A Dark Tourist’s Guide to Bangkok
10 of the Strangest and Darkest Places in BKK
(A video version of this article is now up on my YouTube channel!)
The spirit world is a huge part of daily life in Thai culture. In front of most buildings in Thailand, you will see a spirit house with daily offerings of red Fanta, water, fruit, rice, or even cooked Thai food. Strings of flowers arranged for protection and used as spirit offerings are sold every morning on the busy streets.
You can find Buddhist and Thai magick amulets hanging off the mirrors of taxi cabs, boats and around people’s necks. There are even shrines for Hindu gods and shrines for ghosts found in seemingly random places like in front of busy shopping malls and next to a quiet canal.
Because of the mix of Buddhist and Hindu culture with ancient animist traditions, there are a lot of unique, death-related, and even creepy places all over Thailand.
As someone who gets more excited by an abandoned graveyard than a famous landmark with thousands of living people taking selfies for Instagram, I enjoy living in a country where there are constant reminders of the spirit world, magick, and death.
Since there are so many cool, dark places to explore in Thailand, for this article, I will narrow it down to the strangest and darkest spots in Bangkok:
Congdon’s Anatomical Museum
Very close to the more popular Forensic Museum, Congdon’s Anatomical Museum is like walking into the basement of a mad scientist in the 1800s. This is why it is my favorite dark touristy place in Bangkok!
The museum is separated into three connecting sections. I recommend going into the first room on the right, rather than going straight in from the entrance. When you walk into the room on the right, you will see skeletons everywhere. There are hanging skeletons of regular-sized people, a dwarf skeleton, and the tallest female skeleton in the world! (not sure if that’s true but that’s what the signs say.)
There are geriatric skeletons in glass booths along the far wall, with a vintage picture of how each person looked when they were still alive. There is also a group of deformed, baby skeletons who look content to be there. In the middle of the room are rows of various bones and anatomical specimens encased in glass.
The next section contains human bodies and body parts preserved in what I assume is formaldehyde. There are specimens of an adult woman and man lying down in glass cases with the skin on different areas on their body exposed to show their organs, nerves, and bones. And most notable in this room, is a limbless man whose cheeks, front torso, and sections of his back have been cut open to reveal his insides.
In the main section are rows of preserved human babies, most of them with deformities. There is even a wall of Siamese twins. The term “Siamese twins” originates from Chang and Eng Bunker who were conjoined twins from Siam, now known as Thailand. They moved to the U.S. in the mid-1800s and were a part of traveling “freak shows” in America and Europe until they retired and had 21 children.
Along with the babies, are different preserved human body parts. Some attempt has been made to organize all the specimens, but some of them seem randomly thrown together in the middle portion of the museum.
The row of large, uniquely deformed children along the back wall is the most astonishing part of this museum. I think I will let the picture speak for itself:
Some people have left offerings of toys for the spirits of the children to play with. It is sad to see dead children in glass, but it might help you to know that the people taking care of the museum have a lot of respect for the dead and their spirits. I also didn’t feel that any spirits in the museum were upset or scared. It’s a very calming place if you find peace in death, which I do.
This museum is one of several medical museums scattered throughout a medical block where Siriraj Hospital is. When I first visited the museum several years ago, security was very relaxed and I was able to take pictures and shoot video without any issues. But I went there again in 2021, security was strict. You need to leave your backpack in a locker and they make it clear with signs all over the museum that pictures and videos are not allowed. So just be aware of that.
You can watch the full video of the museum on my Patreon.
The map to Congdon’s is here.
2) The Museum of Human Body
If you have seen a Body Worlds exhibit, you will be familiar with the concept and layout of the Museum of Human Body. I have been fortunate enough to see Body Worlds, so it was interesting to see the differences and similarities between the two exhibits.
The Museum of Human Body is a small museum located inside a dentistry school campus in a well-known shopping area called Siam Square. It’s kind of random that this is at the dentistry school and not the medical school like the other two medical museums on this list, but I’m glad it exists.
Inside the museum, are displays of different human bodies and body parts that have gone through the plastination process. Because of the humid climate in Thailand, the bodies aren’t as pristine as Body Worlds, but still very well preserved. The bodies are arranged in different positions or just standing upright.
Plastinating bodies and posing them is an art form and I think the artists who worked on these bodies did a great job. I especially like the “flayed man” at the very center of the exhibit.
There are two sections in the museum filled with plastinated bodies. There’s even a plastinated human brain you can pick up. It was surprisingly heavy.
3) Siriraj Medical Museum and Parasite Museum
Located near Congden’s Anatomical Museum in Siriraj hospital, but in another medical building nearby, the Siriraj Museum used to house the preserved body of serial killer and alleged cannibal, Si Quay, and three other convicted murders but those bodies were taken down and cremated in 2020.
Here are the pictures of how the bodies looked when they were still displayed in the museum. I used to refer to them as serial killer phone booths. Because of the humid climate in Thailand, the bodies used to drip and had baking tins under them to collect the fluids.
