The Exquisite Corpse

Singapore is known as the law-and-order jewel of Asia. But scratch the surface and you'll find a culture of superstition, corpse oils, talisman shops, & black magicians who will curse your enemies.

And that’s just the beginning.

When I landed in Singapore for the first time, my top priority was to hit the Long Bar in the Raffles Hotel and order a Singapore Sling.

The hotel is an institution of the Lion City. Founded in 1887 by the Armenian Sarkies brothers and named after Singapore’s founder, Sir Stamford Raffles, the hotel has kept its allure for over 130 years.

Its colonial architecture, impeccable service, and roster of legendary guests - Kipling, Conrad, Chaplin - are only trumped, in my mind, by the fact that this gin sling was first crafted there in 1915. Others may be impressed that Murakami wrote a novel named after the hotel, but for me, the drink is what pulled me in.

The hotel sits a stone’s throw from Singapore’s central business district on Beach Road. The street is lined with other prominent city landmarks, like the neo-gothic St Andrew’s Cathedral; and the Masjid Hajjah Fatimah mosque, itself an architectural marriage of European and Islamic style. Another symbol of the eclectic city.

When you arrive to the Raffles, a tall Sikh man wearing a white, neatly tailored old-fashioned military suit will greet you. His employment is a holdover from the lost colonial era.

The bar will be packed, so go early.

On this first trip to Singapore a decade ago, I sipped the lush, sunset-colored sling at the Long Bar and thought of the legends who had sat on the same stools before me.

I felt like I had made it. I was just a dropout 20-something kid from Nowhere, America - and here I was in a tropical dream, at a bar in a hotel that I couldn’t afford to stay at, surrounded by expat old hands and stunning Asian women splashing cash.

My friends were back drinking Pabst tappers at the corner bar playing the same tired jukebox tunes and passing around the same barflies - no bueno.

I knew Asia was the place for me.

My interest in Asia wasn’t this superficial, however.

I first picked up a book on vipassana meditation written by a monk from the Thai Forest Tradition when I was 15, and after that turned to an autodidact study of the Pali Suttas.

It was this strain of my soul, the one tied up in eastern mysticism - which some of you would consider as a polluted superstition, but for me it is of great importance - that brought me to Asia in the first place.

And during my visit to Singapore, this interest sent me around the city to examine its Buddhist shrines.

Two of the great schools of Buddhism, what we classify as Theravada and Mahayana, are represented in the Lion City, as the population is a mix of East, South, and Southeast Asian. So there are no shortage of temples that you can visit, and I did, ticking off the major ones on my route.

But one morning something else caught my eye.

It was a small shop house tucked in an alley just outside the central district. The signage was in gold Chinese characters, but underneath in red lettering it said: Amulets, Magic, & Fortune.

I stepped in and the old uncle shopkeeper ignored me. The shelves were dusty and disheveled, filled with amulets of the Buddha, different monks, and other deities, along with small bottles of oils, joss sticks, statues, coins, and flowers.

One item stood out, sitting in the dim corner: a child’s doll that was tattooed with sak yant, Thai magical symbols and lettering. Later I learned this doll was known as a kuman thong (กุมารทอง in Thai), a “golden child”.

I studied the doll until I felt the old uncle’s eyes tracking me. The longer I lingered, the heavier his gaze felt.

I was fairly new to Asia at this time, and out of respect, I took leave of the shop and walked back to my hotel - a cheap 2-star flop - to research more, as that strange tattooed doll wouldn’t leave my mind.

I discovered that Singapore had many of these amulet shops, with one of the busiest centers at the Fu Lu Shou Complex, a mixed indoor-outdoor mall just a ten-minute walk from the Raffles. Quite literally in the hotel’s opulent shadow.

I spent the next afternoon in the bustle of Fu Lu Shou and its maze of shops. The irony that on the surface this city-state was modern, regimented, and wealthy, but possessed an underbelly of superstition intrigued me.

This is what inspired the research for this essay.

After returning to Thailand, and over the years, I met several individuals who told me more about the occult trade that the Singaporeans were fervently devoted to.

And it’s at this point where I move beyond my anecdotes and into into the side alleys of Singapore’s underground magic economy, introduce its practitioners, their relics and history, in this essay that I call:

The Exquisite Corpse

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Hoary Origins

Many trace Singapore’s interest in Thai Buddhist occultism to an unlikely source: Jackie Chan. In 1974, audiences in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore saw Jackie Chan wearing this Thai amulet.

The specific amulet in this photo was produced at Wat Phikunthong, a temple about 90 minutes from Bangkok, by the revered abbot Luang Phor Pae.

He was famous for his amulet productions in the 20th century. The image of the amulet is of one Somdej Toh (สมเด็จโต), a master of Thai Buddhism, who lived and taught the Dhamma in the early-to-mid 19th century.

After Chan was seen wearing it, demand for Phra Somdej amulets surged across SE Asia and beyond.

Here is an advertisement from 1986 that shows this phenomenon:

And a contemporary online advertisement, which shows that this specific version of the Phra Somdej, sourced from Luang Phor Pae, still has considerable commercial interest:

But the interest in Thai amulets goes further back still.

