Dressed impeccably in a fancy dress and high heels, this vengeful spirit known as La Taconuda haunts the roads and old haciendas of Nicaragua to get revenge on those who took her beauty.
This Nicaraguan legend tells the story of a young woman that was very beautiful, tall with thin and long hair. It is told that she was dressed fabulous in a nice dress with high heels. According to some sources, her name was Ana, but she is today remembered as La Taconuda.
She was the daughter of a Creole Spaniard named Sanches owning all the haciendas to Masaya. After her father died, she inherited everything as she was his only daughter. After this she lived alone except for her male suitors that visited and gifted her beautiful things.
One day, two men that had grown tired of her indifference to them barged into her home and smashed her mauled her face with broken glass bottles.
Ana survived the attack, continued to dress well, but cried every time she looked at herself in the mirror, feeling ugly and defeated, wishing she could get her revenge.
It is many variations as to how she became a vengeful spirit of La Taconuda after she died. Perhaps she finally felt powerful to take revenge of those who attacked her? I some variations she made a pact with the devil to restore her beauty in exchange of giving him a new soul of a man every weekend.
Today you can still spot La Taconuda, often along the road, or out in the coffee plantations, often you can hear it by the clicking of her heels. She looks fine from a distance, but if you come close enough, you will see that she is nothing but a skeleton with the means to kill you.
On the highway in El Salvador, be vary of who you stop for along the way. Especially beautiful women that asks for a ride to a nearby place. It might very well be the vengeful spirit of La Descarnada.
On the long stretch of highway from Santa Ana to Chalchuapa in El Salvador, an old legend is just refusing to die. The legend of La Descarnada, meaning the fleshless in English. She is a vengeful spirit in female form that lures and seduces men that she meets on her way. At first she looks beautiful, young and healthy, but when she has the man in her claws she shows herself in her true form: a rotten living skeleton.
The tale of La Descarnada is a typical ghost legend that are told all across South America and share many similarities with the legends of La Sayona in Venezuela and La Llorona in Mexico for instance. Often her origin story is rooted in being a scorned woman that goes after any man as she wasn’t able to get revenge on the one that mattered. The legend of La Descarnada has also evolved from an old folklore legend to be more similar to the urban legends like The Vanishing Hitchhiker.
The Vanishing Hitchhiker is a well known urban legend throughout the world. Here is a Moonmausoleum original writings based on the Urban Legend – The Vanishing Hitchhiker
La Siguanaba of Central America
The Legend of La Descarnada also has a lot in common with the legend of La Siguanaba. Also known as Cihuanahual, Caballona, Chuca, Sucia, Bandolera, Macihuatli, Matlacihua, Tisigua, and more, is a legendary figure from Central American folklore. Her name, derived from the Quiché language, means “spectral sister of the abyss.”
The Siguanaba is known for her eerie encounters with men who cross her path. As the legend goes, she appears to men, but her face remains hidden. It’s only after she has ensnared a man’s attention that she reveals her true visage, which is often described as a horse or a skull in different versions of the story. This shocking revelation can lead to illness, madness, or even death. The origin of this myth is complex, with roots in both pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican cultures and European folklore. Over time, these beliefs have intertwined, creating a unique and haunting legend that has persisted through generations.
The Hitchhiking Ghost
Late at night on the highway she signals the passing cars to stop. If it is a man travelling alone, she asks for a ride. When he asks her where she is going, she mentions somewhere nearby on his way and it is too easy for him to say he will drop her off there.
Inside the car, she starts her seduction, looking at him provocatively and luring him in. The man doesn’t resist and gives in, starting to caress her. Then the transformation starts, and her beautiful silky skin starts to peel off, little by little and muscles and bones starts to appear under the man’s caresses.
When the man notices it, he freezes, but it is already to late. She continues to decompose right in front of him until she is left as a living skeleton. And those who live to tell the tale have no way of explaining just what happened to them. Although, according to legend they are the lucky ones, as La Descarnada is a folktale that usually ends in the men’s death.
The Legend of La Descarnada
As the legend of La Descarnada continues to send chills down the spines of those who hear it, there is no denying the cautionary tale it holds. The dark tale serves as a reminder to be wary of strange encounters and to trust one’s instincts, especially when traveling alone on long stretches of highway.
