| Sports |
By
THANAPORN PROMYAMYAI
Ghostbusters vs modern times
PHU KHIEO, Thailand: Sitting in a
small thatched hut overlooking rice paddies and sugar cane fields,
Ornta Laokam remembers when Thailand’s landscape was still
blanketed with thick forests that were teaming with ghosts.
Now 77, he was born when this was still the Kingdom of Siam, when
rivers and canals were the main arteries of transportation, and
the countryside was covered more by thick jungle than by rice
paddies.
Among the trees surrounding his hometown in Surin, near the
Cambodian border, Ornta’s grandfather and father taught him to see
the spirits living in the plants and rivers, and even in the
fertile soil itself.
Most of the spirits are benign, he says, some are even angels, but
the malevolent few who tormented the living needed to be caught —
and this what he always wanted to do.
“I began seeking this knowledge when I was 17 years old,” he
recalls.
His father and grandfather passed on their mystical secrets, and
when they could guide him no more, he followed a friend across the
border to Cambodia, where he stayed in a small village and learned
from a spiritual guide even more ancient spells for driving away
ghosts.
Ornta remembers struggling with Khmer to learn the words that
exorcise an evil spirit, and even save a human life.
But the most important part of being able to chase away ghosts, he
says, is to live according to the five precepts of Buddhism: no
killing, no stealing, no adultery, no lying and no alcohol.
This is the only way, he says, that he can keep his own soul pure
when he goes out to wrestle with demons.
After his studies, he returned to Thailand and settled into a
somewhat routine life as a carpenter and odd-job man in the
northeastern region of Issan.
It was 10 years after he returned that he had his first chance to
test his skills, when a man came to his house and begged him to
chase away a ghost that was haunting his wife.
“I can’t remember much about it, it was a long time ago,” he says.
“I just remember that my first client was a woman who was haunted
by a ghost from the jungle. But ever since then, I have been
well-known for being a ghost-buster.”
Spirits are everywhere
After meeting his wife 50 years ago,
he moved to this village, Phu Khieo, far from the Cambodian border
in the middle of Issan. At that time, there were plenty of ghosts
to chase.
Thais believe that spirits were everywhere in nature, and also in
boats and houses.
Even outside the steel-and-glass skyscrapers amid the concrete
jungle of downtown Bangkok, Thais erect small houses where they
make offerings to the spirits who protect the buildings.
These are generally good spirits, and although the city does have
some haunted houses, urban ghosts are usually old souls too
powerful to be forced out, or the spirits of people who died
suddenly or tragically.
After the tsunami ripped across the Indian Ocean in December 2004,
Buddhist monks spent more than a year performing cleansing
ceremonies to help the spirits of the dead ease their way into the
next life.
Even Bangkok’s new international airport had a ghost named Poo
Ming, who workers said would appear, before the main terminal
building opened in September, crying and speaking in tongues.
Poo Ming was believed to be the guardian of the land on which
Suvarnabhumi Airport was built. The airport’s operators brought in
monks to appease him, and built a spirit house where offerings
could be made to him.
These benign and protective spirits are not the ghosts that Ornta
does battle with. His speciality, especially in his younger days,
has been dealing with the angry jungle spirits that torment
villagers in rural Thailand.
Sometimes ghosts have even been known to haunt the spirit of
former ghostbusters, those whose minds were weak and corrupted by
the dark secrets of the trade, Ornta says. He explains that when
these weak ghostbusters die, their souls take over and assume the
power to haunt anyone.
It all combined to keep him so busy ghostbusting that he did all
but give up has day job.
“There was so much demand, I gave up most of my other work and
decided to focus more on chasing ghosts,” he says.
“I wanted to help people, and I can earn merit by helping people
who suffer from these spirits,” Ornta says, alluding to his
Buddhist belief that good deeds in one life help ensure a
favourable reincarnation next time around.
The possessed will look you straight
in the eye
The first thing Ornta does when he performs an exorcism is to make
sure that his subject is not suffering from an illness such as
malaria that might make him or her delusional.
“People who are haunted by ghosts have strong eyes. They will look
you straight in the eye and not avoid eye contact. People with
malaria wouldn’t do this,” he says.
Then he holds a small ceremony, reciting spells over his subject
and tapping their body with a bamboo stick. Ornta fills his own
mouth with holy water which he then sprays over the body of the
person being exorcised.
To keep the bad spirits from returning, Ornta then ties brightly
coloured holy sashes around the victim’s body while chanting
protective spells.
For garden-variety ghosts, the entire ceremony takes only 10
minutes. But he says that a strong ghost can take up to half an
hour to chase away.
“But my most difficult job took three days,” Ornta says, telling
the story of a man who was possessed by a jungle spirit that just
refused to leave.
Ornta had to repeat his spells for three whole days to complete
the exorcism, while the man sat quietly with only his sharp eyes
telling Ornta that the spirit was still in control of his body.
In his heyday, Ornta travelled extensively around Thailand’s
northeast and could earn up to 500 baht (K36) for his services.
“I used to travel to all the nearby provinces. I’ve driven away
around 300 or 400 spirits,” he says.
His interventions weren’t always successful, he said.
“Sometimes we meet with strong spirits who say they want to take
away someone’s life. These spirits can possess the owner until the
body dies,” Ornta says.
As time went on, Thais began relying less on the jungle. Farms and
factories grew, especially over the last two decades, and
modernity and globalisation began changing even remote corners of
the kingdom.
People moved away from villages and into towns, and the demand for
Ornta’s services dropped away.
“As more development came, ghosts were fewer and fewer,” he says.
“It’s probably because people cut down so many trees, so the
ghosts had to evacuate and move deeper into the jungle to live.”
Ornta had to diversify his income, so he took up farming and now
grows cucumbers, corn and beans as his main livelihood.
“Now I start my day in the morning by watering and picking the
vegetables to sell at the market,” says the ghostbuster.
The spirits moved deeper into the
jungle
Farming is not as profitable as chasing ghosts, so he supplements
his income and uses his mystical skills to make sashes for trees
and spirit houses that people use to protect the good spirits near
their homes.
But his skills in chasing away demons are still sometimes called
upon.
Son Mongkolkhiew, a 59-year-old farmer, turned to Ornta last year
when, she says, she was being relentlessly haunted by a ghost.
It all began as she was returning from a Buddhist temple one day
and saw a woman she didn’t recognise pushing a bicycle near a rice
paddy a few metres from Son’s home.
When Son turned back to have another look, the woman was gone. But
Son felt a heavy weight as she pedaled her own bicycle back home.
Not long after, the pains began — she had trouble breathing and
felt a strange and constant pressure on her neck.
She wrapped a holy sash around her neck and felt a little better,
but there was still a nagging pressure on her back and neck, she
says.
“I went to a few hospitals,” Son says. “The doctors did everything
— x-rays, scans and ultrasounds — but they could not find anything
wrong.”
Finally, after a year of suffering with the mysterious pain, she
went to see Ornta, who recited his spells over her.
“I felt better and better, and was back to normal within a week,”
she says. “I could have died if I didn’t go to see him.”
Despite the intermittent demand for his services, it is still too
low to interest Ornta’s four daughters in following in their
father’s footsteps. He’s hoping, improbably, that one of his
grandchildren might want to learn his skills.
“Even though there are fewer ghosts, I still believe this
knowledge is useful,” he says. “I believe it will not die.”— AFP
 
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