There was another famous monk, called Luang Por Kron by Thais and Tok Raja by Malaysians and Singaporeans, a title reserved for Sultans of the Malay. He had the face of a bulldog and lived in the Malaysian state of Kelantan, which borders southern Thailand.

He started producing Phra Pidta (พระปิดตา in Thai), or “blind-folded Buddha” amulets in 1957. They were made from the sap of the Ton Rak tree (ต้นรัก in Thai, scientific name Gluta usitata) - prized for a source of lacquer in that country. Chinese Singaporeans made pilgrimages to his temple at Kelantan, Wat Bang Sae, and a brisk trade in his creations still continues to this day.

This is all to say that pilgrimage to Thai temples for occult protection has long been common among Chinese Malaysians and Singaporeans.

Scholars trace Chinese interest in Thai magic back to the British Malaya period.

But it wasn’t until the post-independence era, starting in 1957, when popular interest really took hold. Change and uncertainty ruled this time, while Chinese-Singaporeans turned to amulets for spiritual protection.

There are dozens of monasteries and sacred sites across the Islamic-dominant border provinces of Songkhla and Pattani on the Thai side and Kelantan on the Malay, where monks steeped in the esoteric tradition of these amulets live and work. It’s easy to catch a bus from Singapore to this border region, costing about $40 USD and taking 14 hours.

And remember: these buses go both ways. Singapore hosts between 20,000 - 50,000 Thai guest workers, who bring their culture and customs with them, which includes an unflinching belief in ghosts, curses, amulets, magical objects, and the rituals that can bring merit, and misfortune, to their desired targets.

You may wonder why Buddhists would put their faith in amulets.

It’s not my intention to write the complete history of magic and occultism in Buddhist cultures, since that would be beyond the scope of this piece, but it’s crucial that a background to these practices are given here.

In the Kevatta Sutta of the Digha Nikaya, the Buddha lays out the various iddhis (Pali; ‘siddhis’ in Sanskrit) that his followers may encounter.

He describes a monk who can bi-locate; appear and disappear; move through walls and mountains; dive into the earth as if it was water; walk on water as if it were land; fly like a bird while sitting. He can access these powers through a “Gandhari charm,” or the power of concentrated will itself.

There’s another charm, the “Manika,” that grants power to read minds.

But the Buddha dismissed these miracles as distractions, saying he felt “horrified, humiliated, and disgusted” by them. They’re byproducts of spiritual practice, but ultimately don’t resolve the main problem that he identifies in life - that of suffering (dukkha) or its solution, which are the Four Noble Truths (cattari ariyasaccani, Pali).

This is one reason why many, even in countries like Thailand, Burma, and Cambodia where amulet culture is strong, see the belief in these powers as adharmic or against the teachings of Gotama Buddha.

And yet, things remain complicated.

In Thailand, the figure of the wandering forest sage, the Ruesi / lersi (in Thai, ฤๅษี; rishi in Sanskrit; “seer” in English) dominates the popular consciousness - although there are less than 100 real ones left in the country.

In iconography he shows up as a man of nature, a chimera with a demon or lion or bull’s head, or wearing the skin of tigers, uncut hair, and sitting in meditative positions.

Rare photo of Lersi Tafai Akhadamo, with two female disciples

In Burma, they call this man the weizza (ဝိဇ္ဇာ, Burmese; from the Sanskrit vidyadhara; sharing the same proto-Indo-European root, *weyd-, meaning “to see”, as English’s wizard).

The wiezza are organized in secret groups who work with various forms of magic - alchemy, incantations, metallurgy, and forest medicine - and they’re documented in texts that are over 2,000 years old.

Much of Thai magic was transmitted into the culture from India through Burma over the centuries, then later spread into Cambodia and beyond.

This is the tradition that produced what we see in modern amulets, yantra and sak yant (magical tattoos), and other magical relics found in SE Asia.

It’s here that I want to introduce the specifics of how this occult economy works, who are the procurers, producers, and smugglers that bring these items into Singapore.

And since we’ve briefly explored the history, let’s look at a few of the rarest items that Singaporeans seek, the ones that fetch the highest prices.

This is where things get a little strange.

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The Child That Can’t Breathe

In the introduction, I brought up the kuman thong - the tattooed doll that I found in that dusty amulet shop.

These dolls have a tangled, syncretic history, as the word itself is derived from the Sanskrit kumara meaning “child or young prince” and the Thai word for gold, thong (ทอง), which comes from the old Chinese word for copper (銅).

The vast majority of them now are produced simply by marking up normal dolls with magical incantations, which then are given a small blessing by an ajahn (อาจารย์ in Thai), in this context an occult magician although the word generally means teacher.

But the lore behind these dolls goes back over 500 years to one Khun Paen, a Siamese soldier.

a rare Kuman Thong bronze from the monk Luang Phor Sanit, said to be made in the occult style described below

In one of the stories, Khun Paen went to a graveyard where he encountered the ghost of a mother who passed away while pregnant. The warrior removed the spirit of the child from this ghost’s belly and raised it up, then captured the spirit in a doll, which became the kuman thong.