For those who have the misfortune of encountering La Descarnada, the outcome is often fatal. The men who fall into her trap are left scarred by the terrifying transformation they witness, unable to comprehend the supernatural force that just took place before their eyes. Their stories, if they’re lucky enough to survive, become cautionary tales whispered among friends and family, spreading awareness of the dangers that lurk on the roads of El Salvador.
And so, the tale of La Descarnada remains ingrained in the consciousness of those who traverse the highways of El Salvador. Her vengeful spirit forever entwined with the folklore of the land, serving as a reminder to heed the warnings of the past and to navigate the roads with caution and wisdom.
Sometimes the sound of someone gasping for air is heard over the deep waters in Lake Lowell, Idaho. Some claim it is the ghost of a girl who drowned at Gotts Point a long time ago that is still trying to get to the shore.
The deep waters can be a treacherous place. One wrong move and you will never reach the shores of safe land ever again. Stories about ghosts of drowned are some of the oldest ghost stories we have and they come from all. From the deep blue sea, fierce rivers and the dark waters of lakes.
Read More: Check out all of the ghost stories from USA
Gotts Point is a place between Nampa and Caldwell in Idaho and bears such a haunting legend. The beautiful Lake Lowell is home to much wonderful wildlife as well as haunting stories of the people that drowned there.
The Ghost of the Lady in the Lake at Gotts Point
One of the ghosts that are said to sit under the surface of the water is that of a girl that drowned in the lake in the 1970s when she was water skiing at Gotts Point. She has later been dubbed Lady of the Lake of Lake Lowell to some when telling the legend of her ghost that are sometimes spotted by swimmers or those that walk along the shores.
The Lady of the Lake: at Gotts Point in Lake Lowell there are tales that a woman is haunting the lake after drowning. Her ghost have been dubbed the Lady of the Lake.
The reports include sounds of her gasping for air out in the lake late at night as well as seeing her sitting on a rock along the shore, but disappearing when you get close.
Her name as well as hard evidence of a girl actually having drowned at that time and place has not surfaced, but considering that many people drown in these parts every year when the summer comes and people are drawn to the water, a ghost of a drowned one doesn’t sound as far fetched at all.
In the night at The River Road Bridge in Idaho you can hear the sound of a splash without having dropped anything in the river. Stories about the ghost of a woman that hanged herself from the bridge keeps haunting the place.
Stories tell a dark tale of this bridge. Apparently The River Road Bridge was once the place where a woman hanged herself. She is still said to haunt the bridge and the Boise river below in Caldwell, Idaho.
The River Road Bridge that was once known as the Silver Bay Bridge was built in 1922 and has spurned several crazy legends of hauntings and scary stuff happening around the bridge. It used to be the place on the Boise river where the pioneers on the Oregon Trail crossed the river so it certainly has experienced its fair share of tragedy. But most of them either lead to or come from the legend of the woman that allegedly hanged herself from it.
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The Hanged Woman of The River Road Bridge
There are several variations of who this woman was and why she did what she did. The most often told story though is that she was a mistress that found herself pregnant without anywhere or anyone to go to after she was cast aside.
The identity of the woman is rarely discussed when speaking of the legend, but sometimes she is referred to as Mary, as so many female ghosts are. Was there really a woman that hung herself by the name of Mary from the bridge? Perhaps it was, although most likely not as it probably would have left some traces in history, especially considering it must have been at earliest in the 1920s.
In some variation she was the illegitimate daughter of the American author, Stephen Crane. There are also stories about it was a local pig farmer with a wealthy family that had her hung from The River Road Bridge to avoid any scandal.
Paranormal Investigation
Either way, the paranormal rumors of the bridge draws visitors from the whole state to have a look and carry out different investigations. Many claim to have found proof of something supernatural going on.
There are also talks about strange lights in a spot of a tiny island below the bridge that light up in the night without a known reason. There is also the sound of a splash as if something hits the water below without anything being dropped.
An urban legend that lingers after the story is about how to spot the woman at night at The River Road Bridge. According to urban legend, you take your car and park it at night on the bridge and turn the lights off. If you do this, you will see the shadow of her on the side of the bridge.
On the Venezuelan plains, the vengeful ghost of La Sayona hunts down cheating men that don’t get from it alive. She is cursed to make her revenge on them after she murdered her whole family.
La Sayona is a Venezuelan ghost story about the vengeful spirit of a woman haunting the roads, the jungle as well as the Venezuelan plains. She is after cheating men and appears mostly on the roads, asking men for a ride on the vast Venezuelan plains known as Los Llanos.
