Films featuring skeletons haunting in and out, stories about ghosts or monsters screaming in graveyards, and online ghost games have become the most widely watched, read or played things for students in primary and middle schools, and colleges too, to kill their time on campus.

"I feel totally relaxed, or sometimes a little bit bored, when I go to college. So some of my classmates and I often meet to play ghost games or listen to ghost stories. These stories are quite thrilling and make our hair stand on end from beginning to end," said Zhao Lin, who went to college last year.

This reporter had interviewed some students, most of whom complained that school life was boring and wanted to play ghost games for fun. Some of them did want to test if ghosts really existed. If they could ever find a ghost, it might be the most exciting thing in their life. Some other students said they played ghost games in order to "test their guts."

Most students do not fell ghost stories are repulsive to them. Some are fascinated by them.

"Ghost stories are very popular in colleges. I think that almost every student has played ghost games at least once, or at least is able to tell a ghost story, " said a student in a college in Jilin, adding that stories about looking for ghosts were especially appealing to girl students.

Experiencing horror feeling is also one of the psychological demands for human beings and a way for people to satisfy their mental needs, said Song Fei, a senior psychological consultant at the Jilin Provincial Women's and Children's Psychological Consulting Center. She said that nowadays, college students have a lot of worries, such as about their current study, future employment, boring campus life… These worries form a kind of psychological pressure and some students just try to release the pressure by playing ghost games.

(China News Service February 27, 2007)