This specific type of ghost, known in Thai as Phi Day Tang Glom (ผีตายทั้งกลม), has special magical power - haunting, vengeful, and fearsome - because the spirit of the child that died yearns for a life that it never had.

Khun Paen subdued this ghost, showing that he was an occult adept, along with hundreds of other spirits there in the graveyard.

Kuman Thong coated in layers of bone chips

In another tale, Khun Paen murdered his lover, cut his son from her belly, then roasted the fetus in flames while chanting specific mantras that bound the spirit to him.

The body oils left after the cremation, known as Nam Man Prai (น้ำมันพราย), were mixed with lacquer, beeswax, and gold leaf to form the doll or kuman thong.

It’s this specific type of doll, made with the remains of a child who met a violent and tragic end, which fetches the highest price in the occult trade. And I want to underline something here - these dolls are still being made in this fashion to this day, although they were eclipsed by another fad which reached a fever-pitch in the 2010’s.

Thep doll, or a Kuman Thong with an angel who has been invited in; the kind I saw in Singapore

It was then that the style of kuman thong, and the materials used in their crafting, changed from actual remains of children who met untimely and violent ends to a more palatable plastic version that you see here.

When this doll is blessed, the angel of a child who has passed away is summoned and captured in the doll, instead of its ghost - a distinction in that the angel has moved onto the next realm, whereas a ghost lingers on earth after death.

There was a stretch of time in the early-to-mid 2010’s in Bangkok where every other chick you’d see, from teens to old aunties, would be lugging one of these dolls around with them. Again, it is extremely rare for dolls of this variety to contain prai or human remains.

These are also extremely popular in Singapore, where they often take a cute form as seen in this advertisement, published only days ago.

Devotees who carry the kuman thong do so for their supposed benefits, which are said to bring the owners wealth and prosperity. Oftentimes, these dolls will become a regular feature in the owner’s household and are treated with the same loving care as one would give to their own child: treats, pampering, doting, washing, and all.

As an aside, I’ve been to the room of a bar girl who kept a kuman thong on a shelf beside her bed, telling me that the spirit within the doll was of her own aborted child. Other mongers I’ve spoken with confirm this is common practice.

There are other items of interest however, more horrible and rare.

One is known as the luk krok (ลูกกรอก), an amulet made from the whole fetus of a stillborn baby, or even more magically potent, of a fetus from the body of a mother who was killed in an accident, suicide, or murder. In Thai, it translates literally as “stillborn child” or “the child that can’t breathe.”

Once in the hands of an ajahn, the body is dried and preserved with salts, then lacquered and layered with gold foil. The timing of its production is chosen by auspicious measure, consulting astrological charts, which is joined with incantations that seal the ghost of the unborn child into the amulet.

These rituals are kept private and the details secret, although I’ve met a couple ajahn who are involved in their production, who confirmed that the specifics vary in terms of how they are made.

A lot of the time I get the sense that the details of these rituals are made up as they go, but at other times I pick up hints of more ancient undercurrents, as this practice is passed down in lineages from one master to their acolytes.

In popular belief, the luk krok can be extremely dangerous to even behold, let alone possess. It’s said if the child spirit within the amulet isn’t given proper respect and care, it can turn on the owner and wreak havoc and violence on everything around it.

The first seven days to a month of possessing a luk krok are the most important, where the owner must feed the spirit milk, put it in a crib, bathe and dress it as if it were alive.

The rarity of this item eclipses any other in the Thai occult system, and the price it fetches reflects that. It’s easy to find cheap examples of this item with a Google search, where eBay will have them on offer for $100 USD, but these are obviously not the real deal, and mostly are a way to profit from the superstitious.

Some practitioners compromise and pick up amulets made from a cat’s fetus, in the traditional method, and these can go for upwards of $300 USD.

With these figures in mind, you can speculate as to how much a legitimate human fetus luk krok can fetch.

With that kind of money on the table, the trade is lively.

The two bottlenecks for the black market of luk krok come first in the acquisition of the human fetus and second in the smuggling of the finished product to markets where people pay top dollar, such as Singapore and Taiwan.

News stories pop up every couple months that cover the arrest of those involved at these two stages of the trade. Strangely, it’s never the ajahn who are caught in the illicit production, but only the procurers, smugglers, and merchants.

In the province of Sa Kaeo, roughly 200 kilometers east of Bangkok, a man ran an amulet shop where he also sold genuine luk krok.

He hosted tours of Chinese Singaporeans who sought after this illicit item. One customer tried to purchase one for roughly $1,000 USD in equivalent currency, and when the shopkeeper sent the package to another province in northern Thailand, the post office intercepted the parcel, finding the desiccated body. This happened just recently, in February 2025.

In another disturbing case, a nurse at a Bangkok hospital collected 14 fetuses from her work, stashing them at her home with intent to sell them for luk krok production.

And in yet another, a Taiwanese man with a British passport was caught smuggling six real luk krok out of Thailand, destined for the underground trade in Taiwan and China.

