Cambodian ghosts and spirits

Cambodian ghosts and spirits are the many unseen beings that Cambodians believe share the world with the living, from village guardians to feared ghosts. Some protect a village, a Wat or a household. Others are dangerous, and people drive them away or keep them at a distance.

A spirit house in the grounds of a pagoda, 2023. Photo: SOPHEAP92, CC BY-SA 4.0

Tradition details
Practice type	Religious practice
Subjects	Religion & Spiritual Life; Literature & Storytelling

As of 2022, the ethnologist Ang Choulean was a professor at the Royal University of Fine Arts. He won Japan's Fukuoka Grand Prize in 2011, and a member of the prize jury called his study of the supernatural beings of Cambodian tradition groundbreaking. He wrote in 1988 that in the Cambodian countryside, the worship of spirits and Buddhism have blended into what he called a true symbiosis, each shaping the other. In a talk in 2000 he called them two systems of belief that complete each other. Where rain decides a village's fate, he said, people look first to having enough to eat, and only then to ethics, the domain of Buddhism.

Kinds of spirits

In a talk at the Royal University of Fine Arts, posted on the university's Facebook page and reported in March 2022, Ang Choulean divided the spirits of Cambodian tradition into two broad groups: spirits with a set role, and spirits with none. Spirits with a set role have human origins and fall into seven categories, he said, ranging from pure spirits to beings that are partly spirit and partly human. Among them are male guardian spirits, mothers from a previous life, evil spirits and the guardian spirit of a house. The beings that are half human include the ahp (អាប, also called krasue), witches and anchorites, hermits who once lived alone in forests, mountains or caves and who could, in this tradition, fly. The spirits that frighten Cambodians most, he said, are the ones nobody can identify, and in his account they are all female. One kind is believed to be the spirit of a young woman strangled or drowned, and the most vicious are believed to be the ghosts of women who died giving birth.

Paul Christensen of the University of Göttingen listed the spirits he came across in Cambodia in 2012 and 2013. They included wild forest spirits called arak, dangerous female spirits such as beisaat and aab, Hindu gods honored as protectors, and spirits of the dead, called pret or khmaoch (ខ្មោច). Anne Yvonne Guillou writes the word khmoc. Spirits are believed to make themselves known in dreams and visions, through the weather and other natural events, and by taking possession of people.

Preay (ព្រាយ)

Ang Choulean wrote at length about the preay in 1988. They are believed to be the spirits of virgins or of women who died in childbirth. He wrote that they are the most dangerous spirits of all, because no other being in the Khmer spirit world is as malicious. Their tragic death, he wrote, leaves them carrying extreme impurity, which is dangerous but is also the source of great magical power. So villagers chase a preay away, by exorcism for one person or by a chase that the whole community joins, and yet they ask for her help, directly or indirectly, whenever they perform a magic rite. Evil spirits are believed to prefer to attack beings like themselves, so preay, as spirits of women who died giving birth, are believed to seek out pregnant women and women in labor above all. In her wild state a preay is believed to roam the countryside or the village as a ball of fire that throws off sparks. Preay (also written brāy) are also believed to bring cholera.

A Wat may take in a preay as a guardian. Wats often keep a racing boat in a shed and race it once a year against the boats of other Wats in the region, with the prestige of the Wat and its people at stake. Villagers believe a preay lives in the boat and gives it magic power, and the monks, often the abbot himself, keep her fed at regular times. Even so, she is believed able to cause a miscarriage in a pregnant woman who passes in front of the boat. Some Wats go further: a preay is believed to live in the base of the main Buddha image in the Wat's main hall and to punish anyone who disrespects the building. Known most often as parami, a word for perfection that recalls the Ten Perfections of the Buddha, she is the power villagers turn to when they need a wish granted or a disaster turned aside. On some holy days, lights are said to flash briefly from the main hall.

Ahp (អាប)

The ahp, or krasue, is part human and part spirit. Ang Choulean said that by day the ahp is an ordinary person in the village, lazy and unwashed, who avoids farm work and goes from house to house asking for vegetables and spices. At night or in the rain, its head is believed to leave its body and fly low in search of food, its intestines glowing. In his account the food it craves most is the blood of a woman who has just given birth.

Guardian spirits

The neak ta (អ្នកតា) are guardian spirits of the land. Ang Choulean said that the male guardian spirits are found mostly in rural areas, where farmers ask them for rain and good harvests. He said that people in Phnom Penh do not hold ceremonies for them, while villagers in Siem Reap province hold them twice a year. In his 2000 talk he called the neak ta the only being in the Cambodian spirit world that serves a whole village. A carved phallus or a long stone often stands for the neak ta, but so can a statue or a ruined pagoda. Alexandra Kent wrote in 2020 that a neak ta may be a guardian of one community, a human ancestor or a dead hero. Treated with respect, the neak ta protect and provide. Neglected, or when the land they own is abused, they can turn against people, sending floods, drought and other misfortune.

Every Wat has a neak ta of its own, with a hut that most often stands in the northeast corner of its grounds. The village's neak ta has a separate hut. The Wat's spirit receives offerings from the faithful and watches over good Buddhist conduct, and he does not tolerate anyone urinating or using offensive words inside the grounds.

Some neak ta are heroes of legend. Anne Yvonne Guillou writes that the story of Khleang Moeung has been told in tens of versions. In the core she draws from them, the 16th-century King Ang Chan is at war with a Siamese army, and in the Pursat area he meets a local strongman, Moeung. Some versions call him a judge, a district head or an army chief instead. To turn the war in the king's favor, Moeung gives up his life. He comes back as a ghost at the front of an army of ghosts, or preay, who spread disease or panic among the Siamese troops. He then becomes a neak ta, honored every year at his shrine in Pursat in the month of pisākh, which Guillou places in May and June. Christensen gives a shorter version, in which Khleang Moeung is said to have given his life to put the rightful king back on the throne.

Spirits of the home and family

Ang Choulean said the guardian spirit of a house lives only in a house and can protect the people who live there. Many Cambodian homes and businesses keep spirit houses, small shrines where offerings are made to keep the spirits content. In return, benevolent spirits are believed to protect the household and keep evil spirits away. Katherine Marshall of Georgetown University wrote that a visiting spirit must ask permission to enter a house, and that the offerings make sure it comes in a good mood.

A newborn child is believed to have a mother from a previous life, a spirit who was its mother before. Ang Choulean said that she loves the child and wants it back, and keeps near the infant from its birth until it is about three years old. Until then, he said, parents must take great care of the child, or the mother from a previous life may take its soul back.

Mediums and monks

Spirit mediums are called kru boramey. Christensen wrote that neak ta possessed or advised most of the mediums he met. The mediums and clients he met came from every class, including the political and economic elite, and they turned to the spirits for advice, prophecies, healing and magical power.

Monks also deal with spirits. Ang Choulean wrote in 1988 that some monks meditate at night in the forest near the home of a spirit, hoping to learn the next winning lottery numbers for villagers. A monk on the solitary ascetic path called dhutang may seek out a spirit in the forest to gain superhuman power. The spirit is believed to test him with apparitions and hardships, and to teach him magic formulas and healing only once he has proven his strength.

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