Do You Believe In Ghosts?

A story of Transcendent Love.

Away from popular Bangkok tourists destinations like the beautiful Buddhist Temple Wat Phra Kaew, and the adjacent Royal Thai Palace, is a very ordinary Thai urban neighborhood in Bangkok’s Wattana district.

From a bustling crowded main road, a narrow back street lined with shops leads to Wat Mahabut. Inside the temple property — there is a vaguely discernible perimeter to the grounds — I had a feeling of stepping back in time.

Wat Mahabut on the Phra Khanong Canal

There are market stalls selling religious paraphernalia to worshipers. There are also food stalls, a massage shop and other merchants.

Two main temples, one a crematorium, dominate the compound. Next to the main temple is a building where resident monks live. The Wat is a living vestige of times past. It was easy for me to envision when Wat Mahabut was the center of a village — now a neighborhood of Bangkok — called Phra Khanong.

My experience of Wat Mahabut felt distinct from when I visited the big fancy Wats, the tourist attractions. At Wat Mahabut there was something poetic about the place.

I had a feeling of being part of the world around me. I experienced an expansion of sensual acuity making my participation in, and connection to, the environment more conscious. The feeling for me was tangible and a little profound.

My Thai friends, Bua Kauo and Nong Pair, accompanying me were not surprised by my experience. They told me it was a special place.

Wat Mahabut is haunted.

During the mid nineteenth century, in the reign of King Rama IV, a young couple, Mae Nak and Paw Mak, lived on the banks of the Phra Kanong Canal. They lived happily, Mae Nak being an ideal wife to the handsome Paw Mak. Mae Nak was beautiful, devoted and pregnant, expecting the couple’s first child. Paw Mak loved her beyond measure.

Paw Mak was conscripted to fight against the encroaching Shan Tribe in Northern Thailand and was injured in the fighting, nearly dying. During Paw Mak’s slow recovery he dreamed about returning to his happy life with his family on the Phra Kanong Canal. Paw Mak’s love for the beautiful Mae Nak, and the baby she bore for them, kept him alive.

Mae Nak and the baby died in childbirth.

However, when Mak finally returns home, Mae Nak welcomes him with great affection. Paw Mak, Mae Nak and the baby resume their happy lives together. Mae Nak so loved her husband her spirit refused to leave.

Alarmed that the unwitting Paw Mak was living with ghosts, a few friends and neighbors tried to warn him. Paw Mak, now sublimely happy with his family, could not understand why his friends would tell such lies.

Infuriated, Mae Nak would steal into the night conjuring storms and sickness to kill the informers effectively silencing the town.

One evening while preparing dinner, Mae Nak dropped a lime between the floor boards. Now an etherial being, Mae Nak simply stretched her arm through the floor board and ten feet below to the ground in order to retrieve the lime.

Working beneath the house, Paw Mak saw the aberration, realized his wife was a ghost, and fled.

The story has two endings. In one version a venerable monk from Wat Mahabut captured Mae Nak’s spirit and imprisoned her in a piece of the skull from Mae Nak’s skeleton. The relic today is kept by the royal family.

In the alternate ending, the monk captured Mae Nak’s spirit and put it in a jar from which she escaped. Mae Nak’s spirit roams Wat Mahabut still today.

I like the second ending. I told Bua Kaou and Pair I felt Mae Nak’s presence, and I was certain that Mae Nak likes me. They laughed. Modern people don’t believe in ghosts. But I saw the hair on Pair’s forearm rise.

Pair (L) and Bua Khao

My initial, very western, perspective of this story was all about the ghost. I have always liked ghost stories. After many months living in Thailand, adapting, becoming more accustomed to, and I hope more like, Thailand’s people and their way of being, I returned to Wat Mahabut.

On my first visit to Wat Mahabut, I failed to notice the nicely dressed young women paying respect to their Buddhist beliefs, earning merit by making donations to the monks, and praying to the memory of Mae Nak. These women are not really worshiping ghosts. They are seeking, aspiring to the essence of the story: a life of Transcendent Love.