Read all of the ghost stories at haunted roads here:
When the man she has chosen as her victim is looking more closely at her, her face is just a skull with terrible teeth. Her name La Sayona is referring to the type of clothes the ghost is supposedly wearing and is a long white dress, and referred to a medieval undergarment. It basically means something along the lines of ‘Sackclothed Woman’.
La Sayona: The ghost has been described as a woman in white haunting the roads in Venezuela. She is like a crossover between the vanishing hitchhiker and the woman in white. But this version is a very dangerous and deadly one.
This is an old legend in Venezuela, similar to many women in white ghost stories from Europe with a hint of The Vanishing Hitchhiker urban legend mixed in with it today. She is also somewhat similar to other vengeful ghosts from across the globe, like the Japanese Onryo or the Korean Virgin Ghost.
Most similar though, will she be of other South American legends about vengeful women on a mission in their afterlife and the story of La Sayona is often mixed with the famous La llorona legend from Mexico. Especially because in these legends, the woman was the violent one. She is also a part of Colombian folklore that has its own spin to it that we will come back to later.
Along the rivers in Mexico a wailing woman wearing white can be see and heard as she comes up drenched from the waters. She is desperately looking for her children she herself drowned. And according to the legends of La Llorona or the wailing woman, you are next.
In the legend of La Sayona there supposedly was a woman named Casilda that lived on the Venezuelan plains in a small town were life was peaceful and without much to worry about. She was the prettiest girl in town and married to a loving husband. Together they had a son and it seemed like she had a perfect life together with her family. But that was all surfaced level though as she had one fault, she was violently jealous.
Once, Casilda was swimming in a river near the village naked where a man from the village spotted her. She told him to get lost and leave her alone, but the man didn’t listen. He would start to follow her and watch her bathing in the river. He then told her that he was there to warn her and said her husband was having an affair with her mother. It was nothing more than a rumor from a random man watching her bathe, but the rumor filled her with an immense rage so she couldn’t think clearly.
Wet Season: La Sayona is known to roam on the Venezuelan plains in search for cheating men she can punish as part of her eternal curse. // Photo: Haroldarmitage
Casilda then ran home to her husband and found him inside the house with their son sleeping in his arms. She was blinded by rage and set the house on fire without asking him for the truth. The villagers heard their screams as both the husband and the son burned to death inside the house.
Meanwhile, Casilda was on her way to her mother’s house that sat on her patio. She would not get the chance to explain either as Casilda attacked her own mother with a machete and stabbed her to death in the stomach.
The mother bled slowly to death, but not before she managed to curse her daughter. She told Casilda that from then on she would avenge all of the women with cheating husbands. And whether her mother and husband really had an affair, she would never get an answer to, driving her mad.
She was from then on known as La Sayona that hunts cheating men by conquering them and then killing them.
The Different Variations of the Legend
There are many variations to this tale today in Venezuela as well as the rest of South America. She sometimes shapeshifts to animals or even monsters or sends out a scream almost like a Banshee that can be heard from a long distance. The variations of the legends have all in common that it is the men who has to pay the ultimate price of her wreath.
The legend of La Sayona is also grouped together with several ghost stories about female spirits haunting the roads and highways after men to take their anger out on. Much like in the case with the story of La Descarnada of the Highway.
On the highway in El Salvador, be vary of who you stop for along the way. Especially beautiful women that asks for a ride to a nearby place. It might very well be the vengeful spirit of La Descarnada.
In some versions of the legend, La Sayona comes out from the jungle where men are working. She comes when the men are talking about sex or about women they left behind. When she appears she either takes form as a beautiful woman or a loved one and manages to lure them into the forest were she has her revenge. There she devours them in an animal-like shape or mangles them, and leaves their body for the rest of them to see as a warning.
In the Colombian version from the plains, they tell that La Sayona was a beautiful woman named Sarona that turned into a monster. In this legend she was not really a violent woman, but a cursed one nonetheless.
She lived as a normal person until she ruined the holy clothes of a priest and was punished for her sin. God condemned her to live an eternity of great hunger because of this. She turned from a beautiful woman to a monster with big teeth and eyes and with an appetite for human flesh.
Sarona’s punishment was something she couldn’t control and she was consumed by it. In her hunger she then devoured her own brother before escaping out on the lonely plains in Columbia where she lives more like beast than man. She comes at dawn and takes drunk men wandering alone she devours.
