Shape-shifters, snakes, witches and demons are among the creepy characters that haunt Asia’s spookiest tourist attractions. These locations are infused with chilling mythology, dark history and claims of supernatural forces, which make them apt for a Halloween-inspired adventure.
As October 31 approaches, here are six of Asia’s most macabre sites.
Witch cafe in Bangkok, Thailand
Atiwan Kongsorn has just offered to speak to my dead relatives. While I weigh up this startling proposition, three black cats are staring at me inside his business, Ace of Cups, Bangkok’s only “witch cafe”.
Thailand is a deeply superstitious nation, where many people prefer odd to even numbers, choose a lucky date on which to buy a home, and believe in spirits and shape-shifters. This all makes the Thai capital a perfect venue for this Wiccan cafe.
Ace of Cups, in the city's northern suburbs, is a stylish two-storey venue co-run by Kongsorn, a practising witch for more than 20 years. On its ground floor is a seating area where customers sip cappuccinos, espressos or Matcha tea and eat fresh cakes and cookies, surrounded by pentagrams, Wiccan flags and books about angels, astrology and magical stones.
Upstairs, in a dimly-lit space, Kongsorn performs witchcraft. His services cover “basic spells” for about Dh50 as well as a “full spiritual cleansing” for Dh700. He says tourists typically choose his simplest services.
After he explains what each one involves, I decline, because one of my own superstitions is not attracting bad luck by messing around with strange forces I don’t understand.
Feroz Shah Kotla fort in Delhi, India
My pulse is elevated, sweat is soaking my skin, and I keep looking over my shoulder. I’m not typically a nervous person, nor am I easily scared. But right now, I’m undeniably rattled by my setting: the spectacular, ancient remains of Feroz Shah Kotla fort in the Indian capital.
The reason I’m so jumpy is that I have just read about the creepy folklore associated with this 14th-century citadel, built during the reign of the Islamic Delhi Sultanate. Tourists come to admire this fort’s weathered yet magnificent assortment of stepwells, mosques and monuments, while local Muslims are more likely to visit to pray to the shape-shifting jinn demons who supposedly lurk here.
Jinns are dangerous spirits who, it is believed, can cast curses. Yet they can also be powerful allies to those who worship them. Accordingly, the fort is filled with offerings, such as letters, coins and amulets, left by locals to appease the jinn. They add an eerie atmosphere to the impressive historic attraction.
Le Mat snake village in Hanoi, Vietnam
Le Mat is powered by snakes. In this unusual Vietnamese village, serpents create jobs, provide nourishing food and act as powerful symbols. They also help to attract tourists, who wander the quiet streets, past restaurants and businesses advertising everything from snake stew and steak to snake wine and blood.
A sleepy community about 8km east of Hanoi’s main tourist district, Le Mat has been home to families who make a living from catching and harvesting snakes for 500 years.
These include Ba Mao, who invites me into his house to show me his collection of snakes, dead and alive. For seven generations his family have been working as snake catchers in Le Mat. They are called out to collect snakes from homes, business and temples. They keep some to eat themselves, and sell others to local restaurants.
As Ba Mao holds up an angry cobra for me to admire, I notice his arms are covered in scars from snake bites. For a fee, he offers to show tourists the basics of snake handling. More often, though, foreign visitors choose a similarly daunting experience: drinking snake blood. I politely decline both activities, but leave Le Mat with an admiration for its brave snake catchers.
Zhazidong Prison in Chongqing, China
On the outskirts of Chongqing, visitors flock to a dense forest, which once echoed with the screams of hundreds of terrified people. Their pleas for help were in vain because back then, during China's civil war in the 1940s, they were locked up here, in a secret concentration camp.
Called Zhazidong Prison, it now operates as a museum that, via maps, images and artefacts, reveals the site's harrowing history. Visitors learn it was opened in 1943 by the KMT, the Chinese Nationalist Party, as part of its long-standing conflict with the country's Communist revolution movement.
Hundreds were detained here, in this huge city in south-western China. Many of these victims were subjected to violent interrogations, including in cells and in torture chambers that visitors can now peer into.
Kiyomizu-dera temple in Kyoto, Japan
One after the next, Japanese women drop to their knees and disappear inside a boulder. I watch them crawl through a tight passage that pierces this three metre-wide rock, which is covered in thousands of papers left by female worshippers in Kyoto. Each note features a written wish. Some are passionate professions of love, others are hopeful prayers to find a partner and some contain surprisingly grim “romantic” requests.
Female worshippers write a prayer, stick it to the rock and then inch through the tunnel, which supposedly ensures their wish will be granted. This ritual occurs dozens of times each day at Yasui Konpiragu shrine. Legend has it that this beautiful, 1,400-year-old Shinto complex is a portal to Japan’s spirit-filled underworld.
No city has preserved Japan’s unique, ancient heritage better than Kyoto, the country’s cultural hub and its national capital from 794 to 1868. Not all of its customs are positive, however. Love curses, for example, have long been a blight on Kyoto's religious sites, including Yasui Konpiragu and nearby Kiyomizu-dera. Priests at both complexes have to remove notes urging Shinto deities to rain misfortune upon a former partner or a current love rival.
Hwaseong Fortress in Suwon, South Korea
Near Seoul rises a grand fortress built to honour a prince who died a hideous death. In 1762, Korea’s Prince Sado was locked in a rice chest by his father, King Yeongjo. Day after day, the prince scratched, screamed and begged for freedom. But the Korean royal never escaped his grim confinement.
Hwaseong Fortress, which is now a tourist attraction and Unesco World Heritage site about 25km south of the South Korean capital, was commissioned by Prince Sado's son King Jeongjo. Prince Sado had been heir to the throne of Korea’s ruling Joseon Dynasty, but his father considered him untrustworthy. Rather than let his son succeed him as monarch, he locked him in the box and let him starve to death.
Praised by Unesco as one of the world’s finest intact military structures, the 130-hectare site impresses with its array of neatly preserved gates, towers, bastions, turrets and guard stations.
