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Ghost hunting with Bangkok's infamous Shock jocks
One radio DJ has spent decades investigating the paranormal -- live on air. Here's some scary stuff that went down one recent night
DJ Pong: "If you try to forget it, you can’t," he says of the Thai preoccupation with the supernatural. "It comes with being Thai, we’re born with it."
The show's host is Kapol Thongplab, or DJ Pong. Beginning his career telling ghost stories on local radio, Pong has spent the last 20 years indulging the Thai appetite for the paranormal with his now hugely popular show.
Listeners can call in with their own ghostly experiences, but the Shock investigation team also visits supposedly haunted houses, relaying their experiences live on air.
I arranged to accompany the Shock team on one such investigation to an abandoned house in Chonburi. An hour and a half after leaving Bangkok we arrive at a narrow country lane. I wonder why someone would want to build a house here -- it’s in the middle of nowhere.
As we pull in, I catch a glimpse of the house, set back 30 meters from the road and briefly illuminated by the car’s headlights. A grimy, unfinished shell of a building, it’s undeniably a sinister looking place. The body of a 30-year-old man was recently found here. His hands were tied together with wire and he’d been shot in the head, apparently the victim of a gang killing.
His spirit is destined to remain here, says Gaeng, a member of the team, “Until his life is over, another 40 or 50 years.”
It seems that malignant spirits aren’t the only potential threat that the Shock team encounters. Gaeng says they often run into trouble with the locals when they come to remote places like this.
There are two police officers with us, one of whom tells me that local youths have been using the house.
“They come here to take drugs, bring girls here,” he says.
“They’re not scared of anything.”
Right on cue, six teenage lads on motorbikes come racing round the corner. The cop turns his torch onto himself and they barely slow down as they make a U-turn and vanish into the night.
This house was recently the scene of a grisly murder investigation.
Team member Jack is providing the show’s listeners with a running commentary by phone as we move into the room where the body was found. There we find a pair of rubber gloves, presumably used by the police during the investigation, and scraps of the cloth that was used to wrap the body. To one side are some sheets of paper, which when lifted up reveal a blood stain on the cement. There’s a joss stick in the ground; someone else has already held their own ceremony here.
The equipment readings are normal, but Gaeng tells me that DJ Pong’s team tends to rely more on their senses.
“We can feel something in the air,” he says.
“Some sounds or some odors -- like an old dead body or the perfume that we pour on someone who recently died.”
“But have you ever actually seen a ghost?" I ask him.
He admits that in 10 years of doing this job he’s never seen one, only felt its presence.
“But sometimes I go home after a ghost hunt and my mum says to me ‘who was that in the car with you, do they want to come in?’ But I was alone.”
Click to page 2 for more on the Shock FM hunt.
