Content warning: This poem discusses maternal death, cremation and removing bones
Mae Nak Phra Khanong is a famous ghost from Thai folklore. She died in childbirth while waiting for her husband Mak to return home from war. After her death she continued to live a normal life as a ghost with the spirit of her child, who was an extension of her ghost form. Monks tried to exorcise her from her home but every one of them ran away screaming. When her husband returned home he was unaware of his wife and child’s state, and they lived as normal.
One day Nak dropped a lime, so she stretched her ghostly arm from the first floor of the house to the ground to reach it. Her husband saw and ran away to hide in a temple. Nak was furious and terrorised the people of the village. Then the monk Somdej Phra Buddhacarya went to Mae Nak and calmed her down, which allowed her and her child to leave the world of the living. She was then cremated and a piece of her forehead bone was taken as an amulet.
You can read more of her story can be read here
The Ghostly Mother
Nak waited for two ships,
one within her the other coming on the river to his wife and coming child
The small ship sailed and met deadly water.
Her child ripped out through her soul, and she became
A ghostly mother
Monks ran and screamed from the waterside hut,
As Mae Nak swept the floors and rocked the child.
She saw the second ship come to her
Mak returned home and she tearfully smiled
Those who breathed warned of a ghostly mother
Nak dropped a lime and stretched her airy arm to reach,
Mak ran to a temple where she could never reach her lover
A holy father held her hand as she left this world
And kept a long dead bone of
A ghostly mother
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Third year journalism student. 2025/2026 Lifestyle and Comment Editor at Brig. Published in The Yucatán Times, Mi Campeche and The Mourning Paper. Host of From the 40s with Air3Radio.
