Thai Ghosts
I've always loved a good ghost story.
Thailand has more specific ghosts than anywhere I've ever heard of. There's well over a hundred of them on the list on Wikipedia alone. This has made the Thais masters of ghost cinema. IMDb lists 111 Thai ghost movies just from 2000 to the present. I was in Thailand 1984 - 1990, and I can tell you: there were hundreds more available then.
Some of my fondest memories are sitting on a folding metal chair in a field in rural Thailand watching ghost movies projected up on a sheet. For pure movie fun, those viewings are only rivaled by the ones I used to enjoy in Piper's Marine Disco in Pattaya City after the disco shut down at midnight.
The fascinating thing about movies at Piper's was the translation. They showed mainly Chinese movies (China's film industry has always been huge). Lots of flying kung fu. So there was a little booth in the back with lights, sound equipment and scripts. The man and the woman in the booth read all the parts to the movie. They had little gadgets they could key with a toe to alter their voices a bit, raising and lowering them a half-octave or so; the man read all the male parts and the woman read all the female.
It was an exercise in mastery. I always sat behind the booth and watched more of them than the movies.
Krasue
Krasue is a regional ghost, known in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam. She is a young and beautiful woman... most of the time. She manifests as a flying head with dangling entrails, often accompanied with a luminescent glow. She looked magnificent in the movies.
Her origin is accounted for by several legends, the only commonality having to do with a sense of karmic payback: she is reborn/rendered a ghost due to her past sins, or (my favorite) as the result of a black magic rite gone wrong.
It All Comes Together:
One of the first screenplays I wrote was set on a Container ship, and by the fifth draft, Krasue made her appearance. There is a Thai crew, of course, some American passengers, and a Dutch officer class. One of the passengers is a burned-out mercenary who may or may not be possessed.
This novel is a long time in the making, and I'm pleased with how it turned out.
You will be, too!
I've always loved a good ghost story.
Thailand has more specific ghosts than anywhere I've ever heard of. There's well over a hundred of them on the list on Wikipedia alone. This has made the Thais masters of ghost cinema. IMDb lists 111 Thai ghost movies just from 2000 to the present. I was in Thailand 1984 - 1990, and I can tell you: there were hundreds more available then.
Some of my fondest memories are sitting on a folding metal chair in a field in rural Thailand watching ghost movies projected up on a sheet. For pure movie fun, those viewings are only rivaled by the ones I used to enjoy in Piper's Marine Disco in Pattaya City after the disco shut down at midnight.
The fascinating thing about movies at Piper's was the translation. They showed mainly Chinese movies (China's film industry has always been huge). Lots of flying kung fu. So there was a little booth in the back with lights, sound equipment and scripts. The man and the woman in the booth read all the parts to the movie. They had little gadgets they could key with a toe to alter their voices a bit, raising and lowering them a half-octave or so; the man read all the male parts and the woman read all the female.
It was an exercise in mastery. I always sat behind the booth and watched more of them than the movies.
Krasue
Krasue is a regional ghost, known in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam. She is a young and beautiful woman... most of the time. She manifests as a flying head with dangling entrails, often accompanied with a luminescent glow. She looked magnificent in the movies.
Her origin is accounted for by several legends, the only commonality having to do with a sense of karmic payback: she is reborn/rendered a ghost due to her past sins, or (my favorite) as the result of a black magic rite gone wrong.
It All Comes Together:
One of the first screenplays I wrote was set on a Container ship, and by the fifth draft, Krasue made her appearance. There is a Thai crew, of course, some American passengers, and a Dutch officer class. One of the passengers is a burned-out mercenary who may or may not be possessed.
This novel is a long time in the making, and I'm pleased with how it turned out.
You will be, too!
Click here to get a copy of the third draft of the original screenplay, Container (pdf). By clicking on the link, you agree to join my mailing list. You'll be the first to know about new releases, freebies, and stories of interest. Go on, climb aboard! |
Container combines elements across continents: David Keller, the mysterious other passenger, has a history...
SOAKED IN BLOOD (Link to an article from The Sun)
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Photo Credit: AFP or licensors
Click here for a link that does a nice job detailing the legend of Krasue. (Photo credit: A Little Bit Human) Click here for the Wikipedia entry. |
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