Building and blessing of our Spirit House

Our spirit house in Thailand

When traveling in Thailand you will have noticed the spirit houses. Well the most houses or plots of land have one or even more spirit houses, to please the spirits of the ghost and not bother the people now living there. And of course my house has also 2 old spirit houses. One made of wood on four legs and one made of cement on 1 leg.

The young Spirit Specialist

Due to an auspicious occasion my wife had promised the spirits of our land a new house. Of course she had not told me that, but a few days later she said “I promised to build new spirit houses, is that ok?”. She knows I am not a real fan of spending money on things that are in my opinion useless. But we life here together so I thought “Why not?”. What harm could be done? I always thought that we could just re-paint them ... but alai-kedai.

Well the biggest harm that could be done was that the old spirit house were actually on the wrong place and the new spirit houses had to be almost in the middle of our garden. A young spirit specialist was called and I could persuade him to announce the best place at a place that I did like, so my wife did agree.

So a new platform for the new spirit houses was build for 2500 thb, and we went on search for the right spirit houses. Well, this is an all new business to me and you can choose out many different style's, sizes and colours. But 2 weeks later the new spirit houses were brought to our house for only 5500 thb. Of course we still had to buy some things to put in the spirit houses and that had be bought at a special shop in Naklua. And of course the young spirit specialist had announced a special day as being the best day to bless our new spirit houses. So at that planned day the new spirit houses and all people gathering were blessed and food was given to the spirits (and of course a donation to the you spirit specialist). The food was of course later eaten by us and the neighbours.

Then what to do with the old spirit houses? Now I would going to learn why you see at some places under an old tree a lot of old spirit houses. Thai do not renovate old spirit houses, but they buy new ones. And you cannot just put the old ones aside somewhere. So we had to dig out the cement leg of the old spirit house (very heavy) and put them all on my pickup-truck to bring them to an old tree near a local temple. And that is where are now my old spirit houses.

Food for the spirits