The Idanha Hotel has a long story of being haunted. And even after it was renovated to apartment buildings, the stories about the misty apparition, the elevator with a will of its own, and whispering voices in the halls still happens in the building.
The old hotel in downtown Boise, Idaho is a historic hotel that was built in 1901 with a long and supposedly bloody history that is still being told in the corridors and whispered about inside the apartments.
Today the old French-chateau style building has been converted to apartments, but until its renovation it was used as a hotel and restaurant that caters to wealthy people from all over the country as it was considered to be the hotel in Boise as a stop on the Oregon trail or just to have some fun downtown.
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During the renovation to make it from a hotel to an apartment complex, the workers reported on strange things happening around them as they worked. Lights turn on and off without someone there as moaning sounds from certain places in the building can be heard without no one there. There is also a strange gray misty apparition that has been spotted without a good explanation.
There are numerous reported sightings about the building and residents in the apartment building have connected their strange experiences to certain stories, where some of the stories they experienced supposedly made them so scared they moved out.
Haunting on the Upper Levels
Not all hauntings stay as just a misty apparition in the corner of the eye or a sound that you may or may not hear. There have also been reports about something sinister going on in the upper floors. People have said that a certain something pulls them out of their beds. But for whatever reason or what it can be is still to be found out.
One of the ghosts that are supposedly haunting the building is a bellboy that worked there in the 1970s. He was shot dead by a guest at work and has been to blame for the elevator malfunctioning. He is known to move the elevator up and down without any people going, especially to the fourth floor where he was reportedly killed.
Some residents have also claimed to have seen his ghost peeking around the corners of the building. Hard evidence that this ever happened has not surfaced though and the story usually ends in its own rumor.
Hauntings at the Lower Levels
On the second floor there is a story of a woman that was murdered by her husband in the 1920s. She was reportedly murdered with a pair of scissors and now is said to roam the halls. There are many stories of residents hearing, talking and walking outside their doors, but when they open, there is no one there.
In the basement there is also a legend that is told again and again. It is said a woman was killed and buried there. She still lingers there as her body is buried underneath the building as well according to the legend. There have never been found a body under the basement floor however that has been revealed to the public, and the story is just that for the moment – a story.
The Future for the Old Idanha Hotel
The building is considered to be one of the landmarks of downtown Boise and is beloved because of the fine architecture and local stories. The apartments have residents that stay for decades and it is a very difficult place to get into apparently.
But there are also stories that tell something else. Although a much sought after place to stay, some of the strange encounters the residents have experienced have supposedly made them so scared that they decided to move out, unable to stay in the haunted space for long.
Guarding the old mining community, these ghosts of these two women have been dubbed witches by the locals, feared as well as revered in their lives. Who were The White Witches of the Black Diamond Mines?
Before the place in the San Francisco Bay area used to be a bustling mining community at the turn of the century. The coal mines was operating until 1945. Now the mines are closed and the place forgotten, but the remains can still be reached an hour away from San Francisco.
Although named the Diamond mines, there was no sparkling diamonds to be found in the mines. Instead it was coal, the black type of diamonds. It is here the legend of the white witches started to take hold of the mining community.
The Contra Costa County is ranked as the scariest place in California because of legends like the Black Diamond Mines and the White Witches that are said to be haunting the place.
The White Witch in Rose Hill Cemetery
Sara Norton worked as a midwife to the people living in the small towns across the bay area and she delivered over 600 babies in her time. She was a widow to Noah Norton that even got the town Nortonville named after himself.
She died however in 1879 at the age of 68. She was on call at her midwife duties when she was thrown from a carriage to make a delivery in Clayton and was killed in the accident.
According to the legend, Sarah was not a religious person and told her own kids that she didn’t want a church funeral. However, when she died that was exactly what they gave her and her spirit became enraged. On the day of the funeral a storm crashed their plan and they decided to go through with the funeral the next day. The next day however, another storm came crashing and ruined their plans. The townspeople took the hint and skipped the formalities and buried her in the Rosehill Cemetery.
From then on the spirit of Sarah has been spotted in the old mining towns as well as floating around the tombstones in the graveyard.
Mary the Wailing Witch in the Black Diamond Mines
Another lady that is haunting the place is Mary, who history forgot her last name. She was working as a nanny in the 1870s, but in contrast to Sarah that brought life into this world, her legacy tells that she put life out.
