Four Chinese men aged over 60 years old have been meted out jail sentences of a maximum of two years each after unearthing female cadavers or dead bodies and then selling them as ghost brides to families to partner their equally dead bachelor sons.

There is a part of tradition where the Chinese believe that sons who died a bachelor ought to marry in ghost marriages to keep them straying in the afterlife alone. Although adherence to the tradition is rare, it may occur only if the families of the two parties agreed to the ritual.

But the four men went to as far as stealing female cadavers which led to their jail sentences issued by the court in the northern province of Shaanxi. Not only did they steal someone else's daughter, sister or maybe wife, they also fabricated the medical files for each of the deceased and eventually sold them for a high price.

The four men pocketed a total of $39,000 from the sales of 10 corpses that they dug up.

The deceased female and male, meeting for the first time, are married in a wedding ceremony of sorts, and then buried side-by-side.