Dark tourism: three ghost tours in Southeast Asia where history, beliefs and horror combine to offer spine-tingling thrills
- Guardian spirits, severed torsos and spectres of protest in Bangkok; a Penang house of horrors; offspring of pregnant women who died haunting Singapore cemetery
- Tour guides take visitors to Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore to macabre destinations well off the usual tourist trail
On the second floor of a deserted market in Bangkok’s Chinatown, the tour group stops beside a spirit house, which looks like a miniature Buddhist temple on a pedestal.
Festooned with garlands and blinking fairy-lights, these shrines, found all over Thailand, are put up to house a guardian spirit which can ward off misfortune and malicious ghosts.
The deities on the altar are Buddhist, Hindu and Chinese. Next to them stands an effigy of a little boy known as a kuman thong (golden child), a mischievous spirit appeased by offerings of red Fanta, which represents blood.
As we look around, many of the little businesses, hidden behind grey metal shutters, have protective talismans above their doors, some Taoist, others Buddhist. Beneath them is a creepy-looking mannequin dressed in traditional Thai clothes, illuminated by a tube of fluorescent light.
