. So maybe that's all. And
(32:17):
I'm assuming the individuals doing it, you know, might be
people who's trade it is to to do this, right,
like I was like a funeral director here, yeah, or
you know, just grave diggers and people who are not
as distant from the biological um realities of death. Yeah. So,
as we mentioned, a lot of you may have heard
about this topic through some of the the more kind
(32:39):
of scandalous headlines that have come out and and you
know in some some mainstream media sources about ghost marriage,
and it's an occasional, rare instances where this ends up
having some sort of a murder. So there's been multiple
instances where connected to the practice there have been either
(33:01):
murders or graves being robbed. Specifically, I mentioned at the
top of the episode that there was a BBC report
this weekend h that was in Northwest China police charge
demand for murdering two women with mental disabilities. Uh. Their argument,
this is the police, was that he was allegedly going
to sell their corpses for ghost weddings. According to the police,
(33:23):
he was telling them, the women that he would find
them groom. So I guess technically he wasn't lying, but uh,
yeah he unfortunately, well you know this is their charge
where I don't know, I guess it's allegedly this practice
was discovered in the Chancey Province back in April of sixteen,
(33:43):
when a woman's body was discovered in a vehicle with
three men who were moving it. Uh. And there's also
evidence that this has been going on for years in
certain parts of China. Living people have been married to
corpses in secret rituals, as we've been discussing throughout this.
But last year, for instance, in fifteen fourteen female corpses
were stolen from a village in shank Xi. Shank Xi
(34:04):
seems to be the place where a lot of this, uh,
these reports are coming out of. Uh. The likely reason
was to make money off of them, selling them as
corpse brides. Again, in four men were sentenced to prison
for exhuming ten women's corpses to sell. Now you're probably wondering, well,
why are they going to all this trouble right, Well,
(34:24):
the BBC article actually interviewed a guy. His name is
Huang jing Chun and he's the head of a study
on this at Shanghai University, and he said the price
of a young woman's corpse or its bone has risen significantly.
They first started moderate monitoring this in two thousand and eight,
and at that time a body would go for between
(34:47):
thirty thousand to fifty thousand yen, which is roughly translated
into forty five hundred or seventy five hundred U S dollars.
Today they're going for around a hundred thousand yen UH
for almost fifty thousand U S dollars. So even though
the sale of corpses was outlawed in two thousand and six,
it hasn't stopped grave robbers. Now. The connections between these
(35:09):
are tenuous though, right like, all we know is that
the police are just saying, well, we think it's because
of ghost marriages, but but who knows what the reasons
are uh. And the reason why shang Zi keeps coming
up as as an area where this seems to be
prevalent is because there's large numbers of young, unmarried men
there and they work as coal miners, so they have
(35:29):
high fatalities. So the idea there is that there's there's
a lot more dead young men there that haven't had
the chance to marry. Yeah. In factor into that too,
like a disproportionate balance between between male and females. Also,
I read that like a number of the females in
the area are and just young people in general are
(35:51):
continue to be like siphoned off to the to the
ever growing metropolitan areas of China. Yeah. I mean that
my general understanding of Chinese culture right now is that's
a fairly common phenomenon, right, Yeah, and that makes sense.
It also reminds me though, of that that potential early
mention of it, where you had the elite criticizing um,
(36:13):
the working class and the other way members of society
for engaging in this, because it's ultimately kind of an
elite privilege to not have to worry about this for
the most part. Because I mean not to say that
tragedy does not strike the elite as well. I mean,
certainly every every elite member of society has ever lived
is also wound up in a hole in the ground. Uh,
(36:36):
But certainly there are professions their trades. Uh within a society,
would it puts you closer to death, closer to injury
and uh and makes it more difficult for just the
normal shape of the family to maintain itself through time. Yeah,
I mean again, like this seems to me to be
a point where we as Westerners can identify a little
(36:57):
bit with this practice. Right. So it's not the practice, sorry,
I want to be clear, not the practice of murdering
people or of robbing their graves, but the idea of, um,
that your son works as a minor, he's in a
dangerous occupation, he dies at a young age before he's
able to marry, and the that you, as a parent
(37:18):
want to somehow bind his spirit so that he can
be honored in your family for eternity. Essentially. Yeah, I
think I think we can all relate to that on
some level, at least, you know, we can. We can
sympathize with that if you want him to be remembered positively. Yeah. Now,
on the the so we've established it, there is to
(37:40):
a certain degree a black market then for either either
stolen bodies or in rare cases, murdered individuals whose bodies
have been then sold. Uh my, my two, my two
cents on this. So while okay, so we have these
rare cases of murder, and of course these are to
be condum time not at all um forgiving that, but uh,
(38:05):
I want to pose an argument here, is the selling
of the dead for matrimonial purposes really worse uh than
the overt or essential selling of the living. And when
it comes to traditional marriages with around the world, you know,
through dowries, arranged marriages, green card marriages, human trafficking, um,
(38:25):
to say nothing of domestic abuses and homicides. According to
two thousand and thirteens the Global Prevalence of Intimate Partner
Homicide a systematic review, at least one in seven homicides globally,
and more than a third of female homicides are perpetrated
by an intimate partner. So this idea that that marriage
(38:46):
and all of the social anxiety that we attached to
marriage and too and to obtaining an intimate partner for
our life. To to think that this is this is
something that never touches on death is ridiculous. I mean
it far more than is comfortable. It It touches on
death and murder and uh and and and other miseries.
(39:06):
I think it is a thing that actually happens. It's
just I think it's rare, right that the idea of well,
I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna kill somebody so
that I can sell their body for you know, however
many dollars. I don't think that this is like a
rampaging practice occurring in the countryside of China, right, and
is we're about to discuss um. You know, this is
(39:29):
not the expression of this ritual is not an enigma um.
And we have a few different traditions we're going to
discuss here that we feel illustrates this the notion that
we can communicate with the spirits of the dead, and
then there's there's some level of interaction between the two realms.
This can be found in most religions, most spiritual traditions.
And uh, and I don't think it's really an extreme
(39:49):
model at all to incorporate marriage to the dead and equation. Yeah. Well,
the first one that we can look at here is
in Japan, where it's it's not all that different from
the Chinese model. Very Yeah. I mean clearly there within
physical proximity to one another, so their cultural traditions can
kind of sometimes bleed back and forth between nations. Uh.
(40:13):
There's a book called Buy Me a Bride by Ellen
Shot Schneider that I took a look at for this,
uh was? She references how the Japanese performed this ritual.
Their spirit marriage keeps the dead from being denied their
sexual and emotional fulfillment. This way, they don't torment the
living with misfortune, possession, or illness. So somewhat similar, maybe
(40:36):
a little grimmer than the Chinese version. Here's the difference.