One case revealed a dissonance in Thai society, bringing attention from political activists and journalists, who viewed Thailand’s prohibitive abortion laws as regressive. Over 2,000 buried fetuses were discovered at a Bangkok temple after locals could no longer ignore the smell. They were traced back to illegal abortion clinics operating throughout the tropical megacity.

This happened in 2010, and since then abortion laws have been relaxed, but the anglophone press never explored the fact that these fetuses are often sold to enterprising ajahn who will perform the rituals necessary to turn them into salable amulets, especially to overseas contacts and markets like in Singapore.

As recently as 2015, one of these fetuses would fetch an equivalent of roughly $400 USD on the Thai domestic black market. This was revealed in a case where a gold-foil covered fetus was found in a glass coffin, buried beneath a Brahma shrine in the northern city of Chiang Mai.

If this same item was exported to a more lucrative market, say in Singapore or Taiwan, the price can reach heights of $5,000 to $10,000 USD, depending on the source, rarity, conditions of the corpse, how the fetus died - where violent deaths become more valuable - and what ajahn performed the rituals to trap the spirit inside.

These international markets: Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, even the US and Europe, are where the majority of these items end up to be sold. Although the goods that you’ll find advertised online through Facebook, Instagram, and other websites are only simulacra of true occult productions, despite claims of authenticity.

It would be valuable to interject briefly on the last story, which features that strange syncretic mix of animism, occultism, Buddhism, and Hinduism in the form of a Brahma shrine.

There’s a satirical phrase, critical of these occult practices, that I’ve come across in my readings in Thai, which says:

เทวดาทำนา เทวดาเก็บเกี่ยว เทวดาขอทาน
โดยยกผีเร่ร่อนข้างสนามหลวง ว่าเป็นเทพวิชิตครับ

The gods (here using the Thai word derived from the Sanskrit deva) farm; the gods harvest; and the gods beg. But the wandering ghosts of Sanam Luang are elevated as gods of victory.

Sanam Luang, now an open field that lays beside the famous Grand Palace in Bangkok, was historically a place for public cremations of commoners and unclaimed bodies.

Spirits of those who died violently or without proper rites are believed to haunt the area.

Calling these restless ghosts “gods of victory” (เทพวิชิต) after saying that the traditional gods are farmers, harvesters, and beggars, is an ironic inversion that conveys the weight of occultism in the religious mind of the region: powerful spirits that can do your bidding are more important than the once lofty gods of Brahmanism who now are left to do the jobs of commoners in this world.

The motivation that spurs interest in these charged objects, more often than not, boils down to a desire for material gain, whether it’s financial or romantic.

Remember that the believers treat these dolls, amulets, and other objects as spiritually alive, that is to say, they take care of them as if they were a loved one. It’s like having a special advisor and friend who will arrange success behind the scenes for you, clearing away any obstacles in the way of your goals.

Ethics and the laws of normal society do not apply to this shadowy world and its ghosts, however.

Crime often overlaps with the occult trade in strange ways: a string of armed robberies in Singapore; drug trafficking and prostitution; scams and madness and murder itself.

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The Spirit of Vice

Criminal enterprise is common between Singapore and neighboring nations.

Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand are all attractive places for entrepreneurial law-breakers, whether they profit from drugs, sex, scams, or the occult.

A few examples from recent headlines.

In June 2025, two Singaporeans and a Thai were arrested in a joint anti-vice sweep. Their charges, human trafficking. Over $700,000 USD was seized from the Singaporean’s bank account, along with laptops, mobile phones, hard drives, bank cards and SIM cards.

The syndicate was bringing the girls from Thailand into Singapore, where they could fetch a higher price for sex.

I recall a Vietnamese woman at a Laotian brothel that related her plans to me one night, saying that she’d soon “go to Singapore, more money there.”

I trust that she made it safely.

Another headline, May 2025: Singaporean man in Thailand nabbed for being part of illegal vape network. Over $500,000 USD was seized, along with vaping equipment and narcotics.

The product being sold were e-cigarettes loaded with etomidate - a nervous system depressant - and ecstasy, popular in Bangkok’s buzzing nightlife scene. They’re known as “zombie cigarettes.”

Yet another, October 2024: Thai woman in $32m luxury goods scam convicted; prosecution seeking 14 to 15 years jail. Her husband, a Singaporean national. The pair bilked 189 victims into forking over hefty cash for watches and bags that never materialized.

Sometimes a strange headline will pop up, like this one from just a week ago, September 2025: 7 people, including drunken girl, 16, arrested in anti-secret societies raids in Rochor, Little India.

The news article describes it as a minor vice crackdown of vapes, which are illegal in Singapore, but also that the business was an entertainment venue, common in the district, with a “stage area where patrons pay to hang flower garlands and sashes on female performers”. The bit about the secret societies, also illegal, stood out to me - along with the girl being underage.

Another story from the vice beat, December 2024: 35 people arrested for suspected involvement in vice-related activities. They operated out of Traditional Chinese Medicine shops, where sexual services were being offered along with the ginseng.

This stuff shouldn’t come as a surprise to enjoyers of happy ending jerk shacks.

