Krahang & Krasue

In this week's episode, we're heading to Thailand for a monster couple, the Krahang and Krasue! How do these two work as a perfect vampiric pair? Can you believe they were seen THIS year (2024)? Find out this week!

Transcript

INTRO:
Hello and welcome to Myth Monsters, my name is Erin and I’ll be your host for these little snack bite size podcasts on folklore and mythical monsters from around the world. 

These podcasts focus on the actual cryptids, folklore and mythic monsters from global mythology, rather than focusing on full stories of heroes and their big adventures.

I’ll also be dropping in some references that they have to recent culture and where you can see these represented in modern day content so you can learn more, and get as obsessed as I am about these absolute legends of the mythological world.

I’m officially back from my holiday and all recovered from the social-ness of it. My cousin had a lovely wedding and I had a lovely time relaxing - and I only got sunburnt once. Turns out that Turkey has some violent mosquitos and I was bitten a lot rather than burnt, which I would say is worse in the short term.

DESCRIPTION:

Anyway, we’re going somewhere equally warm this week and heading over to Thailand for the first time in ages and I do have a slight change of plan with this episode, because I’m also combining it with another Thai monster as they often work together. So I hope you’re ready for this ghostly pair, the Krahang and the Krasue. 

Apologies for the late add-on, but I found that during my research that the Krahang was more of an add-on monster to the Krasue and would make sense to do them together. But I appreciate it’s last minute and hope it comes across as more of a nice surprise to get two in one episode instead of a marginal mistake on my end!

We’ll start with the Krahang, they are described as a male ghost, who has glowing eyes, is completely shirtless and only wearing a loincloth. He brandishes a rice winnowing basket to use to fly, which he wears like bracers and wields a long rice pounding pestle, which he is sometimes seen riding. During the day, he lives the life of a normal villager and only starts his hauntings in the night in rural areas. 

It’s said that the Krahang came to be because the man would have started to use sorcery and it backfired on him, turning him into a permanent fixture of the night. 

In contrast, the Krasue is his companion ghost, who is always female and is described as a beautiful woman with a tired expression during the day. But at night detaches her head and pulls out her spinal cord and entrails from the rest of her body and floats about with the Krahang. Her ghostly form has just her head, sometimes with rows of sharpened teeth in a wide grin, with her lungs, heart, stomach and intestines hanging down from her floating head, dripping with blood and slightly glowing in the dark. 

They are totally vampiric in nature and live off of the blood of victims that are already dead or incapacitated. They’re not capable of killing anything though, so would survive off sleeping people, as well as livestock like cattle and chickens if she couldn’t get people. Pregnant women are her favourite snack, and she would love to get her teeth in a placenta - meaning locals would naturally bury them as deep as they could away from them. If they could help it, they would feed on blood, but if that wasn’t available - they would eat rotting food, carrion and animal and human waste.

This monstrous woman comes to be in a couple of different ways, usually it’s from being cursed by engaging in too many sins in a previous life and once the woman dies, she becomes a ghost or phut in Thai. She is then doomed to live on the waste of humanity, and feeds off of human waste.

However, she could have also been possessed by an evil spirit of a Krasue, trying to learn black magic and made a mistake, had an abortion or killed someone in a previous life or consumed food or drink that had Krasue saliva in it. However, it’s usually the curse or the black magic practice that gets you turning into one or even just being related to someone who does. 

The Krasue is under a curse in Thai culture, and it is driven to consume. They would hide their headless body in a quiet, secret place and take off for the night with the Krahang. They would hunt through rural dark places to find their prey, and both would eat the waste left from humans, but if they found a living one, they would work as a team to get them in their clutches. First the Krahang would scare them off the path into the wilderness, leaving them open to the Krasue, who waits for them to fall asleep and feeds on their blood. They are incredibly embarrassed of their curse though, even in their ghostly form, meaning that if you catch them around, she would end up trying to get away as soon as possible 

The Krahang doesn’t really have much information on how to prevent them or take them out - although they do seem a lot less dangerous than their wives. For Krasue, there is at least a method of prevention which is building spiky fences or planting sharp bamboo outside your house, as they’re frightened their intestines may get stuck to them. You could tell that a Krasue had been nearby as you would find any washing you were drying outside would be covered in human waste and blood where she has wiped her mouth.

You could also kill a Krasue and there are a few ways to do this, but you’d have to find her body for a few. Once you’ve found it, you could either crush, burn or steal it as if the top half cannot find the bottom half, it would burn up in sunlight in the morning. If you found her in the wild with her body detached, you could cut off her intestines to cause her to burst into light and die too. 

But they are not a solo creature, they were able to create more of themselves too by feeding on unsuspecting sleeping people, if you were bitten - it was destined that you would become one once you died, so it’s a full circle really.