The Japanese use dolls instead of living spouses, so they
marry the ghosts to these I guess their custom made dolls,
I would have to imagine. And this is in the
case of both grooms and brides. The style that's practices
in China was also in Japan originally, but it shifted
(40:56):
to this doll ritual in and the reason why is
because young single men were dying during war and it
was hard to find them. All ghost brides and that
kind of traditional practice. So the ceremony goes like this.
In Japan, a photo of a dead man is placed
in a glass case next to a doll to represent
their union. This stays up in the family home for
(41:19):
thirty years. Then the man's spirit is considered to have
passed on to the next realm. Yeah, It's interesting. This
apparently arose as a new practice in Japan in the
forties and fifties among a sort of sort of a
grarian social classes. And it seems like the area where
it really originated was Okinawa, as mentioned at the top
of the podcast, and this is an area where there's
(41:41):
a you know, a fair amount of Chinese influence as
well as some Korean influence as well. So then we
go from Japan all the way across the world to France. Ah. Yes,
and I'm excited about this one because this one definitely
puts it in a Western framework. Yeah, I agree. Uh.
It's actually part of France's legal civil code in article
(42:04):
one seventy one that the President of France can authorize
a marriage where one of the spouses is already dead. Now,
this was actually added to law in nineteen fifty nine,
and the reason why was a damn collapsed and it
killed four and twenty three people. The law was passed
so that the bereaved could marry their dead fiances. Now
(42:25):
and almost of the cases in France where the article
one seventy one is is uh invoked, I guess, and
the president is requested for this. It's by women asking
to marry their their dead fiances. Um, but here's the thing.
The living person has to prove that the couple had
intended to marry, and they also have to have permission
(42:46):
from the deceased family. This allows, for instance, for a
pregnant woman to give birth to the deceased air. Now
that again getting back to patriarchal lineage and the importance
that it has in many syce sieties. You could see
there why they would want the air to be able
to have that name or whatever, depending on what the
I guess like aristocratic nature of the family is. Yeah,
(43:09):
that seems completely sensible to me. Now, another example from
from Western Uh civilization, and this is this is one
this this is not a one to one comparison, but
the ancient Greeks had a tradition called epicleros Uh and
it borders on similar principles in which the kinsman of
a dead man could fill in for him as a
(43:31):
temporary property holder until his widow could produce a son
to act as there And I would assume that by
produce a son it means that the kinsman would be
having sex with the widow. I'm not clear on that point.
I'm not sure if it's a situation where she is
pregnant from the you know, already pregnant, or if it's
(43:52):
like a gray area. Yeah, I'm not sure exactly how
that that comes together. But you do see this idea
of all right, we have a situation here, she doesn't
we need to protect the rights of the child. What
can we do too, It's sort of like a placeholder. Well,
there's actually a very similar practice in southern Sudan. So
(44:12):
the tradition there is within the new Air ethnic group,
and it's very similar to what you just described. In Greece.
If a man dies without male heirs, his kinsman will
marry his wife in the dead man's name. Now, this
kinsman then behaves socially like a husband, but the ghost
is considered the father of any air that they produce. Okay,
(44:34):
So so if the kinsman and the and the wife
produce a son, then he worships the son, worships the
ghost as his actual father, even though biologically the ghost
isn't involved. Uh. And usually this is conducted to secure
property for somebody, like a dead man who died in
(44:57):
a feud um, and this price is paid out by
something that's blood wealth from those who are responsible for
the death. The woman receives this payment during the ghost marriage,
and that's known as the bride price. Sounds very Game
of Thrones E yeah. I mean it ultimately comes down
to like what is what is essential moving forward for
(45:17):
the survivors, Like how much of it is is like
a purely legal property situation, how much of it is uh,
you know, concerns of the spiritual and on as far
as concerns of the spiritual go. The next example is
really key here, and this is from the Church of
Latter Day Saints. Yep, this is right here in the
United States of America. So if you've been listening to
(45:38):
this episode and you've been like, oh, this is so
weird that they do this in these other places, it's
so foreign, Well, there are similar practices that are conducted
right here right now. I do have to say this.
I have seen this sometimes scandalized by like like certain
uh like for instance, chick tracks un from a from
(45:58):
a you know, a very servative Protestant perspective where they're saying, oh, well,
the Church of Latter Day Saints is weird, and let's
explain what chick track is. A chick track is like
a comic book that's produced by a religious organization that
sort of condemns a way of life. Is that about right? Yeah? Satirically, yeah,
(46:19):
it's I have you know, if you haven't seen one,
check do you just google chick tracks. You'll find a
whole archive of them. Generally, the whole point was to
scare children out of doing things or believing in certain things,
and in my experience, attended to backfire because we have
cool monster illustrations to make you think, whoa, it's like
those TV specials in the eighties that told you that
(46:40):
dungeons and dragons would make you worship the devil and
turn you evil. Exactly. Of course, everybody started playing dungeons,
and so I'm pretty sure there were some that the
targeted um that the Church of Latter day Saints for
this idea of celestial marriage. So celestial marriage is just
the idea that marriage last beyond the grave eternity, and
it's one of three major doctrines that were presented by
(47:04):
church founder Joseph Smith in the early eighteen forties. And
these are the three Baptism for the dead, and this
guaranteed deceased relatives membership in the church, eternal marriage which
united living husbands and wives after death, and then proxy marriage,
which linked spouses to their deceased partners. Yeah. So the
idea here, as I understand it is matrimony within this
(47:26):
faith is also called ceiling by doctrine, and what the
what it means is very I think it's a similar
understanding the most marriage systems, especially in religion. It binds
a couple to one another for the rest of their lives,
but also beyond into eternity. Uh, and it allows for
a wedding ceremony to be performed for those who have
(47:48):
already died. Yeah, so you know, it's uh, it's not
that alien. No, I think that's the that's the point
I definitely want to drive drive home with this episode
that on one hand, yeah, it's it's totally fascinating to
to to look into another culture and and find this
thing that that this mode of belief, this motive behavior
that it seems rather different from the way we we
(48:11):
do things within our own culture. But then on the
other hand, that like the next level of interaction is
then to realize how much it has in common with
with all with the beliefs you may have, or at
least beliefs that are present in your immediate community. Well,
our producer No brought up before we started recording. He said, well,
it's not all that different from that movie Ghosts, the
Patrick Swat Demi Moore joint. Uh So when you think
(48:35):
about it that way, I guess you can identify with it. Yeah,
that's the thing, Like, even if your your your written
religious beliefs don't line up with it, we still have
this whole realm of pop culture supernaturalism that you know,
you may just dismiss it as fiction with your rational mind,
but in the irrational color corners of your mind, all
(48:56):
that stuff still resonates and it actually ends up informing
the way you you may you may interact with the world.
So we'd love to hear from you about this. Tell us, Uh,
you know what you think about these ghost marriage practices.
Most importantly, I'm really curious people who have lived in
China or Chinese listeners, if you've had personal experiences with these,
(49:17):
let us know about them, or if you're from one
of the other cultures that we just briefly mentioned at
the end here. Again, we'd love to know more about it.