I invoke these headlines for two reasons.

First, to demonstrate that Thailand and Singapore are closer than many think. As mentioned earlier, you can take a bus from the southern Thai border to Singapore in 14 hours, and for many years, the legendary Eastern & Oriental Express train connected the two locales - but I believe this service has been curtailed, sadly. Although China is now building out their high-speed train network, in a project called the Kunming–Singapore railway (中国—新加坡铁路), to connect Singapore to Bangkok, then to Yunnan and onward to Beijing.

Remember that Southeast Asia has a liminal geography, the borders have always been porous and changing, not just the land but in the shadow world, too. Bodies, drugs, ghost dolls, scams - they move in the same sort of trade.

And second, that the law-and-order Lion City does have an active underworld. For most outsiders, Singapore is the American kid Michael Fay who was caned for tagging subway cars back in the 1990s. Or for the political readers, they see Lee Kuan Yew - powerful reformer indeed - but no man can fully solve vice and its spoils.

Other crimes in Singapore land closer to the occult nature of our inquiry. Take the case from July 1975 of the Swimming Trunk Gang.

It sounds silly, but I assure you, this isn’t a joke.

Over the span of 30 months these four robbers, acolytes of black magic arts, terrorized Singapore while wearing only swimming trunks. They committed more than 500 armed robberies and home invasions where they assaulted and raped at knife-point. They hid out at Bidadari Cemetery where they were finally caught.

The ring-leader, Suhaymi Harith, claimed to possess occult powers that would protect the gang from police.

Or take these modern flirtations with vice and the occult.

Common scams take place through online marketplaces, whether it’s Facebook or Carousel, where these items are sold.

In 2017, one woman was relieved of $40,000 USD when a man promised her that he could remove a black magic spell that had been cast on her. These sort of scams are happening daily in Singapore, and no wonder, given that a sizeable portion of the population are convinced that a parallel, hidden world exerts power over our own.

See the screenshot conversation above for an example.

And it’s not only the Chinese Singaporeans, who have a Buddhist cultural background, that pay for spiritual protection.

Ruqyah, or Islamic magic, flourishes in the Lion City alongside the Thai occult trade. Nearly 15% of the city is ethnically Malay, a Muslim population that has its own syncretic magical tradition that stretches back to pre-Islamic times.

Their name for spirits in the Malay language, orang halus, translates roughly as “fine people”. Locals believe that this spirit world exists next to our own and the orang halus can be negotiated with for material gain - or to command them against enemies. Objects bound with black magic are called buhul in Malay, meaning “knot”, and can take the form of rope, dolls, animal skin, or metallic objects.

But true Ruqyah relies on an Arabic influenced tradition, where Quranic verses are recited to clear illnesses, bad luck, and other maladies that are attributed to malign spiritual forces.

Singapore holds multitudes when it comes to the occult, which are as diverse as its population.

Anecdotes of locals who are victim of the darker current of Islamic magic pop up from time to time. One man shared his story where he found a package that contained a note scrawled with upside down Arabic, a photo of himself, and an unknown powdered substance, all wrapped neatly with a string.

The note was translated and confirmed to be the Shahada, an Islamic pillar of faith that proclaims there is only one God and his messenger is Mohammad. The recipient of this package was still advised to go to a local mosque for investigation in the matter.

Plenty of Singaporean websites offer Ruqyah sessions. Prices are all over the place, but an average home visit to clear bad spirits and secure blessings will run you $150 USD.

Financial motives drive much of the occult trade - for others it’s lust and the promise of power. These are the linchpins of vice. But there are more dreadful currents of superstition that have surfaced in Singaporean history, where asking “who gains?” will leave you empty-handed.

There are no easy answers in this domain.

Remember that the spirit world does not operate as our own - it moves by older laws.

Rape and murder cross an invisible, primitive line in the moral psyche. Acts of domination over body and life itself. Two crimes that when fused with superstition cause strange figures to emerge. Not the buyers of charms or spells, but those who wield rarer powers as their own form of magic.

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You Want It Darker

I took a break when writing this article for a couple days when I reached this point.

I spent the time thinking about the invisible moral line that rape and murder violates.

And I wrote a thousand word detour that went through ancient Greek punishment for adultery and rape, the #MeToo case of Danny Masterson, prison gangs and violation, and other sundry topics that tease out the sex and death connection.

I decided to cut it from this essay - as I wanted to keep trekking on the article’s central spine - but should I have included it?

You tell me.

I still have it tucked away if needed. I like to be personable and get direct feedback from my readers, and I like to experiment - so feel free to tell me what you think.

Anyway, this is where we come back to Singapore to look at the first murder case that I have to present for you.

In my view, the line crossed by murder invites forces into this world from beyond the human realm.

In Singapore, this line was crossed on October 24th, 1984.

Frankie Tan was murdered that night. It was a new moon, a strange fact that hasn’t been mentioned in any other record of this case. As those who walk the path of magick know, this lunar phase is when the chthonic force is in its ascendant.

If the murder was planned for this night for that reason or not, I’m unsure - but it’s important enough to note.

