Yanluo's underworld bureaucracy is not only a matter of individual judgment after death; it is tied to a widely observed annual event in Chinese folk religion, the seventh lunar month, popularly called Ghost Month, during which the gates of Diyu are traditionally believed to open under Yanluo's authority, releasing the spirits of the dead, including hungry ghosts with no living descendants to care for them, to wander freely among the living for the month's duration. Families in many Chinese communities mark the mid-point of this period with the Zhongyuan Festival, also known as the Hungry Ghost Festival, offering food, incense and burning joss paper, often folded or printed to resemble money, clothing or other useful goods, understood as a way of provisioning both one's own ancestors and the unclaimed wandering dead so that they do not go hungry or cause mischief during their temporary release from Yanluo's courts.
Custom in many communities also counsels caution during this month, avoiding activities such as swimming, moving house or holding weddings, out of a belief that the wandering spirits make the period generally inauspicious for major undertakings. These practices remain actively observed today across Chinese communities in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the broader diaspora, adapted to local custom in each place, and they give Yanluo's otherwise abstract role as chief magistrate of the dead a yearly, communal dimension: his realm is not only a destination reached once at death but a domain whose gates are collectively marked and managed by the living on a fixed date every year.