One of the best cartoons by my favorite comic artist, Gary Larson, depicts a soul sitting on a cloud thinking to itself: "If only I had brought a magazine..." For us, the afterlife is another world, very distant from this one. It goes without saying that there are no newsstands or magazines there.

In the image above, however, you see a scene from Japanese life a few centuries ago. People are drinking tea, chatting—everything seems normal. The one detail that makes this situation different (though it's a significant difference) is that those appearing in the scene are all dead, in the afterlife. This is a votive tablet specifically dedicated to the people we see living as if they hadn't died.

The Japanese, in fact, hold the belief that after death, one remains exactly where they died. They do the same things, meet the same people (provided they are also dead, of course), and have the same body—complete with tattoos and scars.

Thus, the dead live alongside us, and the boundary between our World and theirs is far less distinct. We don't see them, but they walk beside us.

In Italy, we commemorate the dead on November 2nd. In Japan, the dead are celebrated (festeggiati) either on July 15th or August 15th. Note that I said celebrated. One form these celebrations take is the Awaodori dance festival in Tokushima, Shikoku—which can now also be seen in Tokyo, where it takes place annually in the Kōenji district.

While we mourn, in Japan they rejoice because the dead return in the flesh to visit us. To welcome them, people prepare a horse and an ox for them using vegetables. The fast horse is for their coming, the slow ox for their departure.

But this can only happen in summer—a vital and fertile season. A second, more subdued celebration of the ancestors occurs later in autumn, when the annual cycle visibly dies away.

The dancers' hats cover their eyes, preventing them from seeing what is beside them. The reason is that the dead, for obvious reasons, love to join the dance but do not wish to be seen. There's noise, drinking, dancing for hours. It's an utterly captivating spectacle, and if you didn't know the purpose of this festival, you would never suspect it.

In my family, we're all atheists; we don't celebrate the Day of the Dead. My friend Bill, however, celebrates it with his family every year and explained how it works. He, his wife, and his mother-in-law wait for her father, who died six years ago. They wait at the door until the women "sense" his presence. He is invited into the house, and for the three days he stays, he has a place at the table and an armchair in front of the television. Everything is exactly as if he were present—because he is present.

Hence the tradition of macabre tales, horror films, etc., that flourish during the summer months.

By pure chance, I found this article from Kokugakuin University:

Why do Japanese people like to tell ghost stories during the summer? – Kokugakuin University

For the record, it is much more than a university. It is an indispensable organ of modern Shintō, training its priests.

According to the article, the custom of telling eerie episodes and ghost stories during summer originated in kabuki theater precisely because of the festival of the dead.