Fengdu Ghost City

Fengdu Ghost City (Fengdu Guicheng) is a sprawling religious and folk-belief complex on Ming Mountain, on the Yangtze River in Fengdu County, Chongqing. For nearly two thousand years (in legend and later tradition), Fengdu has been treated as an earthly mirror of the afterlife, blending Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucian ideas into a theatrical landscape of judgement, punishment, and moral lessons.

Walking through the site is designed like a passage through the underworld. Gates, bridges, and temples echo the idea that the dead must face tests before moving on. Along the route you encounter shrines, statues of underworld officials, and graphic dioramas of torture and retribution that make the place feel closer to a mythic horror set than a typical scenic temple visit.

Its modern fame is also tied to Yangtze tourism: cruise boats commonly stop here, and the “Ghost City” experience has become one of the river’s most iconic dark-cultural excursions. Even in daylight, the combination of steep mountain paths, incense, stone inscriptions and hell imagery gives Fengdu a uniquely unsettling atmosphere.