Are you, the viewer, obsessed with ghosts? Do ghosts rule your life? Beware!
A thunderstorm rages outside, while a misty vapor spreads indoors. Three or four people are sitting around a table, gravely recounting their experiences of ghosts. A pop singer describes how he was accosted from behind in the shower by a female ghost, while on a publicity tour in the South of Taiwan. A pro baseball player recalls being pestered by a ghost in the middle of the ballpark, so that he kept missing the ball. A member of the public, showing no sign of nerves about appearing on television, joins in to tell about the time he was in the mountains with friends, and they encountered and overcame a whole host of ghosts. Like each of the speakers before him, he emphasizes that this was something he experienced at first hand-"this is not a story."
TV ghost shows, in which celebrities and viewers tell of ghostly incidents that "actually happened" to them, are all the rage. The first was "Ghost Talk," a regular feature in TTV's variety show Night of Roses. "Ghost Talk" proved so popular that it quickly inspired a slew of imitations, with names such as "ESP Encounters," "Nightly Madness" and "Flying Over the Fate Line."
Close encounters of the 4th kind
Chinese ghost stories are traditionally told by old men, but this is now deemed too old-fashioned. Even having real people talk about their own experiences is no longer appealing enough, so the new wave of ghost shows has taken a more dramatic approach: instead of just discussing ghosts, they try to actually encounter them.
Once "Ghost Talk" became a hit, Night of Roses began to show photographs of supernatural phenomena. Another of the ghost shows, the "Ghostbusters Squad" segment of Variety Nightclub, includes video footage of supernatural events as its main selling point.
Two other shows, Absolutely Audacious and Incredible Bingbing, jacked the chill factor up to new levels when they began filming volunteers on nighttime visits to "cursed" locations, such as a celebrated haunted house in Chiayi county, the Ilan county crematorium, the ruins of the tragic Welcome Restaurant fire in Taichung, and the notorious stretch of Provincial Highway 1 known as Death Road. Viewers watch petrified as one of their own, lit by the flame of a flickering torch, walks alone into the darkness of a derelict graveyard, there to have a "close encounter" with a ghost.
Although it started with variety shows, television drama has fallen in with the trend too. The X-Files-type series Taiwan Supernatural, uses plots that are inspired by real events, but with the mystery being solved by a clairvoyant policewoman, who communes with spirits to crack the case. Now that ghosts are mandatory for a hit show, the detectives in other longer-running series have become supporting characters, with ghosts as the lead roles. And with the added incentive of Chinese Ghost Month, the various channels are now offering competing festivals of ghost movies, both Chinese and foreign. It seems that Taiwan's television stations have been possessed by those euphemistically named "good brothers."
Ghosts! It's the real thing
The root of the issue is that ghosts are what the public wants to see. When the Night of Roses variety show introduced its "Ghost Talk" feature, viewership doubled overnight, while Absolutely Audacious is the longest-running program on U1 since Rebar launched the channel last year. Likewise, Taiwan Supernatural is the most popular show in its time slot.
How did Night of Roses, the show which launched the ghost TV craze, stumble on its hit? Producer Yu Kai-er describes the scene: There was meeting to discuss a new item planned for the show, but the concept wouldn't take off and everyone was getting tired. During a break in the evening participants switched to exchanging ghost stories, and everyone began to perk up. There was a flash of inspiration for producer Yu, and the idea for "Ghost Talk" was born.
Commies in disguise
"Ghost Talk" may have started by chance, but its popularity reflects people's "perpetual curiosity" about the subject. Not so long ago, such programs would have been impossible to broadcast in Taiwan. Giving currency to stories about ghosts in the 1960's and 1970's would have been regarded as spreading rumors and jeopardizing national security. Those of us around the age of 30 can recall a period during elementary school when many stories were circulating about ghost sightings. Finally the teachers told us that the ghosts were in fact commie infiltrators who had by now been arrested.
With the lifting of many restrictions on broadcasting, television channels discovered that they had to pioneer new topics if they were to keep ahead of the competition. In this ever-changing environment, ghosts are a reliable crowd-pleaser. Wang Chin-tang, the producer of Absolutely Audacious, says: "The moon lost its mystery when man set foot on it. 'This' is what people are curious about now." As one of the program's young participants puts it, hunting for ghosts is as good as downing an ice-cold cola.