Maybe we'll be able to read something that you sent
to us on a listener mail episode in the future. Yeah,
we haven't. I know, we have a number of Asian
and Asian American listeners. We have a number of Mormon
listeners as well. Yeah, you know, let us know. Let
(49:37):
give us your your two cents on the topic. So
the way to do that is you can hit us
up on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram.
You should be able to find this episode on all
of those platforms, and you could just write to us
through those platforms as well, pretty much all of them.
We are blow the Mind or some variation of that phrase.
(49:59):
That's right, and be sure to check out stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. Uh, that is the website.
It's been updated and hey, if you want to get
in touch with us the old fashioned way, reach out
to us at blow the Mind and how stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(50:23):
Is that how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Christian Seger.
Today's topic is something that sounds like it should be
(00:25):
like the plot of a horror movie. That is, maybe
maybe something that's been imported from Asia to America and
it's been remade, like The Ring or The Grudge or
something like that. But well, we were only able to
find one example. Um, and it seems like a relatively
small movie. H Yeah, there's a two thousand thirteen film
called Ghost Bride um from New Zealand director David Blythe.
(00:49):
So what we're talking about today, and this is real,
This isn't this isn't a movie, this isn't the plot
of a movie. In fact, it's a thousands year old
tradition ghost marriages. Uh. And primarily we're gonna be talking
about ghost marriages in China or Chinese cultures around the world,
but they happen in other places to like Sudan, France, uh,
(01:10):
and even here in America. Yeah. In China it's known
as the right of ming Hoon and it's it's pretty interesting.
We're we're gonna We're gonna get into it in this
podcast episode. This is not going to be a particularly
science the episode, but we are going to still apply
that same level of skeptical rationalism that we apply to
all our topics. And uh and and also a certain
(01:33):
demystification because I I feel that at the heart of
this we have something that is really It may may
seem weird, it may seem grotesque or alien too many viewers,
too many listeners here, but when you really break it down,
I think it is not that different from the sort
of thing that a lot of people across the world believe.
(01:53):
Oh yeah, no, I think, And that's why we should
probably start with just kind of defining sort of the
cultural philosophical religion, just ideas behind it. But um, it
seems very much in line with just the human belief
of trying to understand what the afterlife means for us
and for the living and for the dead. Yeah, and
that's uh, you know, we'll get into the details of
(02:15):
it in a bit, but that's the basic idea here
is it's some sort of a marriage ceremony is taking
place between two dead individuals, or between a living and
a dead individual. And uh, you know that that may
sound a little weird to a lot of people, but
it's a real thing. It's been around for a while.
And uh, well we'll we'll break down the reasons for
(02:35):
it as we progress here. The the inspiration for this
was there was an article in the BBC News section
over the weekend that I saw about this and I
just it immediately, Uh struck me as something that we'd
be interested in and that our listeners would be interested in.
So we did a deep dive into research over the
last well there's research over the last couple of thousand
(02:59):
years actually, but really last i'd say sixty years is
the major concentration. It seemed to have very much there
was like a post World War two boom and hand
of this um and also a certain amount of resurgence.
Who was we'll get into it like. It did not
appear in Japan until the post war period, where it
seemed to have sprung out of Chinese influences in Okinawa. Yeah, yeah,
(03:23):
So why don't we start off by sort of just
defining what the religious philosophical practices are behind this that
that lead to ghost marriage. All right, and uh and
and again we're gonna start with the Chinese model, and
then eventually we'll talk about some other cultural motifs as well.
So in order to engage with this topic in a
(03:43):
like a nonsensational manner, and certainly, um, I imagine people
familiar with this you may have encountered it in even
like a semi sensational headline, because you can't, I mean,
to a certain extent, it can't be helped. Right when
when one culture is looking in I another it's it's
something yeah, such a um sort of like we're better
than that. Look at that. That's weird kind of thing.
(04:04):
But when you really like drill down and read about
the people's lives, uh that this affects, it makes a
little bit more sense. Especially I can't wait till we
get to the French example. That's where it really rang
home for me. Yeah, I mean, but the things other
people believe those are always the weird things, never the
things that we've no, no, no, we're perfect all right.
(04:25):
So UM, to properly engagement, we have to we have
to really break down the importance of ancestor veneration in
um in Chinese tradition and to a certain extent in
Asian tradition. As a whole um. This is known as
xiao or filial piety. So it's a concept that's grounded
in Dallas philosophy and in Confucian family values, and it
(04:49):
concerns the the undying nature of the human soul, something
that you find in religions around the world. Um, the
dead live on in the afterlife, and uh then this, uh,
this will own resonates equally well in Western families steeped
in Christian traditions, or even many mainstream or New Age
supernatural belief systems. Right, yeah, you know, it's interesting like
(05:10):
reading about this and then thinking about like Western ghost
stories from like I don't know, like a century, a
hundred and fifty years ago, you know, like I'm thinking
of like m R James stuff like that, ghost stories
of the antiquity. They're not really all that different, right,
The general idea that like, uh, if somebody dies unhappy,
that their spirit lingers on and like sort of causes
(05:31):
problems for the living. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, there
are a lot of crossovers. And and it's important to
note too that when we talk about our beliefs personal
beliefs in the afterlife, we're certainly all capable of holding
multiple ones at once, you know, because you might have
you might have a little bit of influence from your
pop culture, from your religious upbringing, from your sort of
(05:51):
scientific understanding of the world, and all these can sort
of layer on top of each other, and so at
the at one time you might say, oh, well, let's
to see east loved one uh is gone. They don't
exist anymore. But on the other hand, you still might
view it at least partially in these other motifs as well. Right,
that's the thing, as I imagine, and maybe that's where
the sort of like uh um laughter factor, the or
(06:14):
the hysterical headlines come from. Is like something like I
don't know, like a modern movie like The Woman in
Black or something like that, Right, Like see that and
that's that's a horror movie, and you go, okay, that
basically it's a similar plot to what we're going to
describe here today. But there's a there's a reason why
that movie has that plot, right, Like it springs out
(06:37):
of cultural taboos and traditions and sort of fears that
every human being has. Uh But then we we we
want to laugh at the fact that we sort of
believe those things too. Yeah. So, Uh. Where you see
this major difference though between many of these Western models
and the Chinese model here is that uh in xiao Uh.
(07:00):
There's also this importance on continuing to honor, to cease
family members, and to care for them, to tend to
their desires, to curry their favor, um, you know, after
their debt, in order to you know, avoid catastrophe, maintain
balance and happiness for both the living and the debt.
So there's this continued spirit lineage for a given of family.
