The widow ghost scare

In the dry season of 1990, villages in northeast Thailand feared attack by 'widow ghosts' (phi mae mai) blamed for the sudden night-time deaths of young men, many of them labour migrants to Singapore.

1990 CE · 16.43, 102.83 · status: account

The account

Anthropologist Mary Beth Mills documented the six-week scare: men put up wooden phalluses, and in later scares, for example in 2018, men dressed as women or painted their nails to fool the ghosts.

The sceptical view

Doctors identify the deaths as Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome (lai tai), now linked to the inherited heart condition Brugada syndrome.

Sources

1. Wikipedia: Sudden unexplained death syndrome
2. Bangkok Post: 'Widow's ghost' blamed for deaths (2018)