"There has been an abnormally high number of disasters in the last few years, both natural and man-made, which of course generates reports of supernatural occurrences," offers Yu Kai-er as an explanation for the popularity of ghost shows. After 64 people perished in the Welcome Restaurant fire in Taichung, the rumor went around that a "ship of souls" had docked atop a local office block, and wouldn't leave until it had the spirits of 100 dead people on board. This story was still being told in gruesome detail one year later when another fatal fire occurred, and a variation started that the ship was actually waiting for 200 spirits. Will it ever end?
According to Juan Chang-jui, head of anthropology at the Taiwan Provincial Museum, such stories reflect a fundamental sense of ill-ease among the public.
An era of ghosts
How do we evaluate the current crop of ghost shows? According to Wu Hung Bhiksu, secretary-general of the Life Conservationist Association: "It depends on whether they enable people to transcend things and broaden their minds, or just frighten them and leave them needing spiritual solace."
Most of the ghost items on television, however, are featured in mass entertainment variety shows, and tend to emphasize fear and the supernatural. The producers want to scare the viewers, while the participants may be tempted to exaggerate or fabricate to magnify the effect of their own experience. It is hard for the viewers, often glued to the TV set in whole families, to judge what can and can't be believed. Although the pictures of supernatural occurrences in Night of Roses are discussed by photographic experts and religious commentators, the majority of the other shows give only a one-sided view, and fully accept the existence of ghosts.
For example, the production crew arrives at a haunted house, whereupon the guest specialist immediately claims to have seen over 20 ghosts. When the ghosts seem unwilling to be disturbed, ghost money is burned to flush them out. Meanwhile, the volunteer participant is stuck alone in a dark corner, with hands tingling and sweat trickling down the back of his neck, while the air gets more and more stuffy-phenomena which the "master" ascribes to the work of the ghosts.
"These shows do not teach people about ghosts, so much as encourage them to believe that ghosts are the source of all good and bad fortune in the world. Of course it's superstition." So says Li Feng-mao, associate researcher in the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy at the Academia Sinica. Li, who has conducted years of research into folk beliefs and has himself encountered plenty of inexplicable phenomena, feels that the programs should remain factual and avoid gimmickry, while also including objective commentators from religion, science and psychology to offer a balanced view.
Knowing nothing about ghosts
The stretch of highway known as Death Road, for its frequent fatal accidents, was laid out with many blind corners, but the popular account says that ghosts along that road are seeking souls to substitute for themselves. Physical sickness is explained as the result of contamination by something "unclean," while all sorts of general problems are ascribed to the rousing of "evil demons." Attaching every phenomenon to ghosts in this way does of course raise doubts. "Blindly blaming ghosts like this is actually the same as knowing nothing about ghosts," notes Lin Ku-fang, a folk musicologist and follower of tantric Buddhism.
Society seems to have passed from a materialist into a superstitious phase. Human concerns have all but vanished from today's ghost shows, except for the light homily at the end of the program: "Do nothing to be ashamed of, and you never need worry that ghosts will come knocking in the dead of night." But even that exhortation is "too simplistic," laments Wu Hung Bhiksu.
Taiwan is now an affluent society, and when people gain affluence they become more concerned about losing what they have. Many of those made rich overnight by rocketing property values live with the possibility of being ruined in a crash, and therefore maintain a fatalistic belief in the fickleness of fortune.
The simplest way for such people to make some sense of the world is to turn to fortune-telling, geomancy, astrology and ghosts. Television responds to this need in people by joining in with the celebration of the supernatural, and suddenly our screens are filled with the self-appointed pundits of the ghost world.
When the craze for illegal lotteries was at its height, gamblers would sometimes worship in derelict graveyards at the dead of night, hoping for the God of Gambling to reveal the winning numbers to them. Of late, members of the Taiwan Provincial Assembly, the highest publicly elected body at the provincial level, have been embroiled in numerous scandals involving election bribery, libel charges, financial disputes and various lawsuits. In an effort to clean itself up and drive out malevolent forces, the Assembly conducted a prayer session in honor of the "good brothers," thereby resorting to ghosts instead of turning to the common people. With elected representatives behaving like this, no wonder voters get worried about the quality of political life.
"I think the problem for people today is not fear of ghosts, but rather dependence on ghosts," comments Lin Ku-fang, himself a close observer of cultural phenomena. There are so many different tiers of life as it is-how can man master the world of ghosts too? Those who maintain an intelligent attitude may believe in ghosts, but are always aware that they have control over their own destiny, and will not try to reduce all the complexities of the world to ghost terms.
Keep ghosts at a distance?