ORIGIN:

Now moving onto etymology, and we have a bit of a sad fact for this one and that’s that they don’t have any on record. We have assumptions, which is that Krasue might link to the word curse and that Krahang comes from the word for those rice winnowing baskets he uses, kradong - but we’re really not massively sure. 

In regards to their history, it’s also a little shaky due to the tribal culture and mostly word of mouth myth spreading, however, we do have a time bracket of when they were first written about. In 1805, there was a text published of all known Thai ghosts called the Three Seals Law. Within this, neither the Krasue or Krahang were mentioned, meaning that it was later on that they were written into belief. But we think they are much older than this just to clarify, they just weren’t written down at this point - and we don’t have a definitive answer on that I’m afraid.

But first, there’s actually a fictional story to the Krasue’s origin, which I thought I would share. There was once a princess who was in love with a man from a lower status but she had been prearranged to marry a Siamese nobleman. They loved each other, and apparently had a few flings but eventually, the fiance found out about this and sent her to be executed by burning at the stake. The night before the execution, the princess found a powerful witch, who placed a spell over her to protect herself from the flames. Unfortunately, the spell only took effect over half of her body and only her head, neck, and her internal organs remained intact whilst the flames consumed the rest of her - leaving her as the first ever Krasue. 

However, the Krasue and Krahang pair are renowned throughout Thai culture and are some of the most famous mythical monsters from this part of the world. So much so that they are still seen and mentioned to this day in Thailand so let’s get into some recent sightings shall we.

In July 2017, an 18-year-old girl in Buriram Province, said she saw a Krahang through a gap near the ceiling of her bathroom. It appeared as a large man with a winged back. She panicked and fled, telling her whole village about the incident. Many of the older villagers also panicked and one said she saw the same Krahang for ten years. The woman reportedly tried to get her son to film the creature, but never managed to do so. The elder of the village blamed a previously occupied house where her sister and mother died. She reported seeing bright lights floating outside at night and believed they were a Krasue and Krahang. Eventually they hired a sorcerer and still did not manage to banish either of them.

Later that year, a video clip was shared on online, showing an alleged floating thing in the air at the same level as a tree in the area at night. There is no information as to where the video came from and it did cause a stir online. However, it was found out that the entity was actually a drone, decorated as a man's face as a hoax - so that one is easy.

Last year in May, some teenagers in Ratchaburi Province were chatting around midnight at the edge of the irrigation canal. Suddenly, the youngest one noticed a strange red light floating in the direction of them. The other one shouted "Krasue!" and they all hurried away on a motorbike. It was recorded by one of them and posted on TikTok, where it went viral. An elderly local man said the area used to be rampant with Krasue in the past. This Krasue is named "I Kueam" and believed that it floats across the river from the opposite side.

In October, there were three eyewitness reports of Krasue in Lopburi Province. One was an elderly farmer who said he had a serious confrontation with a Krasue. It appeared to be a woman in her 60s with shoulder-length white hair and she bared her teeth at him. As he was about to hit it with the shovel he was carrying, it floated away. He claims that Krasue tried to break into his duck and chicken coops, and he later experimented with a dead duck and found the next day a Krasue had eaten the intestines out of the corpse. 

One of the female eyewitnesses said she encountered the Krasue in a field while waiting for her husband to farm. She said it floated along the surface of the water in the rice fields along with its intestines. She tried to take a video clip with her cell phone but was only able to capture two blurry photos. 

The last eyewitness was a 21-year-old woman who had just given birth a short time before. She woke up at 2am because her baby was crying. When she finished taking care of the baby, she went to the bathroom. When she came out she saw a strange light in front of the house and when she opened the curtains to see. It looked like something was floating past. She said she had left a large amount of blood-stained sanitary pads in a garbage bag in front of the house - which were torn up the next day.

Lastly, THIS YEAR in January 2024, a 16 year old girl in Surin Province went to take pictures of a starry night and found in one of the images, something that looked like a Krasue appeared floating above a tree. Later, a local on facebook posted this photo along with a message warning them to beware of its rampage and many locals confirmed that they had seen Krasue in the area before.

So they are still definitely about by all accounts, but they’re also used throughout Thai culture as a cultural icon. It’s said that an abnormally small banana should be eaten by the Krasue and that someone who eats too fast eats like a Krasue. There’s also a type of luminescent Thai mushroom named after them, the Krasue Mushroom and lastly, there’s a village called Krasue Marsh, but it was renamed because it was too frightening to Happiness Marsh - boo to that.

