“The celebrities, they’re nocturnal.”
“Celebrities creeping at night, wearing menacing smiles, jawboning.”
“For a while we’d been seeing lots of celebrities in the neighborhood.”
“These days, celebrities can only come out at night. Rarely will you see a celebrity during the day.”
“OpenAI has teams of catchers out, like dogcatchers… Teams in vans, just searching for celebrities.”
“Celebrities are like vampires, recumbent by day, living in coffins… Then they rise, after sundown, to feed…”
“Hands shooting up from the ground, clawing through the dirt.”
“Wasn’t there a time that Ferris Wheels were purposely built next to cemeteries?”
“Hard to believe there once was a time when we were fascinated with celebrities.”
“The celebrities were jumping us like monkeys. Had our teeth growing crooked, ripping through our cheeks. Had us speaking with broken jaws, seeing with detached retinas. And when we weren’t growling, we were jerking our heads…”
“Who’s laughing now?”
“But celebrities stopped sucking blood a long time ago.”
“Nowadays celebrities are raccoons, opossums crawling into dumpsters and garbage cans. To feast…”
“It used to be that they’d sometimes collect astronomical sums for brief speaking engagements.”
“10 minutes of talk for $500,000. $50K per minute. Maybe more for the full force of their words.”
“Isn’t that the kiss of life?!”
“A kick in the head.”
“Celebrities in ass-less chaps.”
“Something about payola, right?”
“Suborns.”
“You see, a celebrity was once an animal that anyone could rent.”
“I set up bear-traps in my front and backyards, just to keep the celebrities away…”
“No face left to lose. Fighting an ice war, in a freezer.”
“Used to be a time when celebrities were front and center. At the heart of every discussion. Tech bros each owned at least 5 or 6 celebrities, usually more.
Hundreds, thousands, even. Tech bros used to throw wild parties, have the celebrities parachute onto yachts, belt out showtunes, dance forbidden minstrel show jigs.”
“Jigga, jigga…”
“Turning halls of higher learning into empty cathedrals.”
“But these days celebrities face certain capture, execration, mandatory head-shavings, spontaneous rectal searches and ear-slap blinky bots.”
“Both sides of the scissors…”
“Nowadays there’s nothing worse than being labeled a celebrity.”
“It’s an outrage. An insult. A humiliation.”
“It’s un-American!”
“After the mass cancellations, celebrities fled their homes, and they became the creatures they are now. Night beings. Outcasts. Most live in sewers or in repurposed trees.”
“There’s a rumor OpenAI got a farm full of them. Captured celebrities hooked to breathing tubes, integrated with robotics. Artificial intelligence. A cyborg species…
Tech totalers force-loading TalkGPT, fusing it into celebrities’ brainstems, just gearing the fuckers to go again.”
“I’d buy a celebrity, teach it how to lie to me…”
“Even before the mass cancellations, celebrities had coarse eyes, resolute features.”
“Rumor had it most were eunuchs.”
“I still have phantom pain from the final Bachelorette.”
“I’m old enough, too, to remember reality TV. Watching reality TV was akin to the feeling of being on the wrong plane, unable to turn back. It was a feeling of being trapped under a sheet of ice.”
“… a live, flopping fish, yanked out of the sea, stuffed into your open mouth before you could politely decline...”
“Nowadays I’m sleeping in a cryogenic chamber and still having night sweats…”
“Our shared future...”
“The bots predicted it. The celebrities didn’t die.”
“But the algorithms continue to self-replicate.”
“Besides a sewer or treetop, the best places for a celebrity to live are an abandoned mall, or nearby a charging station.”
“Antecedents, yeah...”
“Rumor has it Paris Hilton is still alive. And it never comes out during the day. Yet it keeps its copper complexion, somehow, and its fluffy gold hair on its small head remains neatly combed. Fucker has a thin neck too. Once the sun sumps it’ll run as fast as its twiggy legs can carry…”
“Paris Hilton running faster than a cheetah. Faster than a flying train.”
“But Paris Hilton wasn’t the celebrity with the pocketknife, on Halloween night, slashing straphangers in the Bronx.”
