Hi Column, the pleasure is all mine. I'm more than willing to share what I know with everyone here. Feel free to ask any and all questions you feel like asking.

It is important to know what 'Hell' is in the Chinese folk religious context. The Chinese Hell is a place where EVERYONE passes through, no exceptions existing. It is more appropriately referred to as a 'netherworld', in all honesty, and as I mentioned earlier, it is not necessarily a place of brutal punishment - spiritual cultivation and paying penance can take many forms. Going to the Chinese Hell is therefore not something that should be regarded as dreadful or undesirable.

Even a theoretically sinless individual must first be verified as being sinless, and this will involve evaluation by the Ten Judges. Such a person need not spend any longer a time in Hell than the time it takes to be judged and cleared.

Only twice.

First instance was a vaguely human shaped, gently luminescent form that I saw crouching in the corner of my bedroom in my first home when I woke from sleep one night. Probably no larger than a young child; I could gauge the size because I too was a young child then. I just lay there in bed and curiously observed it until I fell asleep once more. It never moved or acknowledged my presence. When I woke up, the sun was shining and the ghost was long gone.

Second instance was nothing more than an indistinct but prolonged movement seen out of the corner of my eye - the hint of someone descending the staircase, also of my first home. I was walking near the staircase at the time, but not directly facing it. When I turned to directly face the staircase, there was nobody there. There were only two people at home that evening - myself and my father. I thought it was him coming down the stairs and then quickly backtracking upstairs again, until he came in through the front door from where he had been tinkering with his car.

That old house and neighbourhood were interesting. I wasn't the only person to encounter ghosts there.

They are typically used as signposts to point the way to where sintua events, rituals or festivals are taking place.

No.

You can go out at night.

Just avoid places where the ghosts are known to congregate.