On that night Mr. Tan, aged 39, was ambushed by four assailants and strangled to death. Their weapon was a nylon rope, tied six times around his neck. He was found at 2AM by his wife, Rose Lee, aged 50, after returning home from a late-night Mahjong session.

Mr. Tan was a relatively successful man, serving as vice president at American Express’ Singapore division. He made enough money to afford overseas trips to the United States and Japan. His wife was a former cabaret dancer from Malaysia who came to the Lion City to make better money. She paid his way through school with her dancer’s wage. A real storybook romance if I’ve ever heard one.

Things from here get messy.

Rose Lee had a brother-in-law, Vasavan Sathiadew, who called her up one day to inform her that Mr. Tan had been sleeping with his own wife, Rose’s sister, for the past eleven years.

This wasn’t the only philandering that Mr. Tan had been up to. He was fucking his secretary, along with the wives of his own brothers. Not just that, but two years prior to his murder, Mr. Tan had brought a younger mistress, Thereisa Lee, aged 25, into the home he shared with Rose, and forced his wife to sleep on the couch.

After all of this abuse, Rose asked for a divorce - and Mr. Tan rejected the request. He beat her instead.

Their relationship cratered.

One wonders what Mr. Tan wanted from a woman that much older than him. If it was just for the money early on, it would make sense in light of the other facts of the case - but why did he keep her around for so long, even good work and success?

Rose persisted, still desperate to make their marriage work. She suffered abuses more than just the cheating - she was berated and struck by her husband as she tried to pick up the pieces of their failed pairing.

In desperation, this aged cabaret dancer, a woman who left her home in Malaysia for a better life, turned to the black arts.

Rose and Vasavan engaged in this magic to take down Mr. Tan, but despite their efforts, he continued his abuse. Vasavan seethed with his own desire for revenge, having lost his own wife to Mr. Tan’s seduction, and saw murder as the only solution. He devised a plot that involved three other men. Two Thai construction workers, and another unknown accomplice.

Vasavan promised Rose that the murder would look like a black magic ritual gone wrong. Still holding out for hope that Mr. Tan would change, Rose tried contacting Vasavan on the day of the murder, but was unsuccessful.

Mr. Tan was strangled after coming home from work, between 8PM-10PM, on that new moon night.

When police brought Rose in for questioning, she confessed to the plot immediately. She became a key witness in the case - and with her testimony Vasavan, along with the two Thais, were sentenced to death. The fourth man remains a mystery and was never found.

And yet, we can get darker.

The Tan case was a story of revenge and family betrayal, whereas this next one drips in sadistic horror.

Three years before Frankie Tan’s end there was a pair of murders that rocked Singapore so hard that the names of those involved still conjure up their haunted crimes.

Mugshots of the killers

It’s referred to as the Toa Payoh Ritual Murders. Named after the public housing flats where the bodies of two children, Agnes Ng, aged 9, and Ghazali bin Marzuki, aged 10, were found only weeks apart.

The children had been ritually abused. Blood drawn from the fingers of both victims, consumed by the killers in what they explained later as a magical rite.

The girl, Agnes, was sexually violated in a manner that I won’t repeat. The boy, Ghazali, was murdered in a way that left his nose dripping blood after death, which trailed back to the perpetrator’s apartment.

That’s how Adrian Lim, his wife Catherine Tan Mui Choo, and his “holy wife” Hoe Kah Hong were caught.

Mr. Lim was a medium, a business he had started a few years prior after divorcing his first wife for Catherine, then aged 21. He made thousands of dollars per month by removing curses and producing charms for his clients.

It’s also how he farmed his victims.

His bread and butter was the easy prey. Elderly, superstitious, the uneducated.

But when he wanted sex, he had other targets.

Bargirls, underage runaways, freelance streetwalkers, who he’d invite into his flat. There he would run through a variety of cons, like the “needle and egg” trick. A dead simple routine, where Lim would blacken a needle on a candle’s flame, press it into an egg, seal it, then roll it around the body of his client. After cracking the egg, the blackened needle would fall out, which he explained was the shade menacing the victim.

He learned his trade from a bomoh, a Malay shaman. Despite being baptized Catholic, he used the images of the black Hindu goddess Kali, and the Thai spirit Phra Ngang (พระงั่ง), in his work.

Of the latter, I keep one of them on my desk, his ruby eyes looking at me even as I write this sentence.

If you grant me a small diversion here.

There’s not much reliably written in English on the Phra Ngang, yet they’re ubiquitous in a hidden way throughout SE Asia.

There are thousands of websites and Facebook pages where admirers of the Phra Ngang post their own statuettes, showing them off to other collectors and devotees.

There are some common characteristics of this spirit. One you’ll notice is the curved, pointed hat, that reminds of the Phrygian cap.

His bulging red eyes, another common feature, allow him to see beyond this realm and into the future of his follower.

If you show him to a normal person in SE Asia, fear is the typical reaction. It’s said that only those on the edges of society are attracted to this spirit, who enjoys drink, heaps of sex, and good fortunes won by devilish hands.

