From a list of Thai ghosts, compiled by Andrew Alan Johnson, an assistant professor at Yale-NUS College in Singapore and the author of Ghosts of the New City, published last year by University of Hawaii Press. Johnson estimates that there are hundreds of varieties of spirits in Thai popular belief.

phi phret

A particular stage of existence resulting from sins, especially against Buddhism (e.g., theft of gold from a temple). Doomed to eternal hunger, the phret is enormously tall and thin, with a mouth so small that a single grain of rice cannot enter.

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