A Haunting In Southern Thailand

A Haunting in Southern Thailand: Part 1

This experience occurred not too long ago, still fresh in my mind. But before I begin the story, I would like to give a little background about myself. I have been fascinated with the paranormal since my first experience in an old apartment at a very young age. Throughout the years of being somewhat sensitive to them, I have encountered shadow people, full-bodied apparitions, translucent figures, creepy grudge like things, etc throughout my life. I am not a fully devoted Buddhist but I do follow their teachings to an extent. Also, I no longer live in Thailand but am back in the states.

My family are no skeptics to the paranormal either, each and every one of them have had their own tales and encounters but mostly kept to themselves about it. They will share when asked but if no inquiries are made, they will go on about their life. Their experiences I would write at another time while I try to accurately write their stories in a clear, chronological manner (some stories are just all over the place and requires me contacting them).

Since you know a little more about me now, I will give a short background about why I was in Thailand. In April 2012, I applied to various teaching positions at private schools. My current job did not pay much and I wanted to use the teaching experience to add to my resume for future professional goals. The search for a job did not take long and I landed a job at a well-established school which I enjoyed greatly while there.

After my confirmation for the job and the green light during the hiring phase, I bought my flight tickets and began my journey to the Land of Smiles in late April. I arrived and was picked up by the person who interviewed me via Skype and made our way into the capital of the province, a 40 minute drive through the country side. I was excited, curious and tired during the drive. Once I got to my house, I was in awe. It was completely different from what I was accustomed to back in the states but I adapted rather quickly. As I unpacked into my room, I met my roommates, two middle-aged women from South Africa. Let's call them Sherry and Felicia; Sherry was the older of the two. They greeted me and went about their day, as they had already planned to do so.

At this moment, it gave me the opportunity to get a feel of the house. The house was three stories and contained two bathrooms and three bedrooms. One of the bathrooms is situated on the first floor and the other next to my room. My bedroom was directly across from Sherry's and Felicia was alone in the third floor. The stairway had very little lighting and was always emitting a dark, uneasy feeling. It could be because of the lighting in that area was horribly dim, setting its own mood. Either way, it was never a pleasant experience to go up and down the stairs.

The way my room was laid out was rather awkward. Upon standing in the doorway into the room, there is another door straight ahead that exits to the balcony that looks over a parking lot of a nearby restaurant. Directly to the right of the door (still facing the other door) is a small desk and dresser. And across from the dresser is my bed. And in the path of the room door to the balcony door is a make-up mirror stand that faced directly straight to my bed thus being able to see myself when I sat up.

It would take about two weeks before I had my first experience. I can recall that morning getting ready for our teacher orientation and training. The only shoes I left out were my running shoes and the ones I wore around the city. In my luggage, I left my water shoes in there due to not having the time to use them. As I finished the day's monotonous agenda, I went home and to my surprise, I saw my water shoes out next to my other shoes. At first I responded with an "hmmm", I wonder if someone came in and took my shoes out (this was my reaction) as a prank, a dumb one at that. Since my roommates and I were all out of the house and no one else had access to it, I just assumed it must have been me who did it, but I brushed it off anyways.

The following nights I had terrible experiences of trying to sleep. It was a mix of the firmness of my bed, soi (street) dogs barking late at night and being away from family back in the states. And to my surprise, when I spoke to my roommates about these problems with sleep they all felt the same. During that time, we believed it was due to the assimilation into a foreign environment, which was true for the most part.

In the daytime, the room was bearable; it made me feel safe but as evening approached the atmosphere in my room and the house, shifted into a more ominous one. At this time of the day, I no longer felt alone wherever I walked in the house. There was this constant feeling of being watched and followed by a male presence. I believed it to be male at the time because it was very heavy feeling and nothing that I would associate with a female's. I kept this to myself for about a week before I asked Sherry about it. She too admitted that the house felt rather strange at night but chose to ignore it. Felicia felt the same way too but gave her own theories about why we were feeling the way we did. She believed it had to do with our inner stress and what not. I responded it was possible but my experiences up to that point made me think otherwise.