Confucius studiously avoided the whole topic-he wouldn't speak of "mysterious forces or spirits," and advised keeping ghosts at a "respectful distance." Evading the issue doesn't solve the problem, however. As human beings we always long to know what comes after death, and this longing is answered in the supposed existence of ghosts. This is why for the last 3000 years man has both loved and feared his ghosts.
The Academia Sinica's Li Feng-mao, who has lectured on death and ghosts at many teaching hospitals, feels that we should not only keep a distance from ghosts, but should also set up a series of research institutes to tackle the issue from a scientific standpoint. In his view, avoiding the issue only muddies matters, and leaves the door open for religious con-artists to take advantage of people's superstition.
"Ghosts are a kind of lesson for life, with more significance for us than the discovery of life on Mars would be. Staying far from them or keeping close is a matter of human attitude, but sticking to the facts is adequate," says scholar Lin Ku-fang. Buddhist monk Wu Hung Bhiksu agrees on the need for a correct understanding of ghosts. Talking about ghosts is not intrinsically wrong, then-it is done in the fields of science, culture, and religion, while everyone ends up as a "ghost" anyway, and has to confront this issue at some point in their lives. The problem is, how to confront it? Is there anything wrong with taking part in a TV show and going to some gloomy spot in an effort to meet a ghost?
Natural contact
"Turning ghost sightings into a means of raising ratings, using volunteers as guinea pigs and deliberately trying to make contact-does that sound natural?" asks one producer. In fact, "nature" is the crux of the matter. Finding ghosts, after all, is not like meeting an alien; it actually means encountering life on another level, as well as confronting our own thinking on death, the afterlife, and the world itself. Since ghosts are a "lesson for life," then their existence needs to be verified in this life.
Ghosts and death are two sides of the same coin. In the West, churches often have tombs inside and a cemetery outside, yet people still go to church to worship, and they take their wedding photos there. Chinese society used to be the same, with the dead laid to rest on hillsides near the village. Parents didn't mind their children playing there, but would tell them not to step over someone's grave. The old people would select their own coffins, and choose the spot where they wanted to be buried. Taiwan's aboriginal Paiwan people even buried their ancestors under their own homes.
In modern society we have lost that traditional closeness to death, and driven away the ghosts. The volunteer participants in TV's ghost-encounter shows are almost all aged around twenty. Are they that much braver than earlier generations? Lin Ku-fang answers in the affirmative, but also expresses concern. The youth today haven't experienced hardship, they don't know what the trials and tribulations of life are all about, and have never felt real terror. They have no concept of death, or religion. It's no wonder that they are brave.
Just as with life, love, death and religion, the transition from knowing about ghosts to believing in them "should be learnt through personal experience," says Lin Ku-fang. Nowadays, however, we can miss out the other experiences of life and learn all about ghosts straight from television, through programs that even try to encourage a belief in ghosts. Apart from the fun and thrill of watching the show, what can viewers really learn from this experience?
Disturbing the dead, or the living?
Mr Wang, a old gent in his seventies, experienced the supernatural on many occasions in his youth. On one evening after 10pm he is unable to sleep, and with no-one to talk to he resorts to the TV, flicking between channels with the remote control. "Curses!" he explodes. "Ghosts on this channel, ghosts on that channel-idiots all!" Wang's startled dog looks up at him.
As one old lady puts it, why go "looking for trouble" when everything is going just fine? Besides, man has his place, ghosts have theirs. By dragging all those people and lights about to rouse the dead, it only "serves them right" if they run into a ghost. But isn't that the whole idea?
Photo:
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(left) Ghost shows on TV have becoming increasingly daring. These young volunteers have come with the program to a "cursed" location in the hope of encountering a gui. (photo by Pu Hua-chih)
(right) Hit programs in which performers and audience members share their experiences of ghosts have started a craze. (photo by Diago Chiu)
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(left) Wracked by lawsuits and beset with other problems, the Provincial Assembly held a prayer session in honor of the "good brothers." Is this really the way to deal with malevolent forces? (photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang)
(right) The Min-hsiung Haunted House in Chiayi is said to be the most haunted place in Taiwan, and is now a famous attraction. (photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang)
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Bidding a final farewell to the deceased. One can't help wondering what comes after death, and whether or not the soul really exists. (photo by Pu Hua-chih)
（right） The Min-hsiung Haunted House in Chiayi is said to be the most haunted place in Taiwan, and is now a famous attraction. （photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang）
Bidding a final farewell to the deceased. One can't help wondering what comes after death, and whether or not the soul really exists. （photo by Pu Hua-chih）
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