It's not a spooky scene from the netherworld, just Qing Ming - the annual Chinese rite where people pay respects to their ancestors with offerings and prayers.

The traditional festival falls on Friday but people start visiting cemeteries and columbaria - depending on whether their loved ones have been buried or cremated - over a month-long period surrounding this date.

Crowds have been pouring in to visit gravesites over the past two weekends, so weekday mornings like this see a steady trickle of families hoping to beat the crush.

'It's too crowded over the weekends so we decided to come before work today,' says Mr Koh Teack Guan, 71, a transportation business owner visiting his father's grave with his five brothers and sisters.

The family have come bearing 'gifts' such as packages of paper clothes - symbolising that the dead are provided for - to be burnt at a nearby grassy spot near where their father was laid to rest.

'It's been an 18-year tradition since he died in 1990,' Mr Koh adds in Mandarin.

Read the full story in Friday's edition of The Straits Times' Life!