All of her children that she cared for died of illness and it was not soon before she was accused of witchcraft after some local townspeople allegedly found evidence of her dark rituals that resulted in the death of their children.
In some variations of the legend, she worked as a school teacher, not a nanny. And with the diseases of the times, it is not unlikely diseases went through the community, striking the kids at the same time. So was it a tragedy or witchcraft? The townspeople certainly was of the belief that it was and set out to punish her.
The legend differs from how Mary met her death. Although the evidence is lost to us, it supposedly was enough to hang her for her crimes in some versions of the story. In other version her dead body was found in the mines under strange circumstances. But it was not enough to bring her out of this world.
To this day she is spotted guarding the mines wearing all white and seeking revenge for her murder. But there is also another side to her hauntings. It is said that it is mostly children that see her, and she pushes them out from the dangerous mines that are filled with harmful gasses and unstable tunnels.
So the question remains, is she remaining in the world as a resentful witch, or as a protector of children that she wasn’t able to be alive?
Refusing to leave their home, the ghosts of Ann Starrett mansion still reside in the Victorian house, haunting the place in Port Townsend.
In the city of Port Townsend in Washington, the place is known for its many old Victorian and historical buildings. The place itself was once called, The City of Dreams and a safe harbor.
It’s here a Queen Anne-style mansion that is said to house the dead stands. Built in 1889 by Georg Starrett for his wife Ann, it is said that even in their afterlife they spend their time in this Victorian mansion.
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The House of Four Seasons
For many years the house was used as a motel, and the guests reported about a particular feeling when staying there. A haunting feeling for sure, but perhaps not of the spooky one. The beautiful frescos in the ceiling represented the four seasons and worked as a solar calendar, nicknaming the house The House of Four Seasons as well as Port Townsend’s most haunted.
The Starrett family was living in the mansion for many generations from then on and many will claim that they never really left. For more than twenty years they lived with their only son Edwin, two servants and their nanny, and it is said to have been a happy time for them. So happy that they never left?
The Ghosts in the Ann Starrett Mansion
The House of Four Seasons: The Solar Calendar fresco where the ghosts have been spotted.// Source
There is not only one ghost that has been spotted in the house over the years. The first one is a female ghost with red hair, believed by many to be Ann herself, still the woman in the house. It is said she is seen as a more peaceful spirit than a restless one and she is spotted more than once by the solar calendar that George built for her.
There also has been seen a man believed to be Georg Starrett that also lingers in their home, even after their death. He is often seen accompanying the red haired ghost in the halls and down the stairs. A sign that even in their afterlife, the happy couple stayed together.
The third ghost that has been seen is said to be the spirit of their son’s nanny and her presence has been sensed especially in her old bedroom with her face showing up in the mirror. This is the ghost that often is blamed when something of the more paranormal occurs, like pictures on the walls falling, turning on and off the lights when no one is in the room or smacking peoples head when they say something offensive.
The Future Hauntings of the House
Although a beautiful thing to behold, the house has seen its difficult times being on the market, even though the haunting itself was not something that received any complaints from the owner themselves. For years it was used for a boutique motel before the owners wanted to sell. For twelve years in the early 2000s, they struggled to find a buyer for the house and one can wonder if the spirits in the house much preferred that.
By 2022 though the house was back again as an airbnb for now, and it looks like the permanent residents will continue to be the original owners in the afterlife.
When unexplained deaths of seemingly healthy and young men occur around the same time and same place there are many Thai people who believe it is the Widow Ghost who is after their men, and they have their own way of holding the seemingly paranormal death at bay.
In some parts of rural Thailand, especially in the northeastern parts, men are afraid of falling asleep in fear of dying because a ghost sought them out as a mate. There are sometimes waves of panic where a fear of the widow ghost trying to take them during the night, are keeping them awake.
But whether it is a paranormal explanation or a scientific one still has the local villagers and medical personnel divided.
Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome or Lai-Tai
From time to time, there will be cases where more than one man in a geographic area will die during the same time, perhaps under mysterious circumstances at first glance. Like in the 1990s there were many unexplained deaths of a group of Thai workers in their sleep in the northeastern parts of Thailand. It was referred to as ‘Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome’ by Thai doctors.