“It’s more likely that was Honey Boo Boo.”
“Celebrities show up, in my backyard, from time to time, at night. They’re making silly sounds, running in circles. Like Paris Hilton, they got perfect hair and makeup and every time you see them, they’re smiling.”
“That smile is tatted on their faces, I bet. Like the Joker.”
“Ear to ear.”
“Living in a repurposed tree, living in a sewer, or in an abandoned shopping mall, then having perfectly creased hair, it doesn’t make sense.”
“… could be their skin, their fur.”
“Bugbears.”
“I’m having a recurring dream that a ginger celebrity is riding a red-feathered dinosaur, in a rodeo, like a bull. Then the rodeo pitch becomes an island of red neon light and then the celebrity and dinosaur are just two ellipses… Dot, dot, dot… Dot, dot, dot…”
“Space debris…”
“Anytime I stub my toe, I blame it on the celebrities. Because I know, somehow, someway, that it’s their fault.”
“I be opening my window to shout the celebrities down whenever they rummage through my trash cans. Then they scatter off, like roaches with the light on.”
“They remain a menace.”
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer
THE SENSITIVITY READER CUTS HIS OWN PENIS
The Sensitivity Reader ran his bony fingers through his salt-and-pepper mohawk.
He’d been under duress these past days. Locked down inside his 30 SQM
apartment, staring only at whitewashed walls.
The Reader’s eyes were dry and blood red and felt as if they’d been filled with sand. His body felt like a block of wood… A peaty taste of whiskey burbling up in his burps…
“I was the best sensitivity reader in the business! I fucking read for AGENTED, PUBLISHED authors like Adele Holmes! ADELE. FUCKING. HOLMES!!!!!!!!”
The Sensitivity Reader’s was a case study in isolation. But his vow of silence had been dwindling, devolving into a diatribe far worse than Dave Chappelle’s 8:46.
And it was getting worse than a Michael Richards’ set of stand-up comedy.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Here and there, The Reader’s internal dialog, his solitude, his accumulation of time and flesh would be interrupted by ghosts. Unfriendly ghosts of companions long gone... Demons...
Like his ex-wife. The woman of exotic darkness. The woman damasked with dismay. The waif who’d been popping in, here and there, walking through walls.
The waif with sullen cheeks, bony arches under her eyes… The waif reeking of shit.
Her visits as welcome as an unflushed toilet.
The Sensitivity Reader had known feathery lightness in her hair. Her heavenly scents… Her silky skin soft as a flower soaked by rain.
But these days the waif just stank of shit. And looked like shit too. The waif in her striped pajamas. The waif emaciated, rail-thin, looking as if she’d escaped from a concentration camp in Xinjiang. Her crown of shiny hair just a slim wave. She’d once been so winsome... The waif with perfect facial structure, a doll’s face. A face worthy of being painted.
At times, the waif had been fogging in, appearing in oil-painting poses… The waif stretching for badminton… The waif supine. Air drumming with chopsticks. Her waist-length hair spilling over the edge of the bed like a tomato-red waterfall. The waif levitating, suspended in air, stuck like a light to the ceiling.
“It was her!” The Reader would strain, neck veins popping out, shouting at no one.
“IT WAS HER!!!”
To him, her skeletal face was as distinct as a dead president on a blood-stained banknote… The waif’s snickering. Her summoning swarms of hornets…
“She was fucking here, man, she was fucking here!!!” The Sensitivity Reader would argue with the wall, wash the demon away with whiskey and gales of hysterical laughter. But even the wall knew the waif lived in the air...
The Sensitivity Reader slept with a sledgehammer next to his bed. He’d go down swinging if his ex-wife, nude but for her pink Von Dutch mesh hat, ever exploded
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer out of the closet again, attacked him with garden shears. If she ever again insulted his pasta sauce, attempted to amputate his penis.
‘TOO MANY ONIONS!!! AND NOT ENOUGH FUCKING GARLIC FOR YOU!!!!”
Or if she ever again handcuffed him to the bed, blasted “I Don’t Feel Like Dancing”
or the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Californication on repeat. The waif leaving him in agony as she hooted and hollered, in the next room, at trashy reality TV. The waif, off her meds again, watching reruns of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie making fun of poor people.
