Spooked Out in Kathu: A True Phuket Ghost Story

This past week, Phuket’s predominant Chinese residents celebrated Por Tor – the Festival of Hungry Ghosts, which like Halloween in the West, is based on the ancient animistic belief that spirits of the deceased can return to the physical world they once inhabited, even if only temporarily.

If you asked me what I thought a week ago, I’d probably have told you that it’s nothing more than traditional folklore, mythology and so forth. Indeed, up until recently, I never was a believer in ghosts, at least not since entering into the so-called enlightenment of “science-explains-everything” adulthood.

I’ve been cognitively capable enough to realize that much of the prevalent beliefs in extra-physical spirit entities the world over – those with human-like attributes, dressed up, animated and roaming around trying to seek closure with some “unfinished business” if not to mark and secure their territory with good ol’ fashion scare tactics – is mostly the product of imaginative scriptwriting, storyboard sequencing and cinematographic trickery, if not just vulnerable and gullible audiences.

Still, most Thais and even some Westerners I know in Phuket, can’t stand the thought of being alone, especially in a dark or quiet place, mostly for fear of what they might see or hear, which isn’t actually there.

But as an open-minded non-believer, I have always been welcoming (certainly not petrified) of the opportunity for an actual physical encounter with something/someone from the supernatural realm.

Source: The Phuket News