The lore around the Phra Ngang goes back to the fall of Ayutthaya to the Burmese invaders in the 18th century. A collection of normal Buddha statues was found on the battlefield, soaked in blood of fallen soldiers, which dried in red clumps around the eyes. Those who collected these specific statues found favorable luck after.

But this is a mythologizing of a much older, animistic nature spirit that dwells all over this part of the world - and perhaps I’ll pick this thread up as an article for another day.

The fact is, Adrian Lim, our murdering medium, used Phra Ngang when he violated his younger female victims. He’d get them naked then give them a massage, rubbing the statuette on their body and genitals, then rape them - and was paid for the service, as the clients believed this rite would remove their bad luck.

He ran through countless victims in this way.

He forced other girls into prostitution, taking their substantial earnings - he made $100,000 off one 18 year old girl.

And after marrying Catherine, he brought Hoe into his house as a “holy wife” - one of 40 that he allegedly had at the time of his arrest.

Hoe was a client of his, having been brought in by her mother for spiritual healing. At the time she was married, but Lim kept her in his control by manipulation, alienating her from family, which culminated in a confrontation with her actual husband where he was electrocuted to death.

Hoe was instructed to lie to police, telling them that her husband died by accident from an electric shock of a faulty fan.

Before the murders of the two children, Lim raped another woman, a traveling cosmetic salesperson, by kidnapping and drugging her in his flat. After two weeks in captivity, the woman managed to escape and he filed a report with the police. An investigation was opened.

Lim told Hoe to lie to the police again. She told them that she was in the flat the entire time and claimed that she saw nothing. This didn’t stop the police investigation. So instead, Lim chose to murder the kids to throw them off his tail.

He also believed that the murders would be sacrifices to Kali herself, and that the black goddess would save him from prosecution for his crimes.

Equal parts foolish and nightmarish on its face, the plan fell apart after the bodies were discovered and evidence trailed back to Lim and his residence.

Lim thought he could bend both law and gods to his will. But it was the rope that answered him in the end. After a lengthy trial, the three were executed by hanging in 1988.

Ritual murder, rape and occult exploitation, easy money and selling hope in the form of mystical cures. The Toa Payoh case had a bit of it all.

Even though it would be hard to exceed the curious nature of this case, I don’t want to end the article here.

I’m not that much of a sadist.

---

Other Relics and Characters

What else have I left out?

There’s a lot.

I’ve collected hundreds of sources in notes about this subject over the years. Snippets from books, news articles, anecdotes shared by those in the trade, and my own collections.

Not all of it made the cut. Frankly, I might write a whole book on the subject, but I wanted to share this little ditty for you guys in the meantime. I’m thorough, but impatient.

To round out this essay, I’ll run through a few more tidbits for your own edification. Maybe they’ll open little pathways for your own research and exploration.

I referenced nam man prai (น้ำมันพราย) earlier in this piece, but neglected to complete the connection there.

Here is a photo of the necromantic substance, which is kept by someone close to me for protection.

It is a mix of corpse oil, forest herbs, and other magical items. And it is difficult to find, in its rare varieties, although you will find imitations online in abundance.

Those won’t do much for you.

Here’s a photo of Phor Sala Tan, an ajahn who lives in northern Thailand. It was taken by a Singaporean who traveled to see him at work.

He’s in the process of making a nam man prai batch that will be distributed to his acolytes and their devotees throughout the region and the world.

The ingredients would be corpse oil and remains of bodies that were retrieved after accidents or other violent ends, jungle herbs, and other closely guarded secret ingredients.

You’ll also notice that the ajahn is wearing woman’s clothing. This isn’t for some fetish purpose, but rather it’s done to deceive the spirits who gather around, concealing his own identity as a woman so that they don’t attack him.

The process of making a batch of this substance is considered dangerous and not taken lightly. Any and all precautions are taken, even “switching” genders as needed.

Many of Phor Sala Tan’s followers live in Singapore, and although he passed away ten years ago, the magical relics, potions, oils, and other items he left behind fetch top dollar in the underground trade.

This is an amulet, shared by a friend of mine:

I thought the imagery was striking and felt you’d agree.

When I asked about the nature of the amulet, he said it was a “Hardcore piece, made from a sacred mix of ashes from a body and activated spirits inside the amulet. Made for luck and fortune, gambling, attraction, and gaining the upper hand over your enemies.”

Both the nam man prai and this sort of amulet are popular items that would be traded in Singapore.

But the occult in Singapore isn’t all corpse oil and haunted relics. It also thrives in nightclubs and the banter that men swap over draughts of Tiger Beer.

It’s the lighter side of all this. The human side that any guy reading can relate to.

These men commiserate with stories of being bewitched by Thai girls (siam bu) in clubs, spending all their money and leaving with empty pockets.

It’s a phenomenon called tgong tao (降头) – a Hokkien phrase used to describe a victim of black magic.

Of course it involves Thai women.

This relates back to the case in Little India that I brought up in a previous section, as the clubs where Singaporean men meet the Thai women who bewitch them are of the same nature. These discos are called siam diu, where the men watch the girls dance and hang flower garlands over their shoulders.