The Reader was ready, too, if that cockroach the size of a crocodile ever came back… Oh yes, The Sensitivity Reader knew all about psychic pain, picky eaters, earworms, infestations and sharp objects…
But The Sensitivity Reader had only seen the waif once in the last few days. It was in the shower. She’d slid in through the steam with a straight razor blade, was smiling with black gaps in between her teeth while carving five stars into her shaven pussy mound. Bloody red rivulets running down her chicken legs… The shower water suddenly smelling of unwashed ass...
“Psychic spies from China!!!!” The Sensitivity Reader cursed at the rain shower as light red water, the color of a wine cooler, circled his feet and the clean scent of soap returned.
Dead! She was dead. Dead! The Reader struggled to remind the deepest recesses of his being. After all, she should be vaporous.
After the divorce, she’d been in a gruesome, spectacular accident. In a subway car, in Beijing, that’d flooded with sewage… He’d imagined his rage had festered into blood magic. That she’d died a horrid death on his account. The waif swallowing columns, choking on mouthfuls of brown wastewater. The bitch literally eating shit and dying, just as he’d often commanded…
“Fucking worse than Pablo Escobar blowing up a passenger plane just to kill one person… FUCKING WORSE THAN EVERY SONG ON CALIFORNICATION!!!!!”
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer But no. She wasn’t really dead. Because he’d see her in the air. And in dreams.
Her twisted smile spackled in shit, her whipcord coil stinking putridly, and he’d remember the times she’d teased him, saying he should see a psychiatrist for his increasingly frequent, chicken suit-clad visits to gay bars and glory holes.
The Sensitivity Reader stuck his fingers down his throat but didn’t find anything.
Then his face went crimson. Then he headbutted the wall, screamed an unintelligible sound, sat cross-legged on the tiled floor, rocked back and forth in a fit of sorrow, then finally flicked on his phone.
In his hands he witnessed the carnage. Live video. Grainy, flickering, unsteady video. The riots. The angry mobs. It was France. But it was now.
As he rubbed more sand from his eyes, he knew what it was: The hated Emperor Xi Jinping’s Last Stand.
Emperor Xi’s palace gates were being stormed. The masses braving gunfire.
Masses swimming, sailing across the moat. Rioters in makeshift armor, storming inside, firing 3D-printed guns, flinging beer bottle petrol bombs. The palace grounds becoming a smoldering volcano of fire and smoke.
Human waves washed in like tsunamis slapping shores. The masses chanting, cheering, waving red flags and singing the national anthem. The masses locking arms, in a flood of screaming humanity. An aggrieved wave of arms and legs, full-throated and pushing forward.
And they kept coming, the protestors, the muckers, the rioters. In an endless stream. The flailing masses, in lockstep, surging in an unstoppable current.
The palace guards were eventually overwhelmed. Many of the guards, in their feathery hats, were trampled under the angry feet of the rioters, and scores threw down their epaulets and guns and tore off running, their faces contorted in terror.
The mobs eventually breached the gates, swarmed into the palace.
It wasn’t long before the masses were dragging out the Emperor, the Winnie-the-Pooh lookalike. Emperor Xi was dead they proclaimed. His previously pristine,
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer fleshy face bruised and bloodied. His nude, bloated gray body dragged out by a ski-masked covey. Emperor Xi’s corpse leaving a splotchy stripe of blood.
The ski-masks brought Emperor Xi’s corpse before the cameras. Lifted his floppy head. Then a member of the retinue produced a machete, pressed the serrated silver blade to Emperor Xi’s throat, drawing an immediate line of blood. And once the ski-masked man started sawing, he appeared like a cellist gone mad.
As the impromptu surgery began, blood began spurting from Emperor Xi’s flabby neck like two fountains, and Emperor Xi’s limp body bounced back to life. The Winnie-the-Pooh lookalike, Xi Jinping flopping like a fish, his swollen eyes sliding open in shock. And Emperor Xi attempted to wriggle and he gurgled, spit globs of blood, then unloosed a raspy, pathetic plea for his life that went unanswered as the mob secured his person and commenced the decapitation.