This was the highlight of the museum but there are still some interesting exhibits. There are a lot of skulls with bullet holes and other blunt force trauma, preserved body parts with tattoos, some preserved babies, and weapons used in murders and other objects from crime scenes. There is also an area dedicated to the horrible tsunami which killed an estimated 5,400 people back in 2004.
I’m lumping the parasite museum with Siriraj museum since it is right next to it. When you buy a ticket, you will be able to visit both museums, plus Congdon’s and other medical museums nearby.
Inside the parasite museum are displays of different parasites you can catch in Thailand and the rest of SE Asia. There are real, preserved parasites, plus giant plastic models of them with displays of street food and jungles where you can catch said parasites. As a stand-alone museum, it’s not that great, but with the Siriraj museum alongside it and Congdon’s down the street, it’s a nice little extra.
Here is the map to Siriraj Medical Museum.
4) Ta Prachan Amulet Market
There are a few amulet markets in Bangkok, but most of them just sell Buddhist and Hindu amulets. Ta Prachan amulet market is big and has rows of animist and magical amulets which show just how magic and animist traditions are still a big part of Thai spiritual practices.
There is a black magick shop at Ta Prachan, but I don’t recommend going there since the owners of the shop are working with some very greedy and malevolent spirits who have 0 chill. I told them right off the bat that I did not have money to spend that day and was buying stuff for someone in another country.
They became super greedy and pushy, even flooding my Line messaging app with hundreds of pictures of black magic amulets, statues, and real human body parts after I told them to stop dozens of times. They ended up scaring away the prospective buyer, who was most likely just wasting my time anyway, but they kept harassing me until I blocked them.
It was such a terrible experience and all because the owners can’t handle their magic properly. Thai black magic is very chaotic and will never be what you think it is. It does its own thing and doesn’t really care what you want or expect, so consider yourself warned.
Black magick is technically illegal in Thailand, so like with anything technically illegal in Thailand, it’s still easy to find and there’s a chance you might not run into legal issues, but there’s also a chance you will. Anything resembling human body parts, even if it’s fake, can be confiscated if you try to ship it overseas or travel with it in your luggage, so stick to stuff that doesn’t look like it came from a dead body, even if it’s fake, and you should be fine.
If you don’t want to mess with Thai black magick, and I really don’t recommend that you do, there are a lot of cute, cheap amulets at the Ta Prachan market that don’t involve trapping spirits and ghosts to make them do your bidding. I recommend picking up some cute penis and vagina amulets for $2 apiece.
Video of the amulet market.
5) Mae Nak’s Ghost Shrine
Mae Nak was a beautiful woman who lived in a little canal area in Bangkok called Phra Khanong. She lived with her husband, Mak, during the early to mid-1800s. When Mae Nak became pregnant, her husband was sent to fight a war.
While Mak was away, Mae Nak and her baby died during a difficult childbirth. But when Mak returned home, he saw his beautiful wife and baby waiting for him!
Mak had no idea that his wife and child were ghosts. It is said that when neighbors tried to warn him, Mae Nak’s angry ghost attacked them. It wasn’t until Mae Nak accidentally dropped a lime and her hand went through the floorboard to pick it up, that Mak finally realized the truth.
Terrified, Mak ran to the Wat Mahabut temple to hide from his wife. Mae Nak was furious and terrorized the locals. An exorcist was called and trapped Mae Nak’s ghost in a jar. The jar was tossed in the canal next to the temple, but some fisherman found the jar and opened it.
Mae Nak’s ghost continued to terrorize people in the area until a monk bound her spirit to her forehead bone and then bound it to his waistband. After that, the spirit was finally at rest and the locals made a shrine to honor Mae Nak. She is said to help with money, childbirth, conceiving, and protecting soldiers who are about to go off to war. She also helps young men avoid getting drafted.
Mae Nak’s ghost shrine is located at Wat Mahabut temple. Many people still go there daily to give her offerings of dresses, flowers, candles, money, and toys for her baby. Mae Nak has also been featured in dozens of Thai horror films, commercials, and cartoons.
Wat Mahabut is a very unique temple with shrines for ancient serpent deities called Nāgas, a shrine for an elderly Thai man whose story I was unable to find out about since I cannot read or speak Thai, a random giant Hulk statue, and a skeleton popping out of a coffin, like a Halloween decoration.
The canal is also cool to check out but please don’t buy any caged birds or fish to release them into the canal since they are kept in terrible conditions and shouldn’t be in cages in the first place.
6) The Naturally Mummified Monk in Chinatown
I was strolling around Chinatown with some friends when we happened across a Vietnamese Buddhist Temple. It looked different than the typical Thai temples so we went to take a closer look and a nice, handsome monk invited us inside.
In a hall of important relics and pictures, behind the glass was a mummified monk.