There's a continued back and forth between the world of
(07:24):
the living in the world of the dead, and you
have to maintain that bond. It's um. You could probably
think of it in certain terms as being comparable to
aspects of Catholicism, where one is, you know, say, praying
to a saint in order to uh curry favor in
the afterlife. Well, I think the general idea here is
(07:45):
behind ancestor worship is essentially like we all pass away, right,
and we want someone to remember us, We want someone
to pay us homage after we're gone, And so this
seems to very neatly encapsulate that. Yeah, I was reading
I think we both read this article by Diana Martin
titled Chinese Ghost Marriage, and she she has a wonderful
(08:08):
section in that where she compares all of this to
the Chinese notion of yuan or structural completeness. So in
this you have, you know, a family that consists of
a father and a mother. You have sons who marry
and bring women into the family, uh and offspring into
the home. You have daughters who are merely temporary members
of the family, destined for a simulation assimilation into another family.
(08:31):
So um, you know, Chinese culture is is what you
would call a paternal clan culture, and that gets into
some of the just sort of I guess we could
call it criminal activities that that that might surround this
practice well, or at least there's some of the more
extreme manifestations of it at the French I guess you
would say. But but anyway, within this idea of structural completeness,
(08:54):
it even it even breaks down into like the traditional
um Chinese household where you would have you know, originally
you would have a central room in the family home
where you'd have this ancestral altar, so you'd have wooden table,
what's that bear the names of the deceased. Uh you
know the important dates in this room ideally is also
where elderly members of the family would physically die. So
(09:17):
you have this idea that you know, the there's this
perfect form for what the family is, both in this
life and as it as it extends into the past
and the future. And and there's a lot of effort,
energy and ultimately, as we'll discuss, anxiety going into maintaining
that perfect form. And I think we can we can
(09:37):
all relate to this because we all grow up with
certain certain expectations and models imposed on us for what
a what a family is, what our family is, and
what it should be like in the future. So um So,
even though many cultures don't have that same level of
veneration of of actually sort of reaching out continually to
uh loved ones who have died, I think that the
(10:00):
energy of it is comparable. And in many others, yeah,
I agree, there's societal practices that are designed to, you know,
make us feel uh loved and and that we belong
right and and who doesn't want that? Um Now, it's
worth recognizing to that the this tradition, this in this tradition,
(10:21):
the sun is very important in the family model. Uh.
And their most important duty is to continue on the
patrol line. Uh. They need to provide a descendant so
that this practice will be able to continue. They'll be
descendants who can worship the ancestors, right. Um, So that
tends to lead to what we were just talking about earlier,
(10:42):
with the minimization of the girl's role. This the daughters
in these situations right now. In a in a perfect world,
of course, this structure would be maintained right all the
marriage all these marriages would be arranged perfectly. Uh, there
would be offspring and the line continues in the ancestors
or police. But of course life doesn't always work like that. Um.
(11:02):
You know, stuff happens, and death happens, and uh, and
you end up having to have these different fixes to occur,
like how do you how do you maintain order and
structure for the family, both in the physical and in
this uh, in in the supernatural sense. And the belief
here too is that if one when you die, you
(11:23):
either become an ancestor and you're part of this structure,
or you become a ghost. And if you're a ghost
that's the then then you're a disruptive anxiety inducing UM,
you know, sort of rogue spirit. So instead of finding
that that place in the afterlife where you're supposed to be,
you're sort of roaming free, causing problems, and it's up
to the living to figure out a way to pacify
(11:46):
the debt. And in there, I want to say to
their other there are other ways that are that are
not supernatural and ritual oriented UM to to fix issues
that occur. I mean certainly UM, they're they're examples of
of of adoption to can place UM in these models
where that where this would make up for uh an
inability to conceive U. Martin talks about the adoption at length,
(12:10):
as well as UM as having a daughter who's UM
who's married off to another family. But then those children,
or at least some of the children she has are
are kind of like added back to her original family
as a way to maintain that family line UM and
connecting to the ghost topic, which is you know, pretty
central point to this episode, Martin. My favorite part in
(12:34):
Martin's articles. She says, so let's define who gets to
be a ghost and what are their powers and proceeds
to sort of you know, explain and basically by powers,
I guess what we're talking about here is the ability
to cause illness and misfortune. Yeah, and just this overall
sense too that it's just like things are out of
(12:56):
order with with life, both in this world and beyond.
So like something something has occurred and everything is just
out of whack and you've got to you've got to
realign you know, the energy of it all. Yeah, that's
a nice way to put it. And that's where we
get to this, this idea of ghost marriage of ghost wives,
ghost husbands and uh, the right of Minghun. Okay, so
(13:19):
the right of ming Hun is the official, uh, ritualistic
title of what we're referring to here as ghost marriage, right, Yeah,
and uh, it's it's been around for for quite a
while now. The earliest possible evidence of this, uh, and
I believe this comes, according to to Martin, is that
(13:40):
the Rights of show a guide book of appropriate confusion
behavior written around the third century BC that may include
some mention of it in the in the form of
disapproval of the practice by the educated elite. Despite the
fact that confusism and later blended with Buddhist the mentalism provide,
(14:01):
you know, some of the backbone for the practice but
even even at this point there may have been some
ghost marriage going on, it seems, and it was looked
down on by the elite. Yeah. In fact, one of
the things that I read was was that around two
hundred CE, I think it was um that the practice
was getting so out of hands that there were a
(14:22):
lot of grave robberies occurring. So even that far back
they ended up legislating against this. Yeah, around two that
is when you would, um, you would see examples of
just sort of the sort of the the more typical
version of this, where you have you have a son
who dies without marrying, all right, that's it's out of balance, right,
(14:44):
And then you have there's another family in town and
their daughter dies without marriage. Uh, So you have these
two pieces that are out of alignment. What makes more
sense than bearing them together and pronouncing them man and
wife in the afterlife, and then everything is is back
on a righted course. Yeah. I want to make it
(15:05):
clear to these weddings were originally only for the dead. Um.
The ritual would be conducted by the living to where
the two single deceased people, and they would typically use
those wooden tablets we're talking about it, So it's not
a situation where you would have two corpses lined up
in a for a ceremony. Now it would be I mean, really,
(15:26):
it's it's It makes a lot of sense to me
if you're gonna put this much effort and thought into
what's happening in an afterlife. This is just the equivalent
of sort of like checking off a couple of things
in a couple of boxes for the afterlife and saying,
all right, everything sorted. Yeah, I mean. The idea here
is that you're providing emotional compensation for the bereaved relative.
(15:47):
But also it's especially important in the case where a
son was working to support their family right like they
were providing financial income, but then they died, um, so
they wanted to sure that that son wasn't alone in
the afterlife. The other idea here, too, is that by
hosting these ghost weddings, it can pacify the dead. So
(16:09):
if people believe that misfortune is falling upon them when
their wishes weren't fulfilled, the deceased will continue on in
the afterlife. Uh, in a marriage like this will possibly
calm their spirit so restless spirits. The idea here is
that they would wreck havoc on their family. They might
cause illness that won't respond to conventional treatments, or maybe
(16:30):
they'll start appearing in the living's dreams, or they'll be
general misfortune. Uh. So the idea is if you are
able to conduct a ghost wedding, that will appease them
and they will be able to eventually after a certain
period of time. I think it's thirty years. Um, move
on to the next stage of the afterlife. Yeah, and
and yeah, you can really look at this as much
of a as a bereavement process for grieving parents that
(16:53):
as anything, you know. I mean, this is a like
like most of our our funeral customs. It's a it's
about the living, it's not about the dead, right yeah. Uh,
and it's especially important in families where the older son.
