The Ghost Bride

by Yangsze Choo

This practice of arranging the marriage of a dead person was uncommon, usually held in order to placate a spirit. A deceased concubine who had produced a son might be officially married to elevate her status to a wife. Or two lovers who died tragically might be united after death. That much I knew. But to marry the living to the dead was a rare and, indeed, dreadful occurrence.

Growing up, I once read a local newspaper story about the occurrence of such a marriage. This was so bizarre that I thought about it for a long time afterwards. Who decided to participate in such a ritual? And what did it mean to them; what sort of lives did they lead? Later, I heard more stories about ghost marriage. Usually, the dead married the dead (one of my Singaporean friends told me that his uncle had been married to another ghost in a proper ceremony, with all the food, costumes, and trappings), but more rarely, the living married the dead. I’d been working on a different novel for eight years prior to writing The Ghost Bride (I’m a very slow writer), and one day, I was reminded of this strange practice of marrying dead people. I sat down and wrote the first chapter of this novel, very much as you see it right now. I imagined a scene: a girl sitting in the darkness by a flickering oil lamp, saying to you, “Last night, my father asked me if I’d like to become a ghost bride...” That's how this book started, and once that scene was written, the story began to unfold by itself. Who was this girl, and what kind of family would arrange such a relationship? I tend to write in an organic way, without an outline or plan. It's a bit like riding a bicycle on a dark and windy road, with only your headlamp to show you a little bit of the way ahead. Sometimes a sharp turn will come up, which is a surprise to me as well.