Thread: Dead Things,Ghosts and Spirit Houses

Dougald MacDonald
834 W. Tamarisk St.
Louisville, CO 80027
[email protected]

About 1,460 words




Spirit Houses

By

Dougald MacDonald

The sarn phra phum were plainly visible yet so omnipresent in the landscape that somehow it took a while to notice them. Speeding along the well-paved highway from Phuket to Krabi in southern Thailand, I gazed from the window of a mini-van taxi at vast rubber plantations and stunning limestone towers. Gradually, something smaller entered my consciousness: Small structures, like dollhouses, were perched on pedestals outside the cement and bamboo houses along the rural road. They were decorated like Thai temples, with ornate faux-tile roofs and curving, upward-pointing gables, painted colorfully in reds and yellows. Each was about the size of a small television. Soon I realized every house had one — they were as ubiquitous as mailboxes.

I nudged my neighbor in the van, a seasoned traveler in Asia.

“They’re sprit houses,” he said. “You put one outside your house so the spirits will live in them, instead of in your home.”

I like to find a quest for my travels, a challenge that gives focus to my visit to a new place. Finding a spirit house to take home instantly became my quest. This would not be easy. At Ao Nang, we gathered packs and duffels, waded into the warm Andaman Sea, and climbed aboard long-tail boats, slender wooden water taxis that have loud motors, like souped-up race car engines, balanced atop long prop shafts for both propulsion and steering. We were headed for Phra-Nang, an isolated peninsula resort known for its rock climbing, diving and bacchanalian eating and drinking, and not for its authentic Thai culture. The shops sold only soft drinks, cigarettes, T-shirts and ill-fitting bathing suits.

Chris and I had flown separately, and the next day, after she climbed out of a long-tail onto the beach at Phra-Nang, I told her about my quest. She smiled indulgently and didn’t ask more. When I had a moment, I began to read up on sarn phra phum, the Thai spirit houses.

In their blend of Buddhism and animism, most Thais believe that spirits, called phra phum, may inhabit the land around a house. Though these are considered guardians, they can cause trouble if they spend too much time in the house, like the friends of teenage children. To ensure that these spirits take up residence in their own house, it must be fancier than the human home, installed by a Brahman priest at just the right spot out of the shade of the main home, and maintained with daily offerings of food, flowers and incense. Figurines of ceramic or plastic represent the guardian spirits, the most important being the chao thii, or “place lord.” Larger houses may even have figurines of the family members or servants of the spirits.

When our time at Phra Nang was up, Chris and I again had to travel separately. I planned to spend the night in Phuket before flying home to Colorado; Chris would fly to Bangkok. I had less than a day to fulfill my quest.

Driving toward Phuket, I passed several open-air vendors, like flea markets, that appeared to be selling spirit houses. Two things kept me from stopping. First, my driver spoke no English, and my attempt to pronounce the Thai words for spirit house resulted in a look of utter bewilderment. Also, I had noticed that all of the houses on display were made of cement, which is much less expensive than teak and better able to withstand Thailand’s intense sun and heavy rains. These appeared to weigh a couple of hundred pounds.

Phuket, a pleasant, mid-sized town, had enough street action to be interesting but also quieter neighborhoods of traditional shops and restaurants that reflected southern Thailand’s blend of Thai, Chinese and Portuguese influences. I walked past open-air stalls selling bizarrely shaped fruit and live poultry, T-shirts and ersatz Levis, keeping one eye peeled for a spirit house and the other for racing bicycles and rampaging tuk-tuks, the small trucks that perilously ferry Thai people everywhere. Traditional spirit houses, it seemed, were not sold in the city; probably they were back at those markets I had passed, inside out of the sun.

Finally, I wandered into an alley of newer shops, through a sliding-glass door and into a western-looking department store, complete with an escalator to men’s fashions. There, amid a display of candles, cards and other knick-knacks intended as gift items, was a single, small, dark, cheaply made spirit house. It would have to do – I was out of time.

Chris, meanwhile, had adopted my quest as her own. Partly, she told me later, she didn’t believe I’d actually go through with it. Partly, she didn’t care if I did – the quest had seduced her.

