Staircase Spirits

I left work after dark one night. A security guard saw that I’d come down the stairs instead of taking the elevator. As he approached me, at first I thought I had broken a rule or something. But instead he asked, “weren’t you scared?”

Lots of Thai people believe in spirits of one kind of another. You don’t have to look far to figure this out—movies and magazines on these topics are popular, amulets are everywhere. Spirit doctors are consulted for getting rid of ghosts or curses, or for helping with love troubles.

So I knew the guard wasn’t wondering if I was frightened by the low lighting in the staircase. When I told him I wasn’t worried about spirits, he answered something along the lines of “Oh, you’re the live-and-let-live type, huh?”

Not all spirits are evil. Big trees are often thought to house good spirits. Everyone who puts up a building in Thailand also builds a small house where the spirits of the land can live. The idea is that if the spirits don’t have a house of their own, they may not remain calm.

I decided to answer the security guard by pointing to the spirit house near the office. Somehow it didn’t seem right to tell him that I simply didn’t believe. I wondered later if that thought would even have occurred to him.