Ghost stories

'Is there a real-life Jason?' asked Bird.

I teach English to Bird and one other youngster every week.

He is a fan of foreign horror movies, and wanted to know if the character of Jason Voorhees, from the Friday the 13th movies, was based on a real person.

'No, though some have tried,' I said.

'Well, Thailand has one,' he said excitedly, before telling me the story of See Oui, a Chinese farmer who migrated to Thailand in the 1940s, and turned to eating children to boost his fading strength (he had tuberculosis).

See Oui's story was turned into the 2004 thriller, Zee Oui (see poster above).

Thailand's most notorious serial killer, his mummified body now lies at Sririraj Medical Museum, part of Sririraj Hospital in Bangkok. You can read about what this grisly museum - which includes a museum of forensic medicine - has to offer, at the 'dark destinations' website, here (link harvested - it died).

See Oui is spelt in different ways. Some refer to him as See Uey Sae Ung; on his display case, it's Si Quey.

The 'dark destinations' website is a guide to spooky places here and overseas. The Sririraj museum also contains exhibits related to the death of Ananda Mahidol, also known as Rama VIII, the present King's elder brother.

A brief description of Rama VIII's demise gave me a start; censorship rules would normally forbid Thais from talking in such terms about royalty. Then I realised that the website is not Thai, but comes from overseas.

My students, aged 13, spent the next hour telling me about Thai ghost stories, including spirits which are thought to inhabit the market in which we live, the canal which runs past us, and even a cemetery they had visited.

When they told me creepy things, they would perform a strange gesture: smacking their lips with one hand and then tossing whatever they took from their lips out to one side.

I asked them what they were doing. 'It's a way of making sure the spirits do not enter our body when we talk about them,' said Teuy, my other student.

'Do you believe in ghosts?' she asked.

'Probably,' I said.

'Do you believe that spirits of the dead rise to heaven?' asked Teuy, who comes across as more wordly wise than Mr Bird - who earlier asked me if planes flew into the World Trade Centre towers because the buildings were built too high.

'No.'

'I don't believe in that either,' she said.

Bird and Teuy both claim to have seen ghosts. They were together when they sighted one, they told me excitedly.

Thai students in their mid-teens are evidently no strangers to blood and gore.

Each week, well before the witching hour, when all good children are tucked up in bed, we meet in an old internet shop in the market.

I turned up yesterday just as the pair were having something to eat, which they had ordered from a stall nearby.

Darkness was gathering outside. I didn't know it at the time, but the Moon, Venus and Jupiter had arranged themselves in the sky to resemble an odd grin (see image above, and thank you to reader Ukai for his comment on this post).

While I waited for them to finish, the shop owner, Pee song, put on a Hollywood action movie.

It was full of swearing, blood, and high-paced action, and not suitable viewing for youngsters their age, I would have thought. Needless to say, they had seen it many times before.

Pee Song teaches maths to these youngsters most days after school. He asked me if I would like to teach them English two days a week, as I once taught customers at his shop several years before. I am happy to come, as I enjoy their company.

Song, aged in his 50s, has himself seen a ghost in the market where we live - in an old picture theatre which used to sit opposite his shop.

The cinema was long ago pulled down. After that, it became a petrol station, and a likay (Thai vaudeville) theatre; now it's an humble moo gra ta eatery, which hardly offers the same moody atmosphere.

Where do ghosts go when there are no longer creepy places for them to inhabit?

According to my young students, ghosts can move houses, even from one province to another.

They are keen for me to learn more about Thai horror stories, and have asked Pee Song to find out when the Sririraj Horror Museum opens next.

We will go as a group. Pee Song can be head ghoul, our students junior ghosts. As a cynical farang with few ghost sightings or creepy tales to offer of his own, I'll be understudy.