He was a wicked man in life, and so in death, he became a wicked thing. He wandered the Earth with
an insatiable hunger, feasting when he could on dog feces and dead vermin. He was the “starving
ghost” and he remained that way for eternity. But did it have to be that way?
We think not. For many of you watching this, ghosts might
not be such a big deal. Sure, you’ve been scared watching a horror movie in the past, but you don’t
really believe ghosts are all around you. That’s probably because you come from a western culture.
But if you head over to parts of Asia, where we’ll be going today, ghosts are
no small deal. They really are all around people. Head over to any number of countries in Southeast
Asia, and you’ll see things called “spirit houses” outside just about every building, big or small.
You can find them in front of luxurious hotels or government buildings,
but you’ll also see them next to tiny ramshackle houses or even bars where
tourists often ask why locals are filling them with bottles of red Fanta and scraps of food.
Tourists in Bangkok, for instance, sit on stools drinking beers and watching
the madness of Bangkok’s streets go by and then think what on Earth
is this person doing putting bottles of strawberry Fanta in that little house?
The answer is they are making an offering to the spirits. They are asking for protection.
And this is not some small superstition taken up by only a few groups of people;
it happens all over the country every single day. Thais, as well as other nationalities from that
part of the world, take their spirits seriously. People sometimes even get uncomfortable when you
just say the word “pee”. That means ghost. Just recently, in an article in the New
York Times, a 47-year old, educated Thai man said, “Thai people respect ghosts and spirits.
Every day we pray and, you will notice, our country has not had many cases of coronavirus.
The spirits listen to our prayers.” It’s that serious. YOU DO NOT MESS
WITH GHOSTS! By the way, not long after he said that cases went through the roof.
And those are the good spirits. As you’ll see today, there are some bad ones, and those guys
can really mess up a nice afterlife. You might not believe in them, but you’ll hear soon about
people that claim to have seen them. In Thailand, as well as countries such
as India, Sri Lanka, China, Cambodia, Tibet, Laos, Vietnam, Singapore, South Korea, Japan,
and Malaysia, you’ll hear about Pret, the ghost no one wants to become. Being Pret is tough. It
means wandering around in a kind of purgatory and you’re always starving- the compulsion is
as bad as having constant opiate withdrawals. How Pret is defined depends on the culture,
but it’s always the hungry ghost or the starving ghost. It can never be content.
They have this insatiable hunger, but their mouths are as small as needles. They are often
depicted as having big bellies and having tongues that reach down to their legs.
Sometimes all they can eat is the feces of animals or even humans,
and in that wasteland where they live, they see rivers oozing with blood and pus, where scabs
and broken teeth fill the water. Everything around them is dead or decaying or dying.
It is agony on Earth, or someplace between Earth and being born again. In the sense of rebirth,
becoming a Pret means you’ve accumulated a lot of bad karma in your life. So,
if you are greedy, materialistic, stingy, a cheat, or just a bad person in general,
becoming a Pret could be your fate. And as we said, this is not something
to be balked at. Many people from those regions watching this show might have been
told as kids that if they don’t shape up and start doing the right thing,
they could end up walking the Earth as a PrIn. The closest thing to Pret in western culture
might be a figure you all know as Gollum from The Lord of the Rings books.
If you think about it, a wandering being who is tormented by his need for his “precious”
is just like a Pret. Like Gollum, the Pret is not necessarily seen as dangerous.
Prets are to be pitied. They are awful, monstrous things, who actually just need your help.
That’s why some living people sometimes ceremonially offer gifts to the Pret,
in the hope that the soul that is stuck in that terrible state can be released.
We’re not sure just how long they’ve been around, but we know they go back centuries.
There is something called the “Scroll of Hungry Ghosts” from Japan that dates back to the 12th
century. It depicts the hungry ghosts feasting on what is being pooped out by living people.
It sucks to be a Pret. But the question is, how many folks have actually seen
them? Do they really visit you in your sleep? In 2012, a nun at Wat Khao Kaew in Thailand
was praying when she said she saw a Pret. It made the news in Thailand,
and it scared the hell out of people. The nun, 58-year old Mae Chee Phayao Anman, said she’d been
practicing the Buddhist religion at that temple for a decade and had never seen anything out of
the ordinary. One day, her life changed. Translated from Thai, the news said,
“She was practicing meditation at the prayer hall when she suddenly felt something beside
her. Turning around, she saw a strange figure standing there. It was very tall and boneless.”
She said she prayed for it and suddenly it ran down a hall. She followed, only for it
to turn into a bird and fly away. But get this, when she told local villagers what she’d seen,
they too said there had been sightings of the Pret. Some had even reported it to the police,
and when policemen also saw it, the Thai news said it “scattered.”
Maybe you don’t believe this story. Maybe you think the folks in this
little village in Thailand’s Ang Thong Province are drunk on superstition,
but we found more tales of sightings. There was the 2021 story of a 12-year
old boy named Thanachot in the Prachinburi province of Thailand,
who according to the Thai news media, had some “shocking information.”
In March, he said he was tinkering with a motorcycle outside his house when he heard
the dog howl. He didn’t think much of it, but then he heard a whistling sound. He said he then got up
to look around when he caught sight of what he described as a “tall and skinny” figure,
“more than 20 meters high, like a coconut tree.” It also said it had “big hands.”
Some villagers believed him, some didn’t. Mrs. Pu Phimsuwan,
the village head, said she didn’t believe this kid had seen the devil. Nonetheless,
with the child in shock, she thought someone might have played a trick on him.