This is an important thing to understand about the cultural
tradition here. Older sons are supposed to marry before their
(17:14):
younger brothers. So what happens if the older brother dies unmarried, Well,
then the younger brother can't get married until uh there's
a ghost marriage in place, right, So the solution is
ghost marriage. The older brother his ghost is married to
the ghost of a of a you know, young woman
that maybe they didn't even know. But this allows the
(17:35):
younger brother to continue on with his life, and again
the importance being continuing on the lineage of the family. Um.
Now here's the thing. I mentioned that there was legislation
against us in two hundred a d. Now it's even
more recent than that. All of this practice is technically
illegal in modern day China. Ghost marriage was actually outlawed
(17:56):
under Chairman Mao, but the practice still remains, especially in
northern parts of China. So uh, you know, I mean
it occurs in different communities around and as we'll find out,
like it occurs in Chinese pocket communities and in other
nations as well. Yeah, my understanding is that you'll find
remnants of this in various parts of mainland China and
(18:19):
other Chinese communities, with an emphasis on rural communities. And
certainly in modern times, the Chinese government hasn't been in
strict on traditional practices. Yeah. I can't imagine that it's
that easy to I don't know, discipline. Yeah, most of
these my understandings that they're taking place, you know, very
privately between one party and another. If so, it's not
(18:39):
the kind of thing where you're going to a local
magistrate's office, and you know, applying paperwork for this marriage.
This is not about it as much about a legal
situation as it is about the afterlife and personal um uh,
you know, personal brief. Yeah, we're we should mention this.
We were talking about it before we went on air.
(19:01):
But I grew up in I lived in Singapore for
four years when I was a kid, and at through
the research we found out that this is actually a
practice that goes on in the Chinese community in Singapore.
And I said to Robert, I was like, I'd never
heard or saw anything about this the whole time that
I lived there, And you had a smart answer, which was, well,
of course you wouldn't. You know, this is obviously not
(19:21):
something they're gonna talk about with foreigners. But really it's
it's a private ceremony. They're gonna keep it within the family. Yeah.
A lot of the sources I was reading for this
pointed out that, you know, within it's not the kind
of thing that's necessarily openly talked about even among um,
you know, in Chinese communities. It's going to be the
kind of thing that might have have a sense of
supernaturalism or or silliness even to it, but it's kind
(19:45):
of but it's kind of like a lot of supernatural
things in in Western civilization. I imagine, Um, if you've
ever known anybody who's lost somebody and then they turned
to a spiritualist, they you know, want to somehow reach out,
you know, have a seance or anything like that, or
perhaps they they turned to to certain aspects of the
(20:06):
religion that they you know, previously did not engage with.
I mean, you know, death and breath mint kind of
can kind of change the way you view these, uh,
these these rights and these beliefs. Yes, certainly. And and
so I think that begs the question too, which is
at what point, like how how old does the sun
have to be? At what point do they reach the
(20:28):
age even if they've passed away that they can be
part of this ghost marriage ceremony. Um. I've read that
it's like as as early as twelve um or or
you know, twelve or older when they die. But that's
that's another thing to keep in mind is that it's
not necessarily immediately right after that they say, oh well,
we gotta get this ghost married off. Years may pass it.
(20:53):
There was a one instant sighted in the Dinah Martin
paper where it was the the second oldest son one
like the middle child. He gets to the point where
he's about to marry and then he has an episode
where the ghost speaks through it and so, yeah, I
remember that one. He says, Oh, well, the oldest brother
needs to be married first. And you know this is
some years after his death that they end up checking
(21:14):
that off the list. He possessed by the spirit of
his older brother in this example, uh, and speaks with
the voice that this is what they said, that he
sounded like the older brother and said, you know, no,
he can't be married before I'm married. Yeah, and uh
and and there are other cases to where the ghost
of the male ghost appears to the mother years after
(21:36):
the death and says, you know, I'm unhappy in the afterlife.
I need to be married off. See that that gets
taken care of or can you help me with that? Mom? Man?
If only it was that easy, right in any society. Well,
it's also important to remember that in some Chinese cultures,
if you're female and you're unmarried by the age of thirty,
(21:56):
you're considered to be what is called quote a leftover woman.
So if you're a deceased woman. In this case, the
ghost marriage offers you social and spiritual advantage advantages in
this patriarchal society. It allows these women to have their
memory still be worshiped and to have their spirit tended
to in the same way that we're talking about in
(22:18):
this familial sense. Traditionally, dead women can't be memorialized in
their family home where they grew up because the place
where they grew up is forbidden for their spirit tablet
to be placed. So, uh, you can put it in
their husband's home though, So why not marry the deceased
woman to the ghost of a deceased man. Yeah, it's
(22:40):
basically like balancing out a spreadsheet. Really. Yeah, And it
includes situations where a heterosexual couple are already engaged but
the man dies before their wed So in these types
of weddings, what happens is a white rooster stands in
for the groom. This rooster thereafter a company is the
bride to any formal dealings with the groom's family, and
(23:04):
she is expected to move in with her dead husband's
family and take a vow of celibacy. Now, it's interesting
for the most part when when you have a situation
that where the ghost is appearing and saying, hey, mom,
we need to set up this ghost wedding. Generally it's
the male ghost, but in Taiwan, apparently traditions dictate that
the female ghost is always the one to make first
(23:24):
contact and initiate the matchmaker. Yeah, and the way that
the rituals are just slightly different in these different areas
around Southeast Asia. In Taiwan, if an unmarried woman passes away,
her family will place packets filled with cash and paper money,
not not real money, fake money, uh, a lock of
her hair and a fingernail, just out in the open.
(23:48):
And if a man picks it up and doesn't marry
the ghost bride, it's considered bad luck. So it's kind
of this weird like I don't know trap, but but
I guess, like it's so culturally known that if you're
just a guy walking along and you see such a packet,
you're going to say, well, I don't want to pick
that up because I'm not interested in ghost marriage right now. Yeah. Well,
(24:08):
I mean you could probably say the same about marriage
between a living like someone. Some people would say, hey,
this normal marriage is the trap, right. The difference the
yes they put. The difference in Taiwan, though, is that
the bones aren't actually dug up, and the groom can
still marry a living woman later on, as long as
his dead wife is considered his primary wife. Uh. And yes,
(24:32):
as I mentioned earlier, it also occurs in Singapore. There's
a significant Chinese population there um Singaporean Chinese. The the
best record I could find of this was from nineteen
fifty five, so that goes to show you just how
kind of um secretive it is. But the idea this
was This is written by Marjorie totally back in nine.