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This particular syndrome (SUNDS), is a disorder found in southeast Asia, particularly Thailand, Japan, Philippines and Cambodia, which causes sudden cardiac death, mostly during sleep. In Thailand it also goes under the name lai-tai Lai (dreaming, screaming) Tai (death). It is however not the name of the Widow Ghost as it is cited as in many articles. But what is this ghost?
The Widow Ghost
The unexplained deaths got a more paranormal explanation to it and the legend of the vengeful spirit or the widow ghost fitted the narrative. She is an evil spirit that hunts men at night and steals the men from their bed.
Protection from the Widow Ghost: A scarecrow dressed in red with an erect penis was considered the remedy when the fear of her reached Nakhon Phanom in 2018 // Photo: AsiaWire/thairath
The story about the widow ghost is not a particularly new one, but it definitely is one of the more persistent ones. Around the same time as this was happening in northeastern parts of Thailand, more of the same mysterious deaths occurred among Thai workers both in Malaysia and Singapore. What was this thing that took the lives of so many of their men? Over the years before there was anyone trying to explain this in a scientific way, they had figured out ways to protect themselves from the sudden deaths.
To protect themselves from this, the men themselves as well as their mothers or wives took measures according to superstition to defend themselves and their men. Some put on lipstick or nail polish, or even dress up in womens clothing before going to bed. By doing this, they hoped to fool the widow ghost into thinking they were in fact women and would leave them alone.
There was also a very traditional Thai way of protecting their home where they hung phallic symbols around their necks, over the doors and at the village gates for protection. Many Thai people believe that phallic symbols bring good luck and good business. The bigger the penis, the better the business. There is also the habit of putting scarecrows with erect penises to distract or even hunt the Widow Ghost.
This is the case in Thung Nang Oak, a rural village in Thailand where they have a very phallic symbol for their commune, more than 3 feet long and weighing 22 pounds. One of the reasons for putting that on display was because of the terrible nightmares to the local men that was an indication that the Widow ghost was on her way.
Deadly Health and Diets
However, even with this protection, there would still be death, and a man died in his sleep, even though he wore red nail polish. The Thai public Health Ministry concluded the deaths were not caused by a spirit, but a bad diet of carbohydrate and sugar worsened by both physical and mental strain. This was after the Thai health authorities investigated over 700 of these mysterious deaths from Thai workers in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei since 1983 to the 90s, and many more back in Thailand.
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This seems extreme, but the fact is that at least back in the day, the Thai workers from the northeastern provinces lived on just white rice with a sweet syrup, overproducing insulin and lacking both potassium and vitamin B-1.
Since then, the Public Health Ministry launched campaigns where they tried to advocate for the value of a more balanced diet with more nutrients to stop the panic. But did it work?
Fighting Ghosts with Phallic Symbols
Seems like this is not a problem that only existed, ‘back in the day’. In 2018, there was another wave of panic after five young men died in a few weeks. This was also in northeast Thailand in the remote Nakhon Phanom province. In a small village of 90 people, they resorted to old ways when five of their healthy and young men died suddenly in their sleep.
They were otherwise seemingly healthy and went to bed after taking a bath as per usual. They were all found dead by their families the next morning.
There are no man here: Red shirts are hung up in the fences, trees and doors. They are all trying to tell the widow ghost that there are no men in the house and urging her to pass on over to the next. //Photo: Sanook
The legend of the Widow Ghost came back and so did the old remedies to fight her and protect the men. Huge scarecrows with an impressive 80 cm erect penises were placed on the gates. They hung signs saying ‘There is no man here’ ( “บ้านนี้ไม่มีผู้ชาย”) to confuse the ghost. Often they also hang out red t-shirts as it is a color for women and alludes to the fact that there are only women at home, in the hope the ghost will ignore the house and move on to the next. The men were dressed in dresses and painted with makeup to protect them from being stolen by the ghost in their sleep.
As not a single man died the following week since the scarecrows were put up and the nails painted, they thought that it must have worked.
However, in neighbouringing villages and other cities there were similar cases and panic about the widow ghost. Most of these deaths most likely didn’t have an official autopsy, as it often is. But authorities claim that there is a more logical explanation to it all. In many cases where they have done autopsies, there is the case of malnutrition as well as heart diseases, respiratory failure and other illnesses or accidents.
The story of The Lady Nak of Phra Khanong or Mae Nak Phra Khanong is a very popular ghost story in Thailand about a wife waiting for her husband even in her death.