The living monk explained that the mummified monk had preserved naturally and so was not cremated as is the norm when a Buddhist dies. Instead, his body was dressed and kept in the temple as a sacred relic.
Here is his story, taken from a sign in front of his body:
“Chao Phra Khun was born Rueng Mathura Sakul at home in Phadung Krung Krasem canal, See Yak Mahanak district, Phranakorn province, Bangkok, on August 19th, 1900.
At the age of 21 years old, he was ordained as a monk at Wat Mongkol Samakom on May 20th, 1921.
At 09:15p.m., on April 11th, 1958 he passed away in Chulalongkorn hospital.
It was time to perform the cremation ceremony, the head of Anamm Nikai asked the disciples to open his coffin. Miraculously, his body was still remained and dried without being decayed. Monks brought his body out of the coffin and rearranged him in sitting position. His body as relic was placed in the Patriarch’s Hall in order that Annam Nikai monks and later people are able to worship him.”
It’s cool to just stumble across something like this. I’ve never seen this monk on any guides. This is also not the first mummified monk I’ve stumbled across, but the only one I know of in Bangkok.
The monk is locatated at Wat Mongkol Samakom in Chinatown. Here is the map.
7) Four Abandoned, Chinese Graveyards in Sathon
This is also something I came across randomly. There are four abandoned Chinese gravesites in the Sathon area. One gravesite, my favorite one, has been swallowed up by the jungle:
The other gravesite is along the street next to the highway:
The third is also along the street next to the highway but is on the opposite side:
And the fourth, and saddest gravesite, is covered in trash and had some nice trees that were cut down:
The graveyards are located along Charoenrat Soi 2 and 3 in Sathon. The map is here.
8) The Cobra Shrine
The Cobra Queen Shrine in Bangkok has real, wild cobras outside, but I didn’t see any when I went.
When the giant Rama II road was being built, a worker spotted a pregnant cobra. That night, the mother cobra appeared in his dream and promised she would move once she had her babies. When the worker shared this dream with his boss, the boss laughed and said he was being superstitious. He made the worker kill the cobra mom, which the worker did.
On his way home, the boss got in a brutal car accident. Other workers on the road met their death. The area was cursed by the ghost of the angry cobra. A Brahman said that a shrine had to be built to appease the mother cobra. People now come to honor the cobras and receive good luck with love and money.
9) The Sathon Ghost Tower
The Ghost Tower is an abandoned, 49-story, unfinished condo in Sathon. It was left abandoned during the Asian financial crisis in 1977. Up until a few years ago, people were able to go inside the tower and explore, but a video of dumb tourists parkouring off the building went viral and forced the keepers of the tower to close off the entrances and file criminal charges against anyone breaking in and vlogging there.
Even though the Ghost Tower is called that because it was abandoned and looks creepy, there was one known death in the tower. In 2014, A Swedish tourist was found dead in the tower. He had committed suicide by hanging.
You can see the tower easily from the Saphan Taksin BTS or around Sathon since it’s impossible to miss. You can also take pics next to it but it’s blocked off so you can’t get in anymore.
10) The Corrections Museum
This museum was closed for many years but just reopened in May of 2023. It’s moved to Nonthaburi 1 Road and is the only prison museum in Thailand. I visited the museum at the old location before it closed, but this new location is a nice upgrade and even has a gift shop and café.
According to The Bangkok Post, the corrections museum has “300 torture and execution instruments, documents, everyday items, photographs and other artefacts from prisons around the country.”
Originally opened in 1939, the museum was initially located at the infamous Bang Kwang Central Prison. The purpose of the museum is to teach people about the history of the Thai penal system and show the various punishments for prisoners in Thailand from the Ayutthaya period — which is around the 14th century — to the present.
When you visit the museum, you will see recreations of real-life prison torture methods using dummies. One of the torture methods that still sticks with me to this day is the rattan ball which is a large ball made from a species of palm leaf that has long, sharp nails hammered so that the pointy ends of the nails line the entire inside of the ball.
Prisoners were forced to climb inside the ball and remained trapped while an elephant kicked the ball around until the prisoner confessed to whatever the officers wanted him to confess to. You can imagine how painful and scary that must have been! I’m sure they all confessed even if they didn’t do it.
The methods of torture displayed at the museum are no longer legal in Thailand, but Thai prison is still horrific. I recommend reading The damage done: twelve years of Hell in a Bangkok prison by Warren Fellows, or watching Billy Moore’s interview on LADbible’s YouTube channel called British Boxer on Drug Deals, Fighting & Murders In Thai Prison.
Thai prison is no joke! Don’t break the law in Thailand…or anywhere in SE Asia for that matter!
Video of the museum when it was at the old location.
So which one of these places do you want to visit the most? Are there any on the list that are too creepy for you? Do you know of any other strange places to visit in Bangkok? Please let me know in the comments. I’d love to read what you have to say!
(This article was originally published on Medium.)
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