Why do Thai spirit houses have Red Fanta as offerings?
In front of every house, every business, every building in Bangkok and the rest of Thailand, you will find a spirit house. It might be made of classic wood, ornate cement , colorful ceramic, or more modern green sculpted glass. They come in all sizes and resemble temples or traditional Thai houses.
In front of every spirit house, you will also see offerings. The most common of them all? A small red Fanta bottle with a straw. Thai ghosts need straws too, it seems.
Thai people say that a little bottle of Fanta will get you ten wishes. If you really need help from the spirits, then you might as well offer ten bottles and an extra serving of rice and fruit.
What is a Thai spirit house?
The first time I saw a Thai spirit house was in a place very far away from Thailand, it was in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A couple of friends who used to live in Koh Samui, brought their beautiful wooden spirit house all the way to South America and have taken it to other countries since.
They told me how the spirit houses are meant for the spirits that dwell the areas where living people make their homes. I found it quite interesting, a little romantic even and kept the whole idea of it in the back of my mind. And then a few years later we found ourselves in Thailand where the spirit houses are as common as broken tail cats.
Whenever any kind of building is constructed, there has to be a spirit house set up with it, to shelter the spirits that live on that land. Normal houses have small spirit houses, apartment buildings have bigger ones and hospitals have huge ones! Inside and around the house there are little figurines of people, ceremonial dancers, animals, and even furniture.
My personal journey with Thai Spirit Houses
After months of wandering around and seeing plenty of little houses with offerings of fruit and coconuts and flowers and candles and incense, I realized that the most common offering was actually red strawberry Fanta! (opened and with a straw, of course) I sure found that quite bizarre, but then I understood, or at least I think I did. When you eat all that spicy Thai food and are feeling like your mouth is burning, red Fanta simply cuts that fire down to nothing and yum does it taste good. Who knows…maybe the spirits like that too.
I did some research…
I delved into Thai spirit history and learned that Thais are not only Buddhists, but they are also historically Animistic, meaning that they worship spirits, and believe in all types of ghosts, which they call Phi. They believe in lots of different Phis, there are a whole bunch of them, separated into the ghosts of dead humans and the spirits of other living things like the earth or the trees.
What are the Thai Spirit Houses for?
Typically, the spirit houses are for the earth spirits that live on that piece of land and for any humans that might have died in the vicinity and were never reborn. Every morning, the persons that live or work in the area where the spirit house is, give an offering of food or flowers and a reverential Wai (traditional Thai greeting that involves a bow with both hands joined at the chest) to appease the spirits and keep them happy.
Thais believe that spirits can be good, evil, violent or mischievous and by giving them food, flowers, and red Fanta, they will not bother, and rather protect the living who take care of their little houses.
As I was getting this post together and organizing a nice collection of photos, a friend who lives in an Artist Community outside of the city told me that a previous artist resident had totally flipped with all the spirit houses and started stealing them! He eventually had about 40 different stolen houses piled up in the garden of the studio.
I wonder how many spirits he angered by doing that! The Thai workers and artists in the community were freaking out over what the guy had done and finally managed to return some houses and others had to be left in a “spirit house cemetery” (I still have not found one of these, but I did find one for Chinese house shrines, its similar and there´s a photo), and a ritual was made for forgiveness and many red Fantas were given as gifts.
