The internet is a wonderful place: you can always find something you never new existed. I was minding my own business, looking at Google Image Search results, and found something that looked like play money in the colors of Disney and looking like a coupon for a Chinese restaurant. Upon further review, what I thought was play money was far from a plaything. In fact, it wasn’t designed to resemble the money of any earthly nation. These cool little slips of paper are called a “Hell Bank Note”.
Hell Bank Notes aren’t cleverly-named to cover a true purpose. As somewhat of an Anglicized term, “hell” here means “afterlife,” rather than eternal damnation. These bank notes are printed specifically to be sent into the afterlife as part of funeral rites or on other holidays dedicated to the dead, for the use of the dearly departed or to curry the favor of the pantheon of gods. The easiest way to get something to the afterlife, of course, if to burn it. Small pyres are dedicated to the entity on the Other Side, and billions of dollars from the Bank of Hell are transferred to the accounts in heaven. Hell Bank Notes are a subset of joss paper, representations of earthly goods that are burned for the sake of the dead, and represent everything from precious metals to clothes to food.
The tone of these bills – at least to my Western sensibilities – is positive and friendly, but they are still handled reverently as a part of a religious ritual, as sacred as a host in its transmutation to something holy. The increments of the currency are insane, even by Zimbabwean standards: each bill could be worth millions in the afterlife, and the 
currency certainly looks like it. This “ghost money” is often colorful and eye-catching, bearing various images, particularly the Bank of Hell on the back, and the King of Hell, Yan-Luo, on the front. Great care is made to give the air of legitimate currency – putting the king on the front and the treasury on the back is basic currency protocol – lest banknotes turn out to be unusable in the afterlife.
The nature of these notes appeal to me on several levels. They tug at the strings of the numismatist in me, but the connection to death rites pulls me in a different direction. Dia de los Muertos items, which aren’t too difficult to come by in the United States, tend to be spooky, while Hell Bank Notes are downright pretty. I mean come on: the King of the Dead has a smile on his face in his joss paper depictions; this isn’t your usual Western idea of what death represents. The combination of sacred, ephemeral, and financial means I may have to figure out how to get some of these for myself.
eBay is one place to find some Hell Bank Notes, but the of available bills amount is surprisingly small, since these are rather ephemeral, still being produced, and produced in large numbers. The ones available on eBay now tend to be older and rarer, with a collector in mind, but at relatively reasonable prices. Surprisingly, Archie McFee has a stock of Hell Money and other joss paper items, but I should know by now not to be surprised at things in those “things you never knew existed” catalogs. Most other references online indicate that a Chinatown or other store carrying authentic Chinese and eastern wares is a likely place to find these. Living in North Dakota is a disadvantage, but I’m sure I can find some somehow. I wouldn’t want to wait until my decedents reward me in the afterlife.
