Mae Nak- The Most Famous Ghost in Thailand
By Hideki AKIYAMA
NDN, Bangkok
Mae Nak, the most famous ghost in Thailand, is a female ghost who has been the subject of many dramas and films. There is a temple called Wat Mahabut along the canal where I live, and this ghost is enshrined in a shrine on the temple grounds.
Mae is the Thai word for mother, and Nak is her name. Despite being a ghost, she is respectfully called "Mother Nak" as an object of worship. She is revered as a phee (the Thai word for ghost) with the power to bring happiness to those in love, or feared as a vengeful spirit who is also known for giving out lottery numbers.
The ghost story is similar to "Asaji ga Yado" (the inspiration for Kenji Mizoguchi's The Tale of the Rainy Moon), in which a wife, who died after a difficult childbirth while her husband was on guard duty at the royal palace, obsessively clung to him until she was finally persuaded by a great monk to leave him.
It may seem strange to question whether this ghost was real or not, but there was some gossip that might have sparked the ghost stories. According to the book Unraveling the Mae Nak Legend by Anake Nawigamune, whose cover is shown on the right, an old man who lived during the reigns of Rama III to V responded to a reader's question in a magazine called Siam Prapeet and said the following:
During the reign of King Rama III, there was a rumor that a female ghost appeared along the Phra Khanong Canal. The woman was the wife of a wealthy landowner, and her name was Nak of Amden. She died with her child still in her womb after a difficult delivery. When her husband, Chum, attempted to carry her body to Wat Mahabut, the woman’s ghost appeared, shaking the boat and frightening the people.
After that, the ghost frequently appeared and frightened the villagers. However, it was eventually discovered that the son, fearing his father would remarry and reduce his share of the inheritance, had disguised himself as the ghost to prevent the marriage. After confessing his misdeeds, the son hanged himself at Po Temple and died."
This story was told to the old man by the abbot of Wat Mahabut. The incident occurred in the mid-19th century, during the reign of King Rama III, and the magazine was published in 1899, about half a century later."
At that time, Mae Nak was already a famous ghost, and the book recounts an episode in which a survey was conducted, asking people passing by a gate of the royal palace to name four well-known figures. Mae Nak was the one most people recognized.
Some years later, King Rama VI, then the Crown Prince and residing in England, wrote a short article titled The Second Mae Nak of Phra Khanong in both English and Thai. This was six years after the article in Siam Praphet was published.
n this version, the husband's name is changed to Panchyot, and the police investigate and reveal the ghost’s true identity. However, the basic plot remains the same: a son disguises himself as his mother's ghost to prevent his father's remarriage. This retelling was intended to be a "modern-day" version of the Mae Nak story, but the book does not clarify whether His Majesty wrote it as a true account or as a fictional work.
The "definitive version" of the story appeared seven years later. Prince Worawannakon, one of the sons of King Rama IV and renowned for his translation of One Thousand and One Nights, wrote an opera based on the gossip surrounding Mae Nak, under the pseudonym Markpaya.
In the opera, the husband, Mark (35), is on court security duty when his wife, Nak (32), dies during childbirth along with their child. Now a ghost, Nak visits her husband, and they spend a night together. However, the next morning she vanishes. When Mark returns to the village, his parents inform him that Nak is dead, but he refuses to believe them.
When Mark returns home, he is warmly welcomed by Nak, and they begin living together with their newborn son. However, when his best friend Toy and the psychic medium Kruate come to visit, Nak chokes them and drives them away.
However, when Mark sees Nak’s bones in her hands as she squeezes limes, or when her hands stretch out to pick coriander—scenes as famous as the "stretching of the neck" of Rokurokubi, a well-known ghost in Japan—Mark realizes that his wife is a ghost.
Frightened, Mark asks the medium Kruate to contact a young monk named Puak, who later becomes a high priest. With the power of the Buddha, Puak traps Nak in a jar.
This opera was actually performed in a theater within the royal palace. In the confrontation scene between Mae Nak and the young monk Puak, Nak, who was supposed to be trapped in the urn, appeared from the upper part of the stage near the signboard, prompting cheers from the audience.
The author of Unraveling the Legend of Mae Nak continued to trace the footsteps of Mae Nak as a fictional character. It is safe to say that all the novels, stage plays, TV dramas, and movies that have appeared since then are fundamentally based on the content established in this opera. From this point forward, the name of the husband that Mae Nak longs for has consistently been "Mark."
As a side note, there is a scene in this opera where a caretaker of the temple tries to hollow out a bone from Nak's forehead as a talisman "to win the lottery," only to be strangled by Nak. My long-standing question about why Mae Nak is regarded as the goddess of the lottery was resolved when I read this.
Was there a lottery in Thailand that long ago? When I looked it up, I found this.
The Thai word for lottery, "huai," comes from the Chinese term "huai huai" (花会), which translates to "Flower Party." This game involves players trying to guess one of 34 different picture cards, and if they win, they receive a 30-fold payout from their bankers. In the original Chinese version, portraits of famous historical figures were used, but when the game was popularized in Thailand, the cards featured the Thai alphabet, consisting of 36 characters.
Huai became an official gambling game during the reign of King Rama III (the first half of the 19th century) as part of efforts to restructure the country's finances. The Chinese were chosen to manage the gambling halls and were given the official rank of khunbaan. However, it was banned during the reign of King Rama V due to its overwhelming popularity. According to Wikipedia, "first the casino style was abolished, and then the huai (lottery) style was banned."
Incidentally, 78 years ago, in 1939, a government-run lottery began operating under a law. At that time, the Thai alphabet was still used instead of numbers to indicate the winning numbers.
I have digressed considerably. Mae Nak's anecdote reminds me of Oiwa-san in Japan. The story of Oiwa became popular in Kabuki and Rakugo, and even though it was fictional, people built the Oiwa Inari Shrine in Yotsuya out of fear of being haunted. In Thailand, the royal family, who were at the forefront of the intellectual class at the time, may have played a role similar to Tsuruya Nanboku or Sanyutei Encho (the authors of Kabuki and Rakugo in Japan). They might have aimed to guide people away from superstitious indigenous religions and toward the teachings of Buddhism.
Just as Japanese actors visit Oiwa Inari to perform Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan (The Ghost Story of Yotsuya), Thai staff and actors always visit the Mae Nak Shrine in Phra Khanong when creating a drama or movie about Mae Nak to seek permission to perform and pray for success. What sets them apart is that many of them will likely also ask Mae Nak for winning lottery numbers.
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