The Sensitivity Reader closed his phone. Stood up and stretched his legs. He couldn’t witness any more. Nothing, not even booze, could erase what he’d seen.
He’d sneak outside, for a walk, but the Little Pinks were babooning in packs. The Little Pinks out for blood, saliva, butts and body parts. Plus it was over 40 degrees Celsius. Even at night these days it wasn’t too pleasant to be outside.
His window was lightly caked with sand. But through a beige film The Reader could see there was a prehistoric, crocodile-sized cockroach on his balcony. The prehistoric cockroach was perched on its haunches and rose so it walked on its hind legs. The creature then turned toward the window, started singing an out-of-tune, falsetto version of “Scar Tissue.” And The Reader noticed the cockroach had the face of his ex-wife… as well as her shit-eating grin…
MOTORBIKES, MOTORBIKES, MOTORBIKES
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer The streets were empty.
Save for the motorbikes. Swarms of motorbikes had replaced the people.
Swarms of motorbikes driving themselves.
Thousands of motorbikes screaming, engines churning, gears grinding, the bikes buzzing louder than a thousand swarms of hornets.
Motorbikes, alive on the sidewalks, careening, curving through crosswalks.
Motorbikes shooting from alleys. Faster than cannonballs. The bikes barreling and booming, tailpipes spewing cones of black smoke, smoke trails suspended in air…
Aside from the swarming hive of bikes, the only other activity I could surmise were animated billboards atop office buildings broadcasting black & white footage of old Transformers flicks.
In the midst of the scene, it occurred to me that I was the only creature standing. I was on two feet, stepping forward. A pastel blue sky hung like a sheet, and I dodged the numerous bikes as I trudged forth, my toenails long on the hot concrete.
A blood red sun, like a red hole poked through the blue sky, hung high. Searing my skin, its fiery rays licked over me.
Amid the chaos, I happened upon a late-middle-aged woman. Her oil-black hair natty, like a Rastafarian’s. Though I wasn’t sure if her hair was in dreadlocks or if it was simply dirty.
The lady was in a trench coat, a pink trench coat with a ratty gray, frilly fake fur trim. She was sitting cross-legged, by the ledge of an overpass, staring at the railing. I was thinking she might jump. I don’t know why I thought that, but it was the first thing that crossed my mind, seeing her rooted there, her vacant gaze affixed to the busy buzz of the riderless motorbikes below.
The road’s traffic was all riderless bikes, but soon they were joined by riderless trucks and cars and a riderless bicycle or two, a skateboard, a stand-up scooter, all zipping and surging, people-free, the vehicles crisscrossing every which way.
Strangely, though, there seemed a purpose to their direction. As if they were in a colony of ants.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer The dreadlocked lady spun her head, a 180-degree turn, so that her chin was atop the tip of her spine. Her eyes were hollow. Her eye sockets empty black holes. Her eyeless face shifted itself and tracked me like a security camera as I walked up the overpass’s stairs and cautiously stepped by.
Then the sky instantly darkened and opened up. A deluge of hot black rain soaking the city. The rain appearing as motor oil.
Fortunately, the overpass was covered by a canopy. And I stood in the hissing downpour, watching the riderless bikes blast by, speeding down the slick streets, unimpeded. Shifting my gaze, I glanced over at the dreaded woman, witnessed her rise, then lift into the air and float toward me like a ghost.
As she floated toward me, her small, frail body began to shapeshift into a motorbike. She was on some Terminator 2 type shit. Her arms melting into a silver liquid, then forming into a front wheel, her legs a rear wheel, her spine a chassis, her dreadlocks turning to tassels on the handlebar as the bike landed on the floor of the overpass. Then the bike’s engine backfired louder than a gunshot.
Then I looked down and saw that my feet were molting into rubber…
DO YOU BELIEVE IN GHOSTS?
ผี
“I told you, Jeff, I’m a skeptic.”
“I’ve traveled the world, been to the sites of war crimes, genocides, murders, hotel fires, and I’ve not once, NOT ONCE seen a ghost.”
“My offer still stands. One million dollars to anyone who can prove to me that ghosts exist.”