With half a day in Bangkok, she hired a taxi driver who spoke a bit of English and, battling the capital’s hellish traffic, drove about an hour to the weekend market near Bangkok’s Grand Palace, the 18th century home of the royal family. But the huge market failed to yield any spirit houses. No problem, the driver said, he knew another place. Another aggravating hour of driving led to a couple of outdoor lots filled with spirit houses, but all of the cement variety. Hot and throat-sore from Bangkok’s bitter shroud of air pollution, Chris was ready to give up, but her driver was still keen. “Isn’t that our hotel?” she said, as they taxi crawled along the highway. “One more place,” the driver insisted.

Five hours after the journey started, Chris found herself at a shop filled with wooden spirit houses, only ten minutes from her hotel. She spotted a large, graceful spirit house in beautifully cut and varnished teak. The price was about $60 – a bargain, even counting the $90 taxi fare. But how to get the thing home? She asked her driver to inquire about boxing up the house. “No problem,” he said after talking to the shopkeeper. “In the morning, we come back, and then I take you to the airport.”

Next morning, the spirit house was swaddled in foam and nestled in a cardboard box the size of a mid-sized refrigerator. It stood the height of Chris’ chin. This did not faze her. Chris’ travel quests often involve the largest, most awkward item on sale in a given country. She has purchased room-sized rugs in Nepal, a large wooden chair in Kenya. Once, during a four-day trek between B&B’s in Wales, our loads included a sizeable, framed watercolor that Chris had purchased the day before we started. The polite Welshmen scratched their heads when they were asked to handle the package carefully and said, “We’ve never seen anyone go on a walk with a painting before!”

Chris confidently wheeled her ungainly load into the airport, and, amazingly, the woman at the Thai Airways counter barely paused. She slapped a sticker on the enormous box and wrestled it onto the conveyor. My wife is charmed that way. The next day, I called home from Hong Kong and excitedly told her about my spirit house. It was small and a bit plain, I said, but the important thing was that I had found one.

There was a pause.

“I hope you won’t be mad at me,” Chris said

She told me about criss-crossing Bangkok in search of the spirit house, and then the story of her arrival in Los Angeles, where a burly, blonde customs officer had pulled her out of the line and asked, “What’s in the box?”

“It’s a spirit house,” Chris said.

“What’s it for?”

“You put it outside your home, so the spirits will live in the spirit house instead of your house,” she said matter-of-factly.

The woman looked at Chris.

“Where you from?”

“Boulder.”

The customs agent nodded, plainly recalling Boulder’s spiritual-chic stereotype. She said, “Go on through.”

My dumpy spirit house sits neglected in a cupboard downstairs. Chris’ shining sarn phra phum occupies a pedestal in a corner of our back deck, somehow blending in perfectly despite its exotic architecture. Twice a year, we varnish the teak to protect it from Colorado’s harsh sun. It is gorgeous. We have never stocked it with Barbie dolls or Gumby figures to represent our local spirits, and we’ve rarely made offerings. We admire its beauty, but we are not believers. Still, I wonder.

One day last summer, I moved the spirit house inside to get it out of the way of a house painter who was arriving the next day. In the morning, hornets had massed around our windows. I shooed them outside, thought for a minute, and then carefully peered into the sprit house that sat on the floor. Tucked under the peak of the roof, a small hornet’s nest quivered and buzzed.

Were they guardian spirits? Who knows?

Spirit house is for a spirit who will take care / protect the house. Each house will have one spirit house only.

My parents' house, there is one outside and one inside. Not every house that has the inside one, this depends on their believe.

gah doesn't that make you gnash your teeth? when a Thai person gives you a (from their pov) clear explanation for something and you realise on closer inspection it adds nothing to your understanding

what you just said Goddess, is everyone has one spirit house - except for your parents and all the people that have two

that doesn't help!!! *pounces her* now go back and read DD's post again and answer his questions properly, lol

I think they discard the spirit houses because the spirit inside wasn't reall helpful.

I wonder though why my wife does not have a spirit house. Thinking of it I think I have seldom seen a spirit house in the Isaan country side.

Being an open minded sort of chap, who has studied the intricacies of the wonderful religious beliefs the locals have, I'd like to say that having a spirit house is another load of old bollocks. Thank you.