Bangkok’s Silent Guardians: The Spirit Houses of the Metropolitan

By Kasim Sheerazi

A typical Spirit House found outside every condominium or park in Bangkok. It is said to bring good luck and prosperity to the neighborhood | photo credit: Kasim Sheerazi

Among Bangkok’s heavy skyline, spirit houses, otherwise known as san phra phum, stand watch across the city. Their intricate spires and gilded platforms are easy to overlook in the busy city, but they’ve always persisted on existing everywhere: on construction sites, at luxury hotels, outside shop fronts (Velarde 2020).

Many typical Thai houses, known as mubans, shelter the chao thii, a guardian spirit believed to inhabit the land. Traditionally, Thais erect these shrines to honor and appease these forces, inviting peace, prosperity, and protection. Offerings typically include garlands of marigolds, incense sticks, sweet red Fanta, to signal ongoing dialogues between Bangkok's human and spirit worlds (Velarde 2020; DW 2021).

While their role is of course spiritual, spirit houses also function socially. They’re believed to mark legitimacy for new buildings, bring prosperity, and also foster community rituals through collective offerings. In a city often described as fast-moving, spirit houses provide continuity, stitching generations together across the everchanging skylines.

Ancient Roots in a Modern City

The practice of maintaining spirit houses predates Buddhism’s arrival in Thailand. Animist beliefs were layered over centuries with Hinduism and later Theravada Buddhism, continuing to shape everyday life of Thai society (Kitiarsa 2005; Thailand NOW 2023). Unlike formal temple rituals, spirit house worship is often informal and personal, reflecting the "domestication" of religious practice, where ancient traditions quietly serve contemporary needs (Kitiarsa 2005).

Spirit houses in Bangkok reflect the city’s spiritualism. Around Ratchaprasong intersection, shrines like the Erawan Shrine, a grand cousin of the household spirit house, draw daily crowds of worshippers. Elsewhere, small, spirit houses weigh heavy overtime under the weight of offerings and time by the locals, often placed on the sidewalk corners and condominium gardens and end of parkways (Jakarta Post 2018).

Their designs range from ornate, multi-tiered structures influenced by traditional Thai architecture to minimalist shrines outside high-rise condominiums. In areas with large Chinese-Thai communities, the spirit houses sometimes take the form of red-colored pagodas, blending cultural influences into new spiritual hybrids (Taste of Thailand. 2023) .

Red Fanta and red “est” offerings in front of a Spirit House. They only offer red drinks because it symbolizes ‘blood and life’ and it is said to attract good spirits (photo credits: Wikimedia Commons, "Spirit House with Red Fanta Offerings").

Tradition Meets Modernization

Even Bangkok’s most modern developments respect these ancient structures. When constructing CentralWorld, one of Asia’s largest malls, developers preserved and enhanced the complex’s original shrine, acknowledging not just tradition, but also the spiritual identity of Thai culture.

In newer developments, the spirit houses still adapted. Eco-conscious buildings are now commissioning sustainable spirit houses made of recycled wood and low-carbon materials. Meanwhile, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bangkok residents turned to virtual offerings via apps and livestreams, extending traditional practices into the digital sphere (The Nation Thailand 2021).

This evolving relationship shows that spirit houses are not relics. Instead, they remain active sites where tradition bends according to development but it never breaks. Beliefs are continuously reinterpreted rather than discarded.

A traditional red variant of the spirit house, found in Sukothai. These design choices for the spirit house which utilize red with golden streaks of design are said to be influenced from the Chinese cultural beliefs of luck and protection (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons, "Maison des esprits d'un restaurant de Sukhothaï")

Why They Endure

Spirit houses endure because they offer something tangible in a rapidly intangible world. They localize fears and hopes. They are a way to retain faith, honor the unseen loved ones, and make peace with the uncontrollable future (Thailand NOW 2023).

In a city chasing the future at breakneck speed, the quiet presence of a spirit house shows that the past is never truly past. Every incense stick lit, every bottle of sweet soda placed at a shrine, demonstrates a unique Thai coexistence: one towards the future, and the other offering to the spirits who were here first  (Velarde 2020).