Reading Donald Gregg's book, Pot Shards, about his time in the CIA, part of which was spent in Myanmar, I unexpectedly came across a reference to ghosts. It was a subject that had fascinated me ever since I went to Myanmar in 1974. I was prompted to write the following piece for the Mekong Review, a quarterly literary magazine that was making a strong impression among Southeast Asian specialists at the time.

Anyone who has lived in Myanmar (formerly Burma) for any period can probably tell a story or two about ghosts. If they have not experienced a visitation themselves, they usually know someone who has done so. Indeed, so ubiquitous are such tales that, even among foreign circles in Myanmar, where one might expect a fair degree of scepticism, there is often a quiet acceptance that there are phenomena in the country that simply cannot be explained in terms of the rational calculations that usually govern daily life.

Such beliefs have been the subject of several scholarly studies. In 1967, for example, the American anthropologist Melford Spiro wrote a book titled Burmese Supernaturalism that not only explored the world of animist spirits called nats, but also devas, witches, wizards and ghosts. In 2014, Jane Ferguson published an article in the Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology that described how workers at airports in Myanmar currently manage ghostly influences. The same year, Susan Conway published her fascinating study of Tai Magic: Arts of the Supernatural in the Shan States and Lan Na.

All three authors were struck by the diversity of supernatural beings in Myanmar, and their easy acceptance as natural phenomena by members of the local population.

There have been several accounts by contemporary observers of encounters with ghosts in Myanmar. For example, in her prison memoir Nor Iron Bars a Cage, Ma Thanegi described an incident in which a group of spectral women created such a noise that the guards suspected an attempt by the prisoners to incite unrest. On another occasion, some prisoners saw a group of men in old-fashioned uniforms climbing up some stairs, only to disappear. In his book From the Land of Green Ghosts, Pascal Khoo Thwe described a scene in the jungle in which he encountered the spirits of executed government soldiers.