If you end up in Singapore and go to one, let me know - especially if a Thai dancer curses your wallet with her charms.

Here are a couple Singaporean websites that I found interesting.

The first one here is muted and telegraphs a more refined approach to the trade.

Whereas this one appeals to a base, superstitious, even cheap version - look at that Flinstones glass on the side - where the “golden child” can be coaxed to give winning lottery numbers.

Another amulet I forgot to mention before, the Jatukham Rammathep (จตุคามรามเทพ). Back in the 1980s, this piece kicked off a Thai amulet craze in Singapore that lasts to this day.

Jatukham Rammathep is another syncretic figure, the kingly guardian of a temple in southern Thailand’s province Nakhon Si Thammarat. He’s a combination of the Hindu gods Rama and a mythic local King Chandrabhanu. He’s a solar-lunar deity and is depicted with the serpentine force of Rahu, who eats the moon and causes eclipses.

In 1987, a guard at a bank wore this amulet. He was almost killed by robbers who tried to shoot him, but their gun misfired three times. The guard was unharmed. He attributed the protection to this amulet, and its popularity took off.

This is often how amulets across the region gain notoriety and popularity.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the novels of Jake Needham, who writes a series about a Singaporean every-man detective named Inspector Samuel Tay.

They’re great stories for a couple reasons. First, they’re not stereotypical hard-boiled pulp - there’s humor, introspection, and keen observation woven through. And second, the plots bounce around the region, bringing the reader along as Tay investigates crimes in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Bangkok.

Check them out.

Then there are these photos.

Relics of Singapore’s eclectic occult traditions, set in glass displays for casual observation. Even when many still take this stuff deadly seriously, the public presentation here seems sanitized in a way that only Singapore could pull off.

Looking at these photos make me want to go back to Singapore soon.

It’s an island at the crossroads of many cultures, crystallized into a prosperous city-state by Lee Kuan Yew, but it never gave up the vestigial superstitions of the region.

The pragmatism in business and civic life is what makes the Lion City strong - but its strange underbelly is what calls for me.

I don’t know when, but I’ll return some day.

And when I do, I’ll take another seat in the Long Bar at the Raffles, where my fascination with this place began. I don’t drink anymore, so I’ll order something virgin and sweet, and watch for the city’s ghosts from the my chair.

Maybe I’ll see you there.

Well, what do you think?

I’d love to know your thoughts. You can comment here on this newsletter article or on Twitter.

My next essay will be a bit more personal about my time working with a Patel hotel cartel.

P.S., did you subscribe?

Sources

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/35-people-arrested-for-suspected-involvement-in-vice-related-activities

https://mothership.sg/2025/05/singaporean-arrested-thailand-syndicate-vape/

https://remembersingapore.org/2011/01/24/headlines-that-shook-singapore/

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/7-people-including-drunk-girl-16-arrested-in-anti-secret-societies-raids-at-rochor-little-india

https://sal.org.sg/articles/the-toa-payoh-ritual-murders-a-case-of-insanity-or-was-it-just-a-wayang-part-1/

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Talk%3AToa_Payoh_ritual_murders

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/guilty-as-charged-adrian-lim-and-his-2-holy-wives-kidnapped-tortured-and

https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/6fs0i1/paging_rsg_found_this_creepy_note_stuffed_into_my/

https://archive.is/ms945

https://pantip.com/topic/37763121

https://ch3plus.com/news/social/ruangden/432537

https://pantip.com/topic/34021001/desktop

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/35-people-arrested-for-suspected-involvement-in-vice-related-activities

https://pantip.com/topic/30947640

http://kumantong-4-u.blogspot.com/2012/09/training-kumantong-for-lottery.html

https://sarahmaxresearch.com/2019/07/21/thai-black-magic-singapore-and-its-occult-rituals/

https://www.ricemedia.co/culture-people-i-went-thai-occult-ritual-survived-write-story/ (personal experience of a ritual)

https://www.nationthailand.com/thailand/economy/40037417

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374035285_Globalizing_Thai_amulets_the_Chinese_-_Singaporean_role_in_commoditizing_objects_of_faith

https://thriftytraveller.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/singapore-black-magic/

https://medium.com/@ilyassholihyn/mysticism-and-modern-tech-digital-divinations-from-a-carousell-bomoh-5448ff022b6f

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0967828X16672771

https://so06.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/pub_jss/article/download/279197/185967/1173609

https://southeastasiaglobe.com/lost-sorcerors-thailand/

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/true-crimes-of-asia-discover-the-straits-times-podcast-series

The Thai Occult by Jenx

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11785333

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/2047380/dark-spirit-took-over-me-myanmar-exorcist-court-over-deaths

https://mothership.sg/2025/05/singaporean-arrested-thailand-syndicate-vape/

https://remembersingapore.org/2011/01/24/headlines-that-shook-singapore/

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/7-people-including-drunk-girl-16-arrested-in-anti-secret-societies-raids-at-rochor-little-india

https://www.billionmore.com/product/detail.php?code=PDMAC9711R&Page=10

https://www.billionmore.com/article/article.php?id=11

https://www.nationthailand.com/in-focus/30258541