The top comment on the YouTube video posted by the Thai media company included this:
“My grandmother practiced the Dharma. She has seen it and it really exists. He came
to find someone who can send merit to him.” Remember, the Pret can be released from its
agony if enough people make merit for it. Other people in the comments said the same
thing. Some were a little skeptical, but most weren’t. One guy said he’d seen one himself.
Then there’s the story of the temple in Bangkok called Wat Saket. In the 19th century,
this place was used to cremate a large number of people. But after a cholera outbreak in 1820,
there were so many deaths that they had to leave some of the bodies outside in the temple grounds.
That’s when the vultures came and people started talking about the “vultures of Wat Saket.”
You can imagine with all those dead bodies hanging about and vultures pecking out their eyes,
people became a bit scared of this place. Not only was the sight an ugly one,
but what happened to all the souls who’d been bad in life?
They became Pret, of course, so this temple was said to be home to an overabundance of
those monsters. The Pret also appeared at another temple called “Wat Suthat.” Wat
actually just means temple in Thai. Writing about the Pret at this temple,
someone said, “Pret is a human being who commits the ultimate sin. When he dies,
he will be born as a devil to pay for his karma. He has a needle hole
for a mouth and hands as big as a palm leaf. They appear at night.”
There seems to be much more talk of Pret in Thailand than in other Asian nations. Nonetheless,
we saw a headline of an article written in 2011 by The Philippine Star. It said,
“Banish hungry ghosts from your home.” Here is some advice it gave:
“During the month of the Hungry Ghost, it is prudent to be extra careful when
you are out at night, take extra care when you drive, walk in busy streets or travel.”
It advised people to purify their houses with incense, adding, “Burn the incense and walk
around in a clockwise direction in the house from room to room and door to door. Let the
fragrance spread in the air. Open all windows and doors to let the bad energy move out.”
If that doesn’t work, the writer of the story said wearing an amulet can help, and if the
worst happens and Pret is nearby, you can start chanting “hum, hum, hum, hum.”
It wasn’t a joke article. We found other stories giving people advice on how to deal with Pret. In
Vietnam, some people believe the seventh lunar month of the year will be the time the gates
of hell are opened. This is when Pret and a whole host of other ghosts come to town.
Hardcore believers, of which there are many, will not even go out at night during the month of the
Hungry Ghosts. Some will turn vegan while others will make sure they make merit many
times over. One Vietnamese website also gave this priceless advice:
“Don’t remove your leg hair, spirits tend to avoid people with more leg hair. Don’t swim in the water
as the spirits might grab your legs. Don’t hang clothes out at night as the spirits might be
attracted to it. Don’t turn your head If someone follows or calls your name from behind at night.”
A guy writing in English said they were in Singapore when they saw an altar with “Yakult,
toys, and biscuits” on it. At first, they wondered why. Then they realized it was the
month of the hungry ghost. He said that day he’d had a dream and in it, two kids asked
him for help. He said he couldn’t help them. After seeing the altar and remembering the dream,
he got in an elevator. He wrote, “As the lift began its ascent, two ghostly faces stared
at me through a reflection on the glass. They looked normal, except for one thing:
They had no legs! When I arrived home, they stopped at the door. They couldn’t
enter because I had a feng shui mirror.” The spirits asked to come inside and said
they needed help, but they drifted away when he said he couldn’t help. The guy concluded,
“Until today, I avoid breaking any seventh month superstitions. Just in case.”
Over in Malaysia, the media has run similar articles, stressing that elders tell youngers
they should not stay out at night during the hungry ghost month. One of the articles was
picked up by CNN, who said this happened during the month of the hungry ghost:
“Sightings of a headless ghost at a Malaysian high school are scaring students away from
attending classes.” The chairman for State Education said there was nothing to worry about,
telling the media, “I have not heard of anyone being injured from being 'mauled' by ghosts and
it's safe for the children to go to school.” Still, most people would think such a story
was so plainly ridiculous that he didn’t have to make such a statement. Not in Asia,
where the force of Pret is strong. Some people believe there are three
kinds of Pret. For type one, anything they try and eat will burst into flames as soon as they
get the food close to their mouths. Type two have needle mouths. The third type have
mouths so decomposed nothing can get in there. When asked to describe just what kind of person
will become a Pret, one scholar explained: “We have seen how people can wrap their whole
lives around graspiness and neediness; and every time they meet with somebody it’s like
you can hear the suction. You can just hear it. You feel like the blood is coming out
of your pores. And that’s the kind of person you instinctively stay away from because, literally,
you can feel your energy being sucked into them.” From the ancient Indian texts called the Vedas,
there’s a story of the origin of the Pret. It goes like this:
A man, known as the pretender, robs the clothes of a mother and her five-year-old son. He then sees
the boy drinking water from a jar, and since water is scarce, the man takes that, too. In short,
the boy dies, and the mother dies from grief. In translation, the text then reads, “By that
sin I became a ghost with a mouth as small as the hole of a needle and body as huge as a mountain.
Although I get food I cannot eat. Although I burn with hunger my mouth is contracted.
Since in my mouth I have a hole equal to that of a needle, I am known as Sucimukha.”
We found a definition of that word that read, “Sucimukha (needle-face):
An ever-suspicious man is always wary of people trying to grab his wealth. Proud of his money,
he sins to gain and to retain it.” A person writing about Indian mythology
said perhaps the Pret, or Preta as it’s sometimes called is actually a person in real life. Think
about it, if you are a greedy person who can never be content with what you have, you’ll be in pain.
If your life is all about consumption but you can’t ever be fulfilled, is that not going to
cause you eternal sadness, a kind of living agony? A wise man once said, “The things you own end up
owning you.” Perhaps he’d looked into the mirror one day and seen a Pret staring back at him.
Now you need to watch “Real Story of Demon Possession.” Or, have a look at...