All Hungry Ghosts’ Eve

by Collin Yeoh

Halloween? Really, granddaughter?

You can’t speak your mother tongue. You scorn our ways and traditions. You threw yourself at the first white man who could say “ni hao.” You don’t even have an altar to me in your home.

Now you eagerly celebrate this stupid Western drivel with its vulgar costumes and its children’s games?

You forget we have our own Hungry Ghost Festival. On that night the gates of hell open—and unlike this meaningless, commercialised holiday—that is when spirits really do walk the earth.

I’ll be paying you a visit then.

And I’ll be very hungry.

Collin Yeoh

Collin Yeoh enjoys writing horror drabbles. They’re so much fun! He has had several published in collections by Ghost Orchid Press, Black Ink Fiction, and Black Hare Press. He lives in Bangkok and misses Malaysian food.