(24:55):
The ritual there is called in chi uh. It's similar
to the modern Chinese actual, but it's more common among
Cantonese Chinese than it is among other dialect groups that
might be part of it too, is a lot of
the Chinese. Because I was in high school at the time,
a lot of the Chinese that I was interacting with
were part of the Mandarin dialect group. So maybe I
just I wasn't interacting with the right communities. But the
(25:17):
reason to conduct this maybe you need to acquire a
grandson after the death of a son of a family,
or you need to acquire a living daughter in law
after the death of an unmarried son, when a younger
son wishes to marry and the elder brother had died,
just like we talked about earlier, that's another reason to
do it. So back in ninety five, the process was
(25:37):
they would get these priests and they would pay them
to conduct the arrangements. And the one that they observed
for this particular study was from a Cantonese branch of
Jenese school of Taoism, and these guys earned their living
performing funeral ceremonies and Cantonese rites. Now the actual ghost
marriage ceremonies. These were held in a temple that was
(25:59):
referred to as the dying House. You know, I'm glad
that you you you brought brought this up because it
reminds me that another way for Westerners to think about
this looking in on this tradition is to like, don't
just think of it as a wedding. Think of it
as a wedding slash funeral. It's it's essentially a funeral rite.
It's it's aiming into the afterlife. It's aiming into life
(26:24):
without continued life without these people. Yes, certainly, And I
think one thing that like we should clarify to I,
just like sort of casually talked about it. There's lots
of money involved in this. UM, Like any funeral or
wedding service. You you you pay for these services to be done,
and you need experts to conduct them, and it's kind
of just a combination of some of the methods we've
(26:45):
we've discussed already. So Martin actually found a case from
ninety one. It was five years after a ghost wedding.
The ghost wife's mother adopted her son in law's brother's
child on behalf of the couple. The child was reared
by his own birth parents. He was intended to dutifully
worship the ghost parents. So this ties in again with
(27:09):
other efforts to maintain some level of of of luan
through adoption and or the splitting of a daughter's offspring
between her family and her husband's in terms of of
their responsibility to ancestors. This isn't that doesn't seem that
alien to me. Um. You know what it makes me
think of? Do you ever watched Deadwood? Um? And it
(27:29):
never watched all of it? Okay, there, Well, there's one
of the characters and that eventually I think it's in
one of the last seasons. He marries his brother, his
dead brother's wife, because she doesn't have someone to take
care of her and her son. And he he literally
steps in and fills the role as both husband and father.
And and and yes, they still revere the the the
(27:53):
original father who was his brother. This is all in
the context of America in the late nineteenth century. One
other thing that I wanted to mention about the the
sort of money involved here. So gifts are exchanged and
we're not just talking about those tablets that we mentioned. Traditionally,
the bride's family demands a price. Uh, they also have
(28:16):
a dowry and that includes jewelry, sometimes even servants in
a home. It could be a mansion in some cases.
But here's the thing. They're all made of paper. So
the servants, the jewelry, the mansion, all this stuff, it's
it's paper. It's it's symbols of these things. Are not
actually giving servants to uh, these ghosts couples. Yeah, and
(28:39):
this and this just ties in with a lot of
you know, ancestor of generation that you see in in
Asian cultures. Want the example, I we think over the
ghost houses in Thai culture, where you have the the
little wooden houses that you'll see out in front of
homes but businesses, and they'll be little offerings sometimes in
the forum of say like a soda that the sea
(29:00):
joy life. You know. It's like here in America we've
got those um little neighborhood libraries, you know what I'm
talking about. But like there's a little like houses that
are filled with books. Uh, And I just have to
imagine that, like somebody else would see those and be like,
what's going on with that? That's weird, you know, But
it's it's just culture. Well, I think the the closest
thing we probably have, you know, in terms of like
(29:21):
mainstream American culture, would be the leaving of objects at
a grave, which which is similar. But there are times
where I wish we had something a little more like
like a spirit house like or ancestors altar, like some
way to to you know, symbolically venerate the dead without
having to you know, drive out to a field somewhere
(29:42):
and leave something in the middle of nowhere. Well, it's interesting.
I'm actually working on another project for How Stuff Works
right now that is about the American cultural practices surrounding burial.
And we've become very distanced from that aspect of it,
uh in modern day burial. But you go back not
even a hundred and fifty years, people used to have
(30:03):
picnics on the graves of their family members uh and
up and did all the upkeep of their grave sites
on their own. It wasn't expected to be part of
the cemeteries job. So you know, there was a point
where we had similar practices surrounding this one other thing
that I wanted to mention to which I couldn't find
anything about. But um, so you're digging up the bones
(30:27):
or the body of these brides, right, and then you're
putting them inside the groom's grave. Again, from the research
that I've done on burial practices, man, disinterment is uh
can be a hideous practice, right, It can be very difficult.
So I have to imagine there must be some kind
of protocols in place for how they deal with the bodies.
(30:50):
And yeah, but at the same time we have to
realize that, like the I the idea of burying a
body in one place and stays there forever, it is
not necessarily uniform around the world. I mean that go
down to New Orleans and you will encounter a different
model and weighs a drastically different model than the mainstream
American idea of bearing the dead, the idea that that
(31:13):
the dead will be in in this place temporarily or
in the case of you know, the raised graves, their
body is going to um essentially bake in there and
then you're gonna push the bones back out into a
chamber in the rear of the in the rear of
the mausoleum. Yeah, I guess I'm more thinking along the
lines of just the biological process that a dead body
(31:35):
goes through it, right, and and and what like how
grizzly that might end up being, depending on how the body,
I guess, is prepared for burial, Yeah, and and to
what extent, to what extent is prepared and over prepared,
because as we've touched under our momification absolutely episodes and
discussing even modern funeral rights, the you know, sometimes we
go a bit overboard in our attempts to keep the
(31:57):
natural process from occurring and in a way really prolong
the the weirdness and ickiness of death. I guess all
of this depends on how soon after the death of
either the bride or the groom that they're disinterred um.
Like we said, like sometimes it's a long time. It's all.
They're digging up our bones. So maybe that's all. And
(32:17):
I'm assuming the individuals doing it, you know, might be
people who's trade it is to to do this, right,
like I was like a funeral director here, yeah, or
you know, just grave diggers and people who are not
as distant from the biological um realities of death. Yeah. So,
as we mentioned, a lot of you may have heard
about this topic through some of the the more kind
(32:39):
of scandalous headlines that have come out and and you
know in some some mainstream media sources about ghost marriage,
and it's an occasional, rare instances where this ends up
having some sort of a murder. So there's been multiple
instances where connected to the practice there have been either
(33:01):
murders or graves being robbed. Specifically, I mentioned at the
top of the episode that there was a BBC report
this weekend h that was in Northwest China police charge
demand for murdering two women with mental disabilities. Uh. Their argument,
this is the police, was that he was allegedly going
to sell their corpses for ghost weddings. According to the police,
(33:23):
he was telling them, the women that he would find
them groom. So I guess technically he wasn't lying, but uh,
yeah he unfortunately, well you know this is their charge
where I don't know, I guess it's allegedly this practice
was discovered in the Chancey Province back in April of sixteen,
(33:43):
when a woman's body was discovered in a vehicle with
three men who were moving it. Uh. And there's also
evidence that this has been going on for years in
certain parts of China. Living people have been married to
corpses in secret rituals, as we've been discussing throughout this.
