The Hungry Ghosts are an ancestral legend of Chinese folklore, even having a festival in their namesake. It's said they're spirits of dead people who hope for sacrifices on the fifteenth day of the Chinese calendar's seventh moon, when the gates of the Chinese's Hell open and let their spirits out. Food, "hell money", and other gifts are left at doorsteps to appease the ghosts and pretend them from haunting their houses. But the worst ones only accept the largest sacrifices, including peace, souls to bring to Hell, and in the case of the episode, vital organs. The Hard-Faced Man is the leader of an illicit gambling lottery that caters to such volatile, greedy ghosts. Recruits are brought on to run and hide the ring include Detective Glen Chao, and enforcers keep the game going and the players and accomplices silent. When the accomplices step out of line or try to sell out or take down the syndicate, they're attacked by the mob and/or spirits with brutal torture or cremated alive to eliminate witnesses and prevent their identification. The lottery has the players wage for huge cash prizes they draw from a jade vase, the payment if they lose being an organ they're forced to have harvested by the mob to pay the ghosts with, chosen by tiles representing both the five Chinese elements and each symbol for it meaning a crucial organ, like the eye or the heart. It's revealed the game is all a fix, meant to bribe the desperate people to coming back just to sell their organ under the guise of the "game", the jade vase only having the tiles that would guarantee a draw for the organ the syndicate and the ghosts wanted. Chao tried to stonewall Fox Mulder and Dana Scully when they investigated the cremations, and eventually the deaths of the victims whose organs were harvested. For getting too close, Chao was severely slashed by the enforcers, and when he tried to stop the ring, he knocked over the jade vase, which broke and revealed the identical tiles fix. As the game players rioted on the mob, the police and FBI joint task forces raided the house and arrested them all, including the Hard-Faced Man, who was about to cut the heart out of another victim, Hsin, who already lost his eye hoping for money for his daughter, Kim, who needed an operation. The man shamelessly admits to his operation, but denies it being a crime and hints at the ghosts demanding the payments. The man is released from refusal of witnesses and accomplices to testify, and Chao goes missing. Chao's later incinerated in a furnace as the latest cremation victim. What of the ghosts and the organ initiatives is never never further revealed. (The X-Files: "Hell Money")
Advertisement