Growing up in a traditional Chinese family, I've learnt about the few things people need to be wary about during the Seventh Lunar Month.

Although I no longer take part in the rites and rituals of what is commonly known as the ‘month of the hungry ghosts’, here are a few things that might explain the seemingly bizarre behaviour that you may witness during this time of the year.

What you don’t “see” or “hear” won’t hurt you

During the Seventh Lunar Month, ghosts who died tragic deaths or mischievous spirits are more inclined to pull a fast one on the living. If you see a stranger waving or calling out to you in the middle of the night, or hear any strange (read ‘unnatural’) noises, do not for a moment acknowledge its presence or you might fall into its lure. Find it hard to do at the risk of being rude? Just adopt the same approach as you would to marketers at MRT stations.

Watch your step!

The burnt offerings, foodstuff and other items on makeshift altars that you’ll see everywhere during the seventh month is meant to appease the dead. Spirits come by to partake of the feast and claim these offerings, so treat such items with respect and never step on the burnt offerings. If you do step on it by mistake, remember to apologise for disturbing the meal. You may look silly muttering to yourself, but it’s not half as bad as being spooked or ‘harassed’ afterwards.

Don’t extinguish the’ lamps’

According to certain folk beliefs, each human has three ‘spiritual lamps’ that ward them from evil spirits: one on each shoulder and one on the forehead. If a voice calls out to you from behind, and you turn halfway to acknowledge that person that turns out to be something not quite, you run the risk of extinguishing one of the ‘lamps’ on your shoulder. This invariably reduces your protection against evil spirits. So if you want to acknowledge someone’s call especially at night, turn your full body around, and try not to just look back to answer the call. If you’re the one doing the calling, try not to tap your friend on the shoulder to make him turn around because that too will extinguish the flame on his shoulder. (This is not restricted to the Seventh Lunar Month).

Get the lucky numbers

While people are making the offerings, they often ask for lucky numbers believing that the dead have great powers – despite being dead and not being able to do anything about that! − such as seeing into the future and the ability to predict the week’s winning lottery numbers.

Critical months

Unsubstantiated, but some people believe that for older or sickly folk, if they can live past the Chinese Lunar New Year or Seventh Lunar Month, they’ll likely live peacefully through the rest of the year. If you look around you might find that there’s an oddly increased numbers of funerals just before the Chinese New Year and just before Seventh Lunar Month. I remember counting as many as five funerals in progress on my home from the bus stop one day in January – and that’s just six HDB blocks.

Burning money – by Shih-Chang Huang (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lesily/)

Be generous and don’t mix the fires

According to a friend, her parents will not ‘mix fires’ of two separate offerings. So when someone’s ready to start burning their offerings, and someone else has just finished burning their offerings in the common bin, they’ll often wait till the previous offerings are completely burned and that the fire has died before putting in theirs. Just to ensure the offerings go to the right guys, not the guy before. And despite fears of inflation in the netherworld, it never hurts to burn as much joss paper money. Or candles. Or joss sticks. Less is not more, more is more.

An ingot is worth more than paper money

While most people just burn the gold-leafed paper money in stacks, some families go through the trouble of folding the money into shapes of ingots. Apparently this increases the value of the money that is used in hell. While this doesn’t address the inflation issue described above, it does make for easier burning because of the air pockets.

Don’t feed yourself to drowned spirits

And finally, an important advice for the younger generation from parents is to refrain from swimming anywhere during the seventh month. You run the risk of drowned spirits inviting you into the deep waters while you frolic in their home ground. Jacuzzis and long-kangs (sewage drains) included.

All items mentioned above are rooted in folk traditions and beliefs. While you may not adhere to the same beliefs, it never hurts to respect that other people take these rituals very seriously and practise them.

* If you missed part one of Jasmine Kamiko's Seventh Month Festival, click here!

* Main photo credit: Seb Ruiz http://www.flickr.com/photos/sebr/