But last year, for instance, in fifteen fourteen female corpses
were stolen from a village in shank Xi. Shank Xi
(34:04):
seems to be the place where a lot of this, uh,
these reports are coming out of. Uh. The likely reason
was to make money off of them, selling them as
corpse brides. Again, in four men were sentenced to prison
for exhuming ten women's corpses to sell. Now you're probably wondering, well,
why are they going to all this trouble right, Well,
(34:24):
the BBC article actually interviewed a guy. His name is
Huang jing Chun and he's the head of a study
on this at Shanghai University, and he said the price
of a young woman's corpse or its bone has risen significantly.
They first started moderate monitoring this in two thousand and eight,
and at that time a body would go for between
(34:47):
thirty thousand to fifty thousand yen, which is roughly translated
into forty five hundred or seventy five hundred U S dollars.
Today they're going for around a hundred thousand yen UH
for almost fifty thousand U S dollars. So even though
the sale of corpses was outlawed in two thousand and six,
it hasn't stopped grave robbers. Now. The connections between these
(35:09):
are tenuous though, right like, all we know is that
the police are just saying, well, we think it's because
of ghost marriages, but but who knows what the reasons
are uh. And the reason why shang Zi keeps coming
up as as an area where this seems to be
prevalent is because there's large numbers of young, unmarried men
there and they work as coal miners, so they have
(35:29):
high fatalities. So the idea there is that there's there's
a lot more dead young men there that haven't had
the chance to marry. Yeah. In factor into that too,
like a disproportionate balance between between male and females. Also,
I read that like a number of the females in
the area are and just young people in general are
(35:51):
continue to be like siphoned off to the to the
ever growing metropolitan areas of China. Yeah. I mean that
my general understanding of Chinese culture right now is that's
a fairly common phenomenon, right, Yeah, and that makes sense.
It also reminds me though, of that that potential early
mention of it, where you had the elite criticizing um,
(36:13):
the working class and the other way members of society
for engaging in this, because it's ultimately kind of an
elite privilege to not have to worry about this for
the most part. Because I mean not to say that
tragedy does not strike the elite as well. I mean,
certainly every every elite member of society has ever lived
is also wound up in a hole in the ground. Uh,
(36:36):
But certainly there are professions their trades. Uh within a society,
would it puts you closer to death, closer to injury
and uh and makes it more difficult for just the
normal shape of the family to maintain itself through time. Yeah,
I mean again, like this seems to me to be
a point where we as Westerners can identify a little
(36:57):
bit with this practice. Right. So it's not the practice, sorry,
I want to be clear, not the practice of murdering
people or of robbing their graves, but the idea of, um,
that your son works as a minor, he's in a
dangerous occupation, he dies at a young age before he's
able to marry, and the that you, as a parent
(37:18):
want to somehow bind his spirit so that he can
be honored in your family for eternity. Essentially. Yeah, I
think I think we can all relate to that on
some level, at least, you know, we can. We can
sympathize with that if you want him to be remembered positively. Yeah. Now,
on the the so we've established it, there is to
(37:40):
a certain degree a black market then for either either
stolen bodies or in rare cases, murdered individuals whose bodies
have been then sold. Uh my, my two, my two
cents on this. So while okay, so we have these
rare cases of murder, and of course these are to
be condum time not at all um forgiving that, but uh,
(38:05):
I want to pose an argument here, is the selling
of the dead for matrimonial purposes really worse uh than
the overt or essential selling of the living. And when
it comes to traditional marriages with around the world, you know,
through dowries, arranged marriages, green card marriages, human trafficking, um,
(38:25):
to say nothing of domestic abuses and homicides. According to
two thousand and thirteens the Global Prevalence of Intimate Partner
Homicide a systematic review, at least one in seven homicides globally,
and more than a third of female homicides are perpetrated
by an intimate partner. So this idea that that marriage
(38:46):
and all of the social anxiety that we attached to
marriage and too and to obtaining an intimate partner for
our life. To to think that this is this is
something that never touches on death is ridiculous. I mean
it far more than is comfortable. It It touches on
death and murder and uh and and and other miseries.
(39:06):
I think it is a thing that actually happens. It's
just I think it's rare, right that the idea of well,
I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna kill somebody so
that I can sell their body for you know, however
many dollars. I don't think that this is like a
rampaging practice occurring in the countryside of China, right, and
is we're about to discuss um. You know, this is
(39:29):
not the expression of this ritual is not an enigma um.
And we have a few different traditions we're going to
discuss here that we feel illustrates this the notion that
we can communicate with the spirits of the dead, and
then there's there's some level of interaction between the two realms.
This can be found in most religions, most spiritual traditions.
And uh, and I don't think it's really an extreme
(39:49):
model at all to incorporate marriage to the dead and equation. Yeah. Well,
the first one that we can look at here is
in Japan, where it's it's not all that different from
the Chinese model. Very Yeah. I mean clearly there within
physical proximity to one another, so their cultural traditions can
kind of sometimes bleed back and forth between nations. Uh.
(40:13):
There's a book called Buy Me a Bride by Ellen
Shot Schneider that I took a look at for this,
uh was? She references how the Japanese performed this ritual.
Their spirit marriage keeps the dead from being denied their
sexual and emotional fulfillment. This way, they don't torment the
living with misfortune, possession, or illness. So somewhat similar, maybe
(40:36):
a little grimmer than the Chinese version. Here's the difference.
The Japanese use dolls instead of living spouses, so they
marry the ghosts to these I guess their custom made dolls,
I would have to imagine. And this is in the
case of both grooms and brides. The style that's practices
in China was also in Japan originally, but it shifted
(40:56):
to this doll ritual in and the reason why is
because young single men were dying during war and it
was hard to find them. All ghost brides and that
kind of traditional practice. So the ceremony goes like this.
In Japan, a photo of a dead man is placed
in a glass case next to a doll to represent
their union. This stays up in the family home for
(41:19):
thirty years. Then the man's spirit is considered to have
passed on to the next realm. Yeah, It's interesting. This
apparently arose as a new practice in Japan in the
forties and fifties among a sort of sort of a
grarian social classes. And it seems like the area where
it really originated was Okinawa, as mentioned at the top
of the podcast, and this is an area where there's
(41:41):
a you know, a fair amount of Chinese influence as
well as some Korean influence as well. So then we
go from Japan all the way across the world to France. Ah. Yes,
and I'm excited about this one because this one definitely
puts it in a Western framework. Yeah, I agree. Uh.