We do also have a possible scientific explanation to them, and that’s swamp science. When methane builds up within rotting food, bodies or any other organic matter - it eventually explodes which may create a little firework in the middle of a big field for example, and considering they tend to like these rural areas, it makes sense. However, there is an argument as to what causes ignition, but we won’t think about that bit. 

Lastly, our mythical comparisons for this one are easy. They’re unbelievably common in Southeast Asian folklore with the Mananggal in the Philippines, Penanagglan in Malaysia and Leyak in Indonesia all being these detachable head vampire ladies. The Krahang actually reminds me slightly of Baba Yaga from Slavic folklore because of his pestle and improvised wings, as she flies around on a pestle too - and that’s definitely not a comparison I was expecting to make.

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: 

Now onto modern media, there’s a couple of bits for this one that are in Thai and other Southeast Asian media for both of these monsters.

For art, I’d recommend looking at independent art for this one - unfortunately, there aren’t many portraits or scroll art for these two, so have a look at the creations of artists recently for spookier views on them.

In movies, we have; Inhuman Kiss, Inhuman Kiss: The Last Breath, My Mother is Arb, Krasue Sao, Nak, Oil of Eternal Life, Bloodthirsty Krasue, Demonic Beauty, Krasue Valentine, The Gluttonous Fear, Krasue Fat Pop, Krasue Rak Krasue Sawat, Phi Ta Wan Kap Achan Ta Bo, Lady Vampire, Heredity of Krasue, Freedom Deal, Mystics in Bali, Witch with the Flying Head, Kahang & Krahang.

For TV, we have; Krasue Mahanakhon, Krasue, Creepshow, Thep Sarm Rudoo, Grimm, Fresh Meat, InCryptid, The Aswang Phenomenon, Shake Rattle and Roll, Marvel Anime: Blade, Trese, Supernatural & Elemento.

In video games, we have ones such as; Eyes: The Horror Game, Nightfall: Escape, Shin Megami Tensei, Manang Game, Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, Indivisible, Dark Conspiracy, Malifaux & Final Fantasy.

My book recommendation this week is for In Grandmother's House: Thai Folklore, Traditions, and Rural Village Life by Sorasing Kaowai and Peter Robinson for a great look into local folklore in Thailand and if you’ve got little ones, grab a copy of Thai Children's Favourite Stories: Fables, Myths, Legends and Fairy Tales by Marian D Toth & Patcharee Meesukhon for some really sweet and illustrated Thai myths.

DO I THINK THEY EXISTED? 

Now it’s time for, do I think they existed?

Ah I’m always a bit on the fence about ghostly ones because there are just so many of them throughout world mythology that it’s hard to deny their existence sometimes. However, with these two, it’s a little bit more out there than the usual hauntings so maybe they’re a bit more dubious than others.

I do think the Southeast Asian female vampire organ-floating monsters are a bit of a push here though. I think you could get away with the Krahang, because he seems like a drunk Brit you would meet out in Thailand who came out for the cheap booze and discovered that they have giant pestles and rode it like a broom. However, with the Krasue, Manananggal, Penangalang and Leyak - they’re a bit harder to justify in a normal environment due to what they are, especially nowadays. But people still report seeing them - so who am I to deny it I guess. 

I do love that these two go round in a couple and that they kind of spend their evenings doing romantic things such as eating blood and terrorising villages with a large stick and rice baskets. Hashtag couple goals - but it also makes it trickers to say yes too, because there have been so few Krahang sightings.

I adore Asian ghosts, aswang and yokai - so these two have been quite high up on my list for a little while and I hope we can cover some more, albeit, some of them do end up crossing over into the similar monsters episodes - but I quite like the continuity somewhat.

But what do you think? Did the Krahang & Krasue haunt the dark recesses of Thailand? Let me know on Twitter!

OUTRO: 

What a combo monster this week, and we’ve not really done one of these for a while - so I hope the last minute add-on with the Krasue was worth it and was a bit of a nice surprise. She definitely filled out the episode, which massively saved me too, which I do appreciate from her.

Next week, we’re not heading anywhere in particular but looking at a religious monster that most people know. So I hope you’ve been good, because we’re loving Angels instead next Thursday - and I hope you all know the Robbie Williams song.

For now, thank you so much for listening, it’s been an absolute pleasure. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a rating on the service you’re listening on - I’ve got the twitter for any questions, or suggestions on what monsters to cover next and I’d love to hear from you. The social media handles for Tiktok, Youtube, Threads and Instagram are mythmonsterspodcast, and twitter is mythmonsterspod. But all of our content can be found at mythmonsters.co.uk, including some very cool merchandise - you can also find us on Goodpods, Buymeacoffee and Patreon if you want to help me fund the podcast too.

Come join the fun though and share this with your pals, they might love me as much as you do.

But for now, stay spooky and I’ll see you later babes.