Posted by samizdis 2 days ago
Usually, it's family members who will do it yearly. In addition, each year during Ghost Month, people will burn offerings to those ghosts who do not have family.
They don't burn actual clothes, but representations of clothes made of paper. They are also burn paper made houses, cars, and money.
Also, clothes are useful for signaling a "ghost's" identity and status.
Jokes aside, I am wondering if cynicism and humorous over-analysis is a recent phenomena, because the general population is more educated/have basic needs met than those in Victorian times.
You see the same incentives in the modern day with Biblical literalism and flat earth, and UFO folklore where "ultraterrestrial" and "interdimensional" theory shows up. It seems like science if everything you know about science comes from Reddit and TikTok but it's really just three space goblins stacked in a lab coat. Three because, of course, three is a sacred number.
There's no explanation for why ghosts wear clothes that isn't less ridiculous than the obvious, that it's because we imagine people wearing clothes, and ghosts are imaginary people.
Those ancient and respected forebears of the modern geeks.
Your brain imagining a specter in a doorway does not mean there is any anomaly within the physical space of the doorway at all that anyone else could perceive or measure - they would need to measure your brain to (theoretically) detect the physical basis of it.
What you see, feel, hear, taste is an interpretation of your physical environment, and may not accurately reflect it at all times.
Imaginary numbers are also not real.
The whole situation is quite complex.
Complex indeed...