![]() ![]() Therefore, food offerings and special "ghost money" (bureaucracy abounds in the Chinese underworld) are left on the streets to appease them. It is believed to be the only time that Hungry Ghosts - tormented spirits with long, thin necks and huge distended bellies - can eat. During the Ghost Month, held across Asia in the seventh month of the lunar cycle (August this year), the gates of hell are said to open, unleashing starving hordes of spirits that wander the earth for 30 days and 30 nights. ![]() Snacks and spectres are a common theme in Chinese mythology. ![]() If you leave a bowl of rice for one near a shrine, it will kneel over the offering and chomp away. Sometimes they yowl like wounded animals. You see these creatures jerking along throughout the levels. "Don't be scared when you see the Lingered, just hold your breath and walk away," reads an illustrated warning from another book you find. Detention is Asian folklore meets politics, with all the trappings of a ghost story. Further back, garbled guqin tones soar out of a radio, fading into marching music. In the distance, unknowable horrors with red tongues and long limbs lurk. Sickly mustard walls and red shrines veiled with incense abound. The player moves through a candlelit diorama of folded-up flags propped aside glowing kerosene heaters. In Detention, you play as two teenagers sitting out a typhoon in a local school. Despite ending in 1987, the events of the period are yet to be common knowledge for the global community - and Taiwan's younger generations. The White Terror was only recently usurped by Syria as the longest period of martial law in history. Around 140,000 Taiwanese citizens were imprisoned, and up to 4,000 executed for their real or perceived dissidence toward the ruling Nationalist Party of China government during the period. This was a period which plunged the country into an oppressive Orwellian nightmare that lasted nearly four decades. The latter set of scenes are all based on real-life historical events.ĭetention takes place in 1960s Taiwan, more than a decade into the 38-year period of martial law known in as the White Terror. Bound and hooded figures kneel in the bowels of an abandoned school - ankle deep in dark water. At one point you stroll past a goldfish moon, surrounded by trees stuck with pins and figures made of static. If you idle too long underneath a washing line, unseen nasties snatch you upward.ĭetention can be surreal too. The walls sometimes pulse with plentiful squinting eyes. Meanwhile, a literal blood river courses past the dimly-lit abandoned school you're trapped in. If you keep your breath held, it continues its grim passage through the darkness - its hanging lamp swaying gently in the wind. It stops dead still when it sees you, and peers down from stilt-like legs. You encounter a lantern spirit moments later. "Do not panic, and it will keep on moving." "When it comes near you, still your breath," the book continues. He has covered his mouth with his hands, and his eyes are wide with fear. The accompanying print depicts a grey spectre with a wide-brimmed hat, arched over a toddler. "If you chance upon a lantern spirit, avert your gaze and stand unmoving," warns an illustrated page from a creepy book you find in the horror adventure Detention. ![]()
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