It's actually part of France's legal civil code in article
(42:04):
one seventy one that the President of France can authorize
a marriage where one of the spouses is already dead. Now,
this was actually added to law in nineteen fifty nine,
and the reason why was a damn collapsed and it
killed four and twenty three people. The law was passed
so that the bereaved could marry their dead fiances. Now
(42:25):
and almost of the cases in France where the article
one seventy one is is uh invoked, I guess, and
the president is requested for this. It's by women asking
to marry their their dead fiances. Um, but here's the thing.
The living person has to prove that the couple had
intended to marry, and they also have to have permission
(42:46):
from the deceased family. This allows, for instance, for a
pregnant woman to give birth to the deceased air. Now
that again getting back to patriarchal lineage and the importance
that it has in many syce sieties. You could see
there why they would want the air to be able
to have that name or whatever, depending on what the
I guess like aristocratic nature of the family is. Yeah,
(43:09):
that seems completely sensible to me. Now, another example from
from Western Uh civilization, and this is this is one
this this is not a one to one comparison, but
the ancient Greeks had a tradition called epicleros Uh and
it borders on similar principles in which the kinsman of
a dead man could fill in for him as a
(43:31):
temporary property holder until his widow could produce a son
to act as there And I would assume that by
produce a son it means that the kinsman would be
having sex with the widow. I'm not clear on that point.
I'm not sure if it's a situation where she is
pregnant from the you know, already pregnant, or if it's
(43:52):
like a gray area. Yeah, I'm not sure exactly how
that that comes together. But you do see this idea
of all right, we have a situation here, she doesn't
we need to protect the rights of the child. What
can we do too, It's sort of like a placeholder. Well,
there's actually a very similar practice in southern Sudan. So
(44:12):
the tradition there is within the new Air ethnic group,
and it's very similar to what you just described. In Greece.
If a man dies without male heirs, his kinsman will
marry his wife in the dead man's name. Now, this
kinsman then behaves socially like a husband, but the ghost
is considered the father of any air that they produce. Okay,
(44:34):
So so if the kinsman and the and the wife
produce a son, then he worships the son, worships the
ghost as his actual father, even though biologically the ghost
isn't involved. Uh. And usually this is conducted to secure
property for somebody, like a dead man who died in
(44:57):
a feud um, and this price is paid out by
something that's blood wealth from those who are responsible for
the death. The woman receives this payment during the ghost marriage,
and that's known as the bride price. Sounds very Game
of Thrones E yeah. I mean it ultimately comes down
to like what is what is essential moving forward for
(45:17):
the survivors, Like how much of it is is like
a purely legal property situation, how much of it is uh,
you know, concerns of the spiritual and on as far
as concerns of the spiritual go. The next example is
really key here, and this is from the Church of
Latter Day Saints. Yep, this is right here in the
United States of America. So if you've been listening to
(45:38):
this episode and you've been like, oh, this is so
weird that they do this in these other places, it's
so foreign, Well, there are similar practices that are conducted
right here right now. I do have to say this.
I have seen this sometimes scandalized by like like certain
uh like for instance, chick tracks un from a from
(45:58):
a you know, a very servative Protestant perspective where they're saying, oh, well,
the Church of Latter Day Saints is weird, and let's
explain what chick track is. A chick track is like
a comic book that's produced by a religious organization that
sort of condemns a way of life. Is that about right? Yeah? Satirically, yeah,
(46:19):
it's I have you know, if you haven't seen one,
check do you just google chick tracks. You'll find a
whole archive of them. Generally, the whole point was to
scare children out of doing things or believing in certain things,
and in my experience, attended to backfire because we have
cool monster illustrations to make you think, whoa, it's like
those TV specials in the eighties that told you that
(46:40):
dungeons and dragons would make you worship the devil and
turn you evil. Exactly. Of course, everybody started playing dungeons,
and so I'm pretty sure there were some that the
targeted um that the Church of Latter day Saints for
this idea of celestial marriage. So celestial marriage is just
the idea that marriage last beyond the grave eternity, and
it's one of three major doctrines that were presented by
(47:04):
church founder Joseph Smith in the early eighteen forties. And
these are the three Baptism for the dead, and this
guaranteed deceased relatives membership in the church, eternal marriage which
united living husbands and wives after death, and then proxy marriage,
which linked spouses to their deceased partners. Yeah. So the
idea here, as I understand it is matrimony within this
(47:26):
faith is also called ceiling by doctrine, and what the
what it means is very I think it's a similar
understanding the most marriage systems, especially in religion. It binds
a couple to one another for the rest of their lives,
but also beyond into eternity. Uh, and it allows for
a wedding ceremony to be performed for those who have
(47:48):
already died. Yeah, so you know, it's uh, it's not
that alien. No, I think that's the that's the point
I definitely want to drive drive home with this episode
that on one hand, yeah, it's it's totally fascinating to
to to look into another culture and and find this
thing that that this mode of belief, this motive behavior
that it seems rather different from the way we we
(48:11):
do things within our own culture. But then on the
other hand, that like the next level of interaction is
then to realize how much it has in common with
with all with the beliefs you may have, or at
least beliefs that are present in your immediate community. Well,
our producer No brought up before we started recording. He said, well,
it's not all that different from that movie Ghosts, the
Patrick Swat Demi Moore joint. Uh So when you think
(48:35):
about it that way, I guess you can identify with it. Yeah,
that's the thing, Like, even if your your your written
religious beliefs don't line up with it, we still have
this whole realm of pop culture supernaturalism that you know,
you may just dismiss it as fiction with your rational mind,
but in the irrational color corners of your mind, all
(48:56):
that stuff still resonates and it actually ends up informing
the way you you may you may interact with the world.
So we'd love to hear from you about this. Tell us, Uh,
you know what you think about these ghost marriage practices.
Most importantly, I'm really curious people who have lived in
China or Chinese listeners, if you've had personal experiences with these,
(49:17):
let us know about them, or if you're from one
of the other cultures that we just briefly mentioned at
the end here. Again, we'd love to know more about it.
Maybe we'll be able to read something that you sent
to us on a listener mail episode in the future. Yeah,
we haven't. I know, we have a number of Asian
and Asian American listeners. We have a number of Mormon
listeners as well. Yeah, you know, let us know. Let
(49:37):
give us your your two cents on the topic. So
the way to do that is you can hit us
up on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram.
You should be able to find this episode on all
of those platforms, and you could just write to us
through those platforms as well, pretty much all of them.
We are blow the Mind or some variation of that phrase.
(49:59):
That's right, and be sure to check out stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. Uh, that is the website.
It's been updated and hey, if you want to get
in touch with us the old fashioned way, reach out
to us at blow the Mind and how stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(50:23):
Is that how stuff works dot com.
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