The next ghost in our Thailand ghost series is the notoriously feared Phi (Ghost) Krasue. The stories and lore that surround this particular ghost are not confined to Thailand however. Though she goes by different names in each of the countries, there are also several tales of Krasue throughout Cambodia and Laos as well.
It is said in the daytime Krasue looks like any typical young beautiful female. In the night however, she becomes something completely different. In the night time Krasue moves around by floating. She still has the face of a beautiful young woman but from the neck down there is no body, only her heart, stomach and intestines. Witnesses who have seen her have also claimed that she was surrounded by a faint red or green light (the color of light differs from story to story).
There are many different stories of “origin” for the Krasue. Some believe that the Krasue lived a sinful previous life and returned as the ghost, cursed to suffer from severe hunger and eat uncooked and rotten meat as well as other deliciously disgusting morsels of food such as faecal matter and the entrails of mothers and children.
Other stories tell the story of the Krasue as though it is a curse, passed onto women by consuming water that contains the Krasue’s saliva. The Krasue is rumored to stalk around the houses of pregnant women waiting for them to drift to sleep before using her long tongue to eat the unborn fetus and placenta from within the womb.
There are a few preventative measures that are taken by families of pregnant women in Southeast Asia. One of these measures is to surround your house with bushes and plants that contain thorns or brambles. It is said that the Krasue cannot pass through these without her entrails being caught in them. When the Krasue goes out to feast at night she is said to hide her headless body away from others.
She is vulnerable and able to be killed by someone destroying the headless form or by someone hiding it from her. The tales say that she will return in the morning and inhabit the wrong headless body and be forced to suffer until her death.
Much like our previous story of Mae Nak, the legend of Krasue has been depicted in several films, each one with their own dramatization of the story line. This also causes various different versions of the original tale. It does not however change the fact that there have been hundreds of sightings of the Krasue. Perhaps there is something to this tale after all.
