It’s almost midnight in Thailand, it’s time for that ghost radioa popular show broadcast on the internet from a top floor studio in a semi-abandoned shopping mall in Bangkok.
Tens of thousands of Thais tune in to watch or listen live as listeners share their experiences with ghosts, spirits and other beings from the afterlife.
Belief in the supernatural runs deep in the kingdom’s popular culture, from the myth of Mae Nak, who stalked her neighbors after she died in childbirth, to the frightening Krasue, female creatures hungry for fresh meat.
Today these old stories are being dug up by online platforms like YouTube or TikTok and instant messengers.
“In a dream, a man in a white suit appeared to her and told her that her time had come and that she should follow him,” the first interviewee describes with a trembling voice.
“But when she turned around, she saw her own body on the bed.”
In the studio, animator Watcharapol Fukjaidee looks for details.
His webcast, which has three million subscribers on YouTube, occurs twice a week from 11pm until dawn.
Watcharapol Fukjaidee started 20 years ago with Thailand’s “godfather of spirits” Kapol Thongplub, whose late-night show made taxi drivers happy.
Thanks to new technology, “the likelihood of seeing ghosts is increasing,” he told AFP.
“Ghosts communicate through apps, messages, phone calls. Technology is becoming the channel through which they can connect with people,” says Watcharapol, 46, who maintains a discreet and tongue-in-cheek style.
He recalls getting a call from a man saying he was contacted by a friend who made an appointment for him at a temple. When he arrived, what he discovered sent shivers down his spine: “His friend was dead and his phone had been placed in the coffin.”
“Folk beliefs adapt incredibly” to changes in society, says anthropologist Andrew Alan Johnson, who has studied the role of the supernatural in Thai society.
Ghost stories help to preserve the memory of places or to explain a feeling of being uprooted, especially in the megalopolis of Bangkok, which has changed a lot in recent years, the expert continues.
Downstairs, a fan-filled ghost cafe provides another revenue stream for the show alongside the on-air sponsors.
One staffer, Khemjira, sifts through dozens of stories submitted by listeners and discards those that touch on politics or a taboo subject in the monarchy.
“With the influence of Twitter and TikTok, more and more young people are calling,” he explains. “I think people often encounter ghosts. We almost never hear the same story.”
Chalwat Thungood, a 25-year-old police officer, chews on a tombstone-shaped brownie and tells how he had a supernatural experience while on duty.
When he was called to intervene in a house, on arrival he saw the shadow of a very fat man walking through the bathroom: After trying to open the door, he discovered an obese man who had been dead for at least five hours was dead. .
“I’ve seen the ghost of the fat man,” he affirms, “I believe 100% that ghosts exist.”
Watcharapol, meanwhile, refuses to say if he believes it, before admitting he is “scared to death” of the ghosts that would haunt hospitals.
According to him, people find themselves on his show “because sometimes they can’t tell their family about their ghostly experiences.”
“Nobody can prove it’s real except the listener on the air,” Watcharapol cowardly before smiling.