The next two weeks were hellish to my mind and body. I would go to sleep around 12am and constantly wake up every hour for three hours, finally sleeping around 4am. It was very annoying because I had to get up early for work. I was becoming very irritated with everything around me and tried my best to keep a calm composure. Then one day, I brought up the idea of doing a food offering to the spirit of the house because we had a Chinese altar on the first floor. We all affirmed.

The ritual was pretty simple in nature and required some food or snacks to be offered, a cup of water and incense to symbolize the transformation of the food from physical form to spiritual. The offering consisted of two store bought sandwich snacks and water in a glass cup. During the ritual Sherry and Felicia sat behind me while I led the ritual of asking the spirit to welcome and protect us and that we do not mean to disturb it (I do not know if I did the ritual correctly, just thought the idea of a food offering would appease the spirit of the house because I had seen my parents do it before). I lit three Asian incenses, putting them in between my palms (like a "wai") and spoke in my head and out loud, bowing three times in between. After the last bow, I stuck the incenses into a cup filled with rice allowing it to stand upright (this cup was already present before we all arrived).

Once the short ritual was completed, we all felt the atmosphere change. It felt lighter. Even the dark areas of the house felt lighter as if the house finally allowed us to stay and call it home. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred during this grace period until Felicia decided to move for personal reasons (had nothing to do with the house). We bid her farewell and she left about three weeks after the ritual. Looking back at this moment, Sherry and I made a key mistake of not doing another ritual to allow Felicia to leave because after she had left, it all started again but the feelings were stronger than the previous and sightings began to occur.

The day Felicia left was pretty quiet. The reason being is that Sherry and I worked in the day; Sherry worked from 7:30am - 4:30pm respectively and I worked from 10am - 7:00pm. Regardless of my start time, I got up early anyways because I hated rushing to work. We knew of the day she left but when she physically left the house, we were already at work. We went about our business as usual and chit chat like we always did when I got off of work.

Sherry was a mother figure to me because she was about the age of my mom and I enjoyed talking to her about the day when I was off of work. I came to be known, jokingly by the other teachers, as her son because she had a son about my age as well. We were pretty close and shared a lot of experiences and thoughts with one another. It did not take long for her to bring up weird happenings during our daily conversations.

One day, after arriving home around 7:30pm, I entered the house feeling weird again, it was heavy and uneasy. I asked her how her day was and she said it was fine for the most part except for chit chatter that she would hear outside her door near the stairs. She said it sounded like two people talking but she could not understand what they were saying; even if it were Thai, she would at least be able to remember some of the words and I can have it translated by some of the Thai staff we worked with. But it was nothing coherent. She said she did not feel scared, just curious to what it could be.

At this point, we did not ever cross the idea of the incidents being connected to Felicia's departure. But onward with the story, this incident and other incidents to come would gradually lead to an ever active manifestation of the male spirit. That would not occur until about a week later. But before his manifestation, he would be felt roaming around the house. For instance, I would come downstairs to the kitchen and while making some coffee, I would see him in my peripheral moving out of frame as if it were intentional; I do not really know if this is the case but to Sherry and me, it seemed so.

To add to this, Sherry would tell me that while she is downstairs in the kitchen making noodles, she would see the man manifest as a translucent shape walk from the base of the stairs and vanish once it got to the first landing. She did not tell me this until I told her about what I saw which was almost identical to her experience.

Then onward, I would talk to nothing, or something, about not bothering me and that I was aware of its existence. Felt somewhat crazy at this point but it made me feel sane. Throughout this point of my time in Thailand, I did not speak about it to the other teachers, but occasionally would put it out there, never following up on it. Not until I was talking to a colleague of mine. He has been teaching for the school for over a year already and knew many of the previous teachers from his first year teaching. And when I brought up my strange occurrence from the first part of my story, the one about the shoes moving, he told me that the person who had lived and slept in the very same room had experienced the same thing. I was shocked to hear that but felt at ease because I knew that it was not me who took the shoes out.

