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Abstract: This article examines the process of building kinship relations between Thai spirit devotees and violent spirits. I examine three spirit shrines on the outskirts of Bangkok: a shrine to the ghost of a woman killed in childbirth, a shrine to a cobra spirit that causes accidents along a busy highway, and a household shrine to an aborted fetus. The devotees to whom I spoke actively sought out such places known for death in order to 'adopt' or 'become adopted by' the spirits in those locations-an action that, I argue, allowed for a renegotiation of the devotees' position vis-à-vis accident and trauma. I suggest that becoming a spirit's 'child' forms a mutually dependent relationship that allows for the domestication of forces outside of oneself.
Keywords: ghosts, giftexchange, kinship, popular religion, Thailand, violence
Grandmother Nak of Phra Khanong district (Ya Nak Phra-Khanong)1 and her unborn child are among the most feared of Thai ghosts. Nak's story has been the most popular of all time, appearing in genres ranging from horror to animation to comedy to melodrama (Nonzee Nimibutr 1999). She is featured in present-day stage musicals and radio dramatizations, and her name is instantly recognizable to most Thais. Her story varies from telling to telling, but the mutually understood portions are as follows.
Once upon a time, Nak lived with her husband Mak on the banks of a canal in what is now Bangkok's Phra Khanong district. Phra Khanong is quite urban nowadays, boasting a giant Tesco superstore and a skytrain station, but at the time of this story it was a small water-based village connected by canals. When the country, then known as Siam, went to war,2 Mak was conscripted into the Siamese army and leftNak at home, alone and pregnant. While he was serving in the army, Nak's time came, but she died while giving birth, thus becoming the worst of Thai ghosts-the spirit of a pregnant woman.
Mak returned from the military campaign to find that the villagers had fled down the canal, leaving his neighborhood abandoned and devastated. Only his house remained upright. And there was Nak with their infant son, waiting to welcome him home. Mak and Nak lived together, then, for some time. But Mak was unable to see...