Mae Nak Phra Khanong, “Lady Nak of Phra Khanong,” is a Thai ghost story set in the reign of King Rama IV. Nak, who lived on the banks of the Phra Khanong Canal, loved her husband Mak deeply. While she was pregnant he was conscripted and sent to war, where he was badly wounded; while he recovered in Bangkok, Nak and their child both died in childbirth. When Mak came home, his wife and child were waiting for him. The neighbors warned him that he was living with a ghost, and he refused to listen.
One day Nak dropped a lime off the porch while cooking and, in her haste, stretched her arm to an impossible length to pick it up from the ground below. Seeing this, Mak slipped away that night. He hid behind a bush of sticky Blumea, which ghosts are said to fear, and ran into Wat Mahabut, holy ground no ghost can enter. In her grief Nak terrorized the people of Phra Khanong until a powerful monk confined her spirit in an earthen jar and threw it into the canal; how it ends from there varies by telling.
The Thai historian Anek Nawikamul found an 1899 newspaper article claiming the story began with a real woman, Amdaeng Nak, whose son staged the haunting in women’s clothing to protect his inheritance. Today the Mae Nak shrine at Wat Mahabut still receives cloth, toys and dresses from people praying for easy childbirth or for husbands to be spared conscription.