Teenager dug from grave to become ghost bride

Chinese newspapers are carrying the story of a teenage girl who’s body was dug up in the Sha’anxi province so she could become the ghost bride of a recently deceased single man.

The Telegraph reports that the grieving father of the deceased man paid four people around £2,700 to find a companion for his son in the afterlife.

In some rural areas of China there is the belief that the bodies of women who have only recently died can be married to the corpse of a single man and buried with him in order to create a ghost bride for the afterlife.

The government has made efforts to remove the practise from rural culture but it has begun to resurface. There is the fear that the unmarried dead may return to haunt their family as lonely spirits.

In Pure Spirit

Should governments do more to stamp out believes like this? Or should they do less and leave the local cultures in tact?