Mae Nak Phra Khanong (แม่นากพระโขนง), meaning The Lady Nak of Phra Khanong is one of the most famous Thai ghost stories. Her hauntings are retold in countless movies, books and series and even today, you can visit a shrine in her honor to give offerings in Thailand.
The Story of Mae Nak Phra Khanong
During the reign of King Rama IV in the mid 1800s, there lived a woman named Mae Nak. She lived together with her husband, Mak on the banks of the Phra Khanong Canal in Bangkok until he was conscripted to fight in a war.
In many versions of the story it was a war against the Shan tribe where he was wounded and had to spend time away to recover. He was sent to central Bangkok where he was nursed back to health before being sent home.
During this time, Mae Nak was pregnant and waiting for her husband’s return, but the birth of their child would be struck with tragedy. While in labor, she died together with their child after a long and difficult birth. But instead of going to the afterlife, she turned into a powerful spirit called Phi Tai Hong Thong Klom (ผีตายโหงทองกลม), a vengeful and restless spirit of a person that suffered a violent or cruel death.
Finally when Mak returns home from the war after being healed from his injuries, he finds his wife and their child waiting for him and thinks they are alive and well as the news of their deaths never reached him. When neighbors try to warn him that they have already died, he refuses to believe them and lives together with his family in blissful ignorance.
Ghost Legend in Movies: The legend of Mae Nak Phra Khanong has been made into a movie on several occasions. Here actress Davika Hoorne in ‘Pee Mak Phra Kanong.
One day Mae Nak is preparing nam phrik, a type of Thai chili sauce, she drops a lime on the porch. The house was built in a traditional thai way with piles, so the lime fell on the ground under the house. Being a ghost, she makes her arm longer and picks it up from the ground. This is the moment when Mak realizes that his wife is in fact a ghost and his undying love turns to fear.
He tries to flee the house without her noticing and manages to slip away when lying about going to the toilet. In the dead of the night he escapes. When Mae Nak notices that her husband has left her, she goes after him. Mak hides behind a Blumea balsamifera (หนาด) bush. According to folklore, ghosts fear this bush and he is protected.
He finally reaches Wat Mahabut temple, a holy ground where ghosts cannot enter and is finally safe from the ghost of his wife, whose undying love for her husband is turning to anger and grief.
Mae Nak’s Spirit in a Jar
Mae Nak uses her anger and in her grief, she starts to terrorize the people of Phra Khanong for helping Mak to see the truth and leave her. She is finally captured by an exorcist, trapping her spirit in a jar that is thrown in the canal.
From there, the story has several versions for the continuing haunting of the ghost. In all versions though, some finds her jar in the canal and opens it and thereby freeing her.
This time it was the famous monk Somdet Phra Phutthachan that captured her spirit and trapper her in the jar. He was a widely recognized monk that they said possessed magical powers and confined her spirit in the bone of her forehead. He then binded it to his waistband. Legend says that the waistband is actually in possession of the Thai royal family. However, in other versions, the monk promised Mae Nak that she would be together with her husband in the next life, and she chose to go to the afterlife herself.
The Shrine of Mae Nak Phra Khanong
The Shrine: Mae Nak Phra Khanong shrine in 2009, part facing the canal// Source: Xufanc
The shrine to Mae Nak was built at Wat Mahabut until it was moved in 1997 to central Bangkok near the Suan Luang District and is located next to a large temple on Soi 77 by the Sukhumvit Road.
The Mae Nak shrine has a statue of her and her infant son. People often make offerings to her, giving her clothes, toys for her child, fruits, lotuses and incense sticks. She even has a display of beautiful dresses behind her. The people giving these offerings to her often ask her for help, either to have an easy childbirth or to help their husband be exempted from military conscription. They also asks her for the lottery numbers.
The Story Behind the Haunting
Although the legend of this Thai ghost story is well imprinted in the culture, there are no historical evidence of it being nothing more than a myth. But there are however, some similar stories.
In 1899 there was a story about the legend in the Siam Praphet newspaper. The author claimed that the story of Nak was based on the life of Amdaeng Nak (อำแดงนาก) that died when she was pregnant. Her living son was worried that his father would remarry and that he had to share his inheritance with his stepmother.
To prevent this, he invented the ghost story and dressed in womens clothing. When boats passed the house he threw rocks at them to make them believe it was the ghost of his mother that did it.
No matter the origin of the story, it continues to scare and inspire people and is an example of a living legend and Mae Nak’s story that refuses to die.
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