Pchum Ben is the second most significant public holiday in Cambodia after Khmer New Year. The pronunciation of Ben here is somewhere between the name ‘Ben’ and the word ‘Bun’, phonetically ‘Bĕn’ is most accurate. Pchum means ‘to come together’ and Ben means ‘ball of food’, usually a rice or meat ball used as a food offering. So the literal meaning of Pchum Ben is something like ‘to come together to offer food’. Pchum Ben is based on a lunar calendar, so it’s exact date shifts from year to year, but generally falls in September or October. It comes at the end of the three month Buddhist monastic retreat of Vassa. During Pchum Ben, Cambodians travel to pagodas across the country to pay homage to their ancestors up to the seventh generation.

Pchum Ben involves 15 days of religious practice which culminates in a 3 day long public holiday. Because Pchum Ben involves significant travel across the country – visiting the stupas of seven generations of ancestors – many workplaces offer additional days off and Cambodians often take additional days off during this time.

Pchum Ben is believed to mark the annual occurrence of King Yama (the Vedic, Hindu, and Buddhist God of the Dead) opening the gates of Hell so that tormented ghosts can be cared for by their descendants. These ghosts are believed to have too much negative karma to be reincarnated and are locked in Hell until they burn off their negative karma. Along the same lines the belief is that ancestors with positive karma would have either been sent to Heaven to burn off their positive karma or would have already started the reincarnation process on earth. Buddhist Monks chant the suttas in Pali constantly throughout Pchum Ben to offer the community protection from evil spirits. During my last term I lived across the street from a pagoda which broadcast the chanting on loudspeakers – all night – and I eventually started planning trips into Phnom Penh (which is at it’s quietest due to most people traveling to the countryside) during Pchum Ben.

The ancient belief, which predates Buddhism and likely Hinduism in Cambodia, is that these ghosts cannot feed themselves and in a constant stage of starvation, but that their descendants can feed them through food offerings. This belief is not limited to Pchum Ben, most Cambodians make daily food offerings at ancestor shrines in their homes and make food offerings at the stupa where their ancestors are interned on their death anniversary. It is believed that the hungry ghosts bless their descendants that feed them but if they do not find food they curse their relatives. Remember that these are not believed to be the good ancestors, these are the ancestors who are being tormented in Hell to burn off their negative karma.

The adoption of Buddhism re-focused Pchum Ben around acquiring merit for ancestors. Under this framework, instead of directly feeding ghosts through food offerings, Cambodian Buddhists help their ancestors by giving food offerings and other offerings to the pagoda in the ancestor’s name; vicariously earning positive karma for the ancestor. This practice of earning ‘merit’ for the ancestors is also believed to benefit not just ‘evil’ ancestors who have been trapped in Hell but also ‘good’ ancestors who have been reincarnated or ascended to heaven.

Most pagodas in Cambodia carry on both the ancient and Buddhist practices associated with Pchum Ben. Cambodian visitors will both make food offerings to Monks as well scattering rice through an empty field or preparing food offerings with thin noodles since the ghosts’ mouths have shriveled in Hell. Large ceremonial mounds of sand are set in pagodas because it’s believed that evil spirits have to count each grain of sand before they can turn their focus on the living.

There are many similarities between the observances of Pchum Ben, the Day of the Dead, and pre-commercialized Halloween. Food offerings to the dead being one of the most notable. Pchum Ben is a happy holiday for some Cambodians, a time for the broader family to come together to remember those who have died and join in community in their ancestral homelands. For others, it’s a anxious holiday full of worry about evil spirits and trying to make offerings to all of the right spirits in order avoid being cursed. For most Cambodians, the holiday is both happy and anxious- there’s a sense of celebration, renewed community, tension, and fear.