Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival story Night 2 - Seventh Month mischief

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This was told by my mother who was staying in the village when she was young. In her village time, everyone would burn the joss stick and paper on the first day on the ground. These days the burning was done on a tin can. There was a group of three kids in the village. They were the most mischievous ones. They were bored and decided to do some mischief. The leader of the boys decided to kick the burning joss paper and also throw all the sticks. They will even eat the offering despite of the villagers tell them repeatingly not to do such things to offend the ghosts. They did not care and repeatingly laughing at the people and diss them. On the next morning, three boys were down with fever. The leader who kicked the burning ass keep complaining that his left leg were painful and when the parents had a look, they were shocked to find that his left leg was rotting (??). The boys were mumbling and crying in their sleep during the fever. Despite of having modern medicine, they still could not recover from the fever and the boy leg was worsening. Given no choice and advisory from the elderly, they invited the local temple priest to have a look at the boys. When the priest arrived, he said that he was shocked to see many spirits angry faces staring down at them. There were two spirits gnawing at leader left leg. After communicating with the spirits, he had said that the spirits were very angry with the boys for their deeds and hence the fever. They were also angry with the boy for kicking at the burning paper where they are picking up. Hence they decided to punish him by having his right leg amputated. The parents of the leader had pleaded for negotiation through the priest. After much communication, he said that the spirit will be willing to let him keep his left leg so long as they burnt ten times the amount of the offering. The rest of the boys will have to burn a large amount of offering and apologise to the spirit. All of them recovered from the fever. The leader of the boys also recovered but he had walked with a cripple from then on. The lesson here will be that even if you do not believe in any religion ritual, do not do anything to diss for you will not know what will happen if you do that. By the way, is this true, based on my mother, it is. From what i see, it could be true as the ghost story is not exactly dramatic as per movies.