So I was able to confirm one part of my experience which was a relief. But some may wonder about the male presence, his history will be in the final part of my story.

Onward with the story... Sherry and I were the only ones in the house for about 3 weeks before we had new roommates move in. They were a couple I will call Jane and Ricky. Ricky taught while Jane stayed home. While we gained new roommates, I would later have confirmation from Sherry that she would leave for family reasons which was devastating news to me because I have grown to enjoy her company for the short time I have lived with her.

The new roommates I would not officially meet until about a week after their stay due to coming home tired, I would talk to Sherry and head straight to bed. But on one occasion, I pulled up to our house gates with my motor scooter. My engine still on and the lights peering into the dark living room of ours. And straight ahead is the doorway into the kitchen area and directly to its left are the stairways. And while looking ahead and opening the gates, I see a male figure that I thought was Ricky. The reason being is that I, still at this point, have not met him in person so I assumed it was him. The figure was about 5ft 11in tall or approximately 180cm. It wore a white T-shirt (very important) and blue jeans and stood there emotionless. As I parked and approached the door, the figure turned toward the stairs and turned off the kitchen light (seriously rude). I brushed it off and assumed he probably did not see me or something. So I enter the house more curious about the situation and walked into Sherry's room. I told her what happened and she said it was an awkward thing to do and we set the incident aside and talked about our day instead.

That very same weekend, Sherry was leaving back to South Africa. So during her last night in the house, I helped her pack and talked about how it was going to "suck" not having someone to talk to after work. She agreed and said she will miss the conversations we had daily. That night, I awoke out of my sleep feeling uneasy and turned on the lights right away. I had the feeling of being watched from my door. I lied in bed listening to music and eventually fell back asleep. Later that morning I woke up around 5:30am to help Sherry bring down her luggage. Once we cleared out her room we proceeded downstairs. We sat on our table outside and talked for the very last time when her pick-up service arrived. We exchanged good-byes, hugged and I went back inside and fell asleep.

During the slumber, I had a dream about Sherry and how she was taken away from me. I awoke feeling sad and actually shed a few tears. I showered and continued on with my Sherry-less day and officially met Jane while walking downstairs to make some coffee. We talked for a bit and I brought up about if anything weird has happened to her since moving in. And to my surprise, she had a few experiences that she could not explain. So I invited her to sit outside at the table Sherry and I sat at and we talked all afternoon. Ricky was at work, his work days were different from most teachers, his week started on Wednesday and ended on Sunday.

Jane proceeded to tell me an experience (at this point, I had not shared any experiences with her) about the kitchen. She said she was making coffee and saw a man walk upstairs. I was extremely shocked at this point and had goose bumps because three people had seen the exact same thing leading me to believe that it must be some type of residual haunting. She also began to share the feeling of being watched and would sometimes wake up abruptly from her sleep, on guard as if something sinister made itself known. While this occurred to her, Ricky had no experiences and remained a skeptic for the most part until his experiences which I will share later.

Since I was already talking about weird happenings, I brought up about Ricky and spoke about the day I saw him standing at the doorway to the kitchen. And to her surprise, she said he was not that type of person and it could not have been him. I was creeped out because I thought I was looking at flesh and blood. Also, the reason why it could not have been Ricky was that he did not own any white T-shirts or jeans, just shorts, colored T shirts and trousers. During this day, we spent it all conversing about experiences we had back home and Ricky chimed in too as a skeptic.

We all went to bed late that night feeling tired (we were drinking) and scared. Over the following week, strange occurrences would happen to Jane and finally Ricky. On the other hand, I only felt the heavy presence of the spirit that stared at me.