Some families in rural China still hold weddings where one or both partners are dead, and the strangest part is that the living treat it as a way to calm the restless.

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Some families in rural China still hold weddings where one or both partners are dead, and the strangest part is that the living treat it as a way to calm the restless. In so called ghost marriages, a deceased unmarried person is matched with another dead soul, or occasionally with a living spouse, through a mix of fortune tellers, omens, and family negotiations. Paper effigies, tiny furniture, and even cardboard houses are burned so the couple will have a proper home together in the afterlife. The fear underneath is that a young person who dies single might become a hungry spirit, jealous of weddings they never had, bringing misfortune to siblings and cousins. Stories circulate of strange footsteps after midnight, photos falling from walls, or dreams where the dead complain of loneliness until a ceremony is arranged. To outsiders it looks macabre; to believers it is simply unfinished family business finally resolved.