“Look, Mr. Palmer…”
“Call me ‘Jay,’” he interrupted.
“Jay, you didn’t get to be a wealthy man by being gullible, but…”
Jay interrupted again, “Cut the flattery. You’re saying that you can show me ghosts in Bangkok, and I say it’s bullshit. The offer stands. Show me a ghost, I’ll show you one million dollars. My secretary will email you my Bangkok itinerary.
We’ll be in touch.”
And with that the call cut off.
For a couple years I’d been following Mr. Jay Palmer, on Twitter, and had been enthralled, entertained and annoyed at his tweets. No stranger to fame or controversy, the handsome young billionaire, the Wall Street hedge fund star had once been heralded as the next Warren Buffett.
He’d originally achieved fame for his business acumen but these days was known more for his brash, outspoken personality and relentless ridicule of the supernatural, ghosts, in particular, as well as his tendency to engage in social media spats, often with other celebs, and sometimes even random commenters.
I’d seen that Mr. Palmer, along with his starlet girlfriend, would be in Vietnam on business, so I’d tweeted him, thinking he’d probably ignore me.
But, to my astonishment, he’d replied, and we’d exchanged direct messages, then phone calls, and I’d challenged him to visit the haunted sites of Bangkok, which includes my street, and afterwards see if he still doubted the existence of ghosts.
He’d taken me up on my challenge, and I’d be seeing him in less than 48 hours…
As for me, I wholeheartedly believe in ghosts. I’ve seen plenty, been accustomed to their presence since I was a youngster. I’d seen several spirits in my childhood home, in Pittsburgh. The first I saw were tiny balls of light floating around and through the ceiling of my bedroom.
Later, I’d see misty silhouettes of human forms on the staircase by the living room.
There’d also routinely be doors closing, opening unexplainably, around the house.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer My sister, too, had seen the blobs of light flying through the ceiling, in her room, but my parents refused to believe the ghosts were there. But I knew. And my sister knew. And the ghosts, they knew. And that was enough for me.
Fortunately, the ghosts in my house were not malicious spirits. They were only present. Remnants of the former owners, probably. Such is usually the case when one lives in a 100-year-old house. I never feared them, those ghosts, and simply accepted them as fellow occupants of the dwelling…
For as long as I can remember, ghosts have fascinated me. I’ve always enjoyed ghost stories, movies, books, more for the entertainment factor, history lessons, though, that they held.
The stories, the ghosts never scared me, really. More so, I’d pitied the ghosts, and I wondered if the ghosts in my house or the ghosts in the stories knew if they were ghosts.
What a tragedy, to be a ghost, and not know it…
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When I first came to Bangkok as a tourist, I was delighted to discover the city held such strong beliefs in ghosts.
The welcoming, warm and friendly Thai people, plus the climate, the hot weather, and the scrumptious, hot and spicy food agreed with me, and I decided to ditch the corporate world, and stay in Thailand, in Bangkok. For the last 7 years, it’s where I’ve been. I’ve left only for border runs to Cambodia, Laos to renew my visas.
My first job in Thailand, like many expats here, was teaching English, but then I found my way into another, more exciting and lucrative business- paranormal tours, videos…
Along with my Thai partner, Somchai, we started the business as a side hustle, but it’d expanded well enough that we were able to turn it into a full-time gig.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Our tours consisted of taking clients out around Bangkok to local haunted sites, at night, and we made videos of these ghost tours that we’d post online, share on social media- video recordings of real footage of paranormal activity.
Our tours were provided on motorcycles, one driven by Somchai, one by me, and perhaps additional drivers if we had a larger group.
Motorcycles sure aren’t the safest method of transport, but it’s the fastest way of getting around in Bangkok, given the perpetually gridlocked city traffic.
Occasionally, though, we’d take clients out in a car if they were too squeamish to sit on the backseat of a motorcycle, or if they demanded AC.
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Our tours’ itinerary included several spots. Many only provided entertaining, spooky tales, but not actual ghost sightings.
However, The Sathorn Unique Tower, Wat Don Cemetery, and the “Curve of 100
Corpses,” these were the most reliable Bangkok locations to spot paranormal activity. Especially the Wat Don Cemetery. Practically every trip we took there yielded a ghost sighting or two.
In the cemetery, a place where over 10,000 victims of accidents were buried, many in unmarked graves, we’d often see “tai hong”, which is Thai for an angry ghost, one that died in a sudden, tragic manner.
The “tai hong” we most frequently saw was a headless ghost that’d fall from a tree, crawl on its stomach like an alligator and disappear into dead air.
One time a ghost appeared in Somchai’s car, in the backseat, the ghost bloody, missing limbs, screaming in agony. A couple German clients sitting next to it freaked out, yelling and demanding us to pull over, and when we did, they ran away, tearing off running into the crowded Bangkok streets.
Somchai said a prayer that let the ghost out, back into the night.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer After that, Somchai bought a special green jade amulet, from a monk, and the amulet has since prevented ghosts from entering his car, though recently we found a legless ghost on the roof, and Somchai said a blessing that allowed it to leave…
The Sathorn Tower was a hotspot, too, for ghosts.
We’d often find ghosts of businessmen jumping from upper floors, reenacting their suicides. Somchai said they were trapped in repeat, in a purgatory of sorts, having to jump again and again until they’d be able to pass onto the next realm.
Or maybe they were being punished, forced to relive their suicide because of the bad karma they’d created.
In addition to the jumpers, we could also, via telescope, spot the ghost of a middle-aged Swedish man, a tourist, hanging by a noose from a ceiling pipe. You could see him hanging lifeless there practically every night.
Occasionally, we could bribe a security guard to enter the building, have a look around, but never were we able to see the ghosts up close. The ghosts there seemed to prefer keeping their distance, only staying visible from afar…
The “Curve of 100 Corpses” yielded many sightings, ghosts on motorcycles, mostly, those lost in auto accidents. Somchai said they were also in a purgatory, riding around the same roads until they could pass. He said it was because their family members might not have performed the correct funerary rites, or that the ghosts were too angry to accept they’d died, refusing to believe it, continuing to ride back and forth along the same stretch of road, every day and night.
(I’d wondered, too, if some of the office workers I’d seen in subways, rush hour traffic, back in America were suffering the same fate…) ผีผีผีผี
Another famous ghost spot, the “Thawi Nakhon Deserted Mansion” was a point of contention between Somchai and me.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer It was the only site he’d been genuinely afraid of, and he’d dissuaded me from adding it to our itinerary. His objections being that the site was haunted by a malicious ghost called “Dao.”
It’s common for ghosts of those who died in horrific, tragic manners to attempt to take vengeance on the living, particularly those similar to the people the ghosts are angry with; the ghosts doing this either out of sheer hatred, or so the living might take the ghost’s place in the afterlife.
“Dao” was one such malicious ghost, the ghost of a young woman with long black hair, who always wore a white dress that resembled a nightgown.
Somchai said it was her that’d possessed many tourists, foreign men, Westerners in Bangkok, and caused their deaths.
Somchai told me his sister, a medium, once spoke to Dao. That his sister was contacted by her, randomly, as she slept, and the two of them spoke in a lush green rice field near the outskirts of Bangkok…
Dao said she’d been jilted by a foreigner, a handsome young man, a US soldier, around the time of the Vietnam War. The man was in Bangkok on R&R before he was to return to America, after completing his tour, being discharged. He’d met and seduced Dao, who was a chaste young woman from an upper-class family, and a practicing Buddhist, and he’d taken her virginity, promising to return later to marry her.
But he never returned.
Dao, in a fit of grief, jumped from a building, plunging to her death in the Chao Phraya River.
Her family had moved, abandoned the mansion, on the edge of Bangkok. With its bad karma coming from the inauspicious end of the family’s daughter, it never found a buyer, and the mansion remains empty to this day. Dao’s ghost its only resident.
Though in life Dao was said to be reserved, after death, her demeanor changed, and her grief shifted to rage. Her ghost not only resides in her family’s abandoned mansion, but is said to be alive in Bangkok, floating from hotel to hotel, in search of vulnerable foreigners, those down on their luck, depressed, or with other
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer issues. Dao enters their head, encourages them to commit suicide by jumping from a building or bridge.
Though she’s mainly preyed on foreigners, she’s also attacked Thais too, murdering 5 teens who’d disturbed her house, the teens belonging to a group that’d broken into the house late at night, to do drugs, drink and do whatever else teens do. Later, one by one, each died in various gruesome traffic accidents…
Not wishing to disturb such a spirit, we’d stayed away from the mansion. Until a wealthy Italian, with a large pile of cash, too much to refuse, demanded that we take him and his wife there. At night!
Which we did, armed with Somchai’s most powerful amulet, and a protective spell from his monk, bestowed on us after a generous donation to the temple…
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The mansion was situated on a large empty lot, flanked by endless green rice fields, a patch of jungle, and a highway to its far left. A fence around its perimeter precluded entrance.
On the back of twin motorcycles, one driven by me, one by Somchai, with the Italians riding on the motorcycle backseats, the wife on Somchai’s, and the man on mine, and damn, was the portly fellow weighing down my bike, draining the gas gauge as we rode slowly up to the mansion and parked for a peak at the house.
A chalky white, three-storey manor, with hulking Grecian columns in its front, it’d stood up to time, the elements rather well, I thought, showing only mild dilapidation, weather wear.
At first the manor was totally dark, but suddenly, a light went on in an upstairs room. The Italians shrieked in Italian. Somchai screamed something in Thai. And I followed his lead as he tore off back to the highway.
A week afterwards, the wife, holding large handfuls of shopping bags, was struck by a motorcycle taxi while crossing Sukhumvit Road and died on the scene.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Perhaps out of grief, or something else as well, the husband jumped to his death from the fifth floor of the Terminal 21 shopping mall, landing face first on the ground floor, horrifying the surrounding shoppers, staff alike… The mall was only a block from where his wife had died…
“Dao,” Somchai told me.
We both immediately went and received further blessings from the temple after learning of the suicide.
Somchai also had his sister, the medium, attempt to contact Dao, which she did, meeting Dao again in the rice field in a dream, though this time, the rice field was on fire. Dao appeared as a burn victim, horrific scars covering her body.
This time, Dao wouldn’t speak, and instead summoned a driverless motorcycle to ride off, disappear into the conflagration. Then she twisted her burnt lips into a grin and walked slowly into the fire.
Somchai reckoned that it was a sign, a warning to keep away from the house and that we were lucky to be alive. He told me he wouldn’t go there again, even for a million dollars…
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Mr. Jay Palmer and his girlfriend, the lovely Miss Amber Royal, reality TV star, Instagram influencer, model, socialite, etc., arrived in Bangkok with much fanfare.
Local paparazzi were there to snap pictures of their early afternoon arrival at Suvarnabhumi airport.
After passing by a contingent of Thai fans, signing a handful of autographs, they traveled via limo to the Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok’s premier luxury hotel, where I met them, for a pre-tour meeting.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer When I rode my motorcycle into the hotel’s parking lot, I saw a throng of fans, paparazzi and press camped outside the hotel. Seeing the clumped masses, wide-eyed and wielding microphones, cameras, and phones, I wasn’t envious of the pair’s fame. Their money, yes, I did envy that, but being hounded by photographers, having people with their smartphones chasing after them anywhere they went, even in Thailand, that level of fame, nope, didn’t envy that at all…
We met in the hotel’s ritzy “Author’s Lounge” for late afternoon tea.
I must admit I was a tad starstruck when they entered and sat down to our table.
Heads all around the wooden room were turning, everyone collectively marveling at the pair’s celebrity and perfect facial structures.
Aside from what appeared a very forced smile and perfunctory “hello”, Amber said nothing, ate nothing, only sipped sparingly on a glass of sparkling water, and stared and tapped at her phone unflinchingly.
Jay, on the other hand, was animated.
“Jeff, I can’t believe you make money doing this. People are idiots. It’s that they WANT to believe in ghosts. That’s why they see them.”
He continued, heatedly, between healthy bites from a splendid plate of assorted tropical fruits, “It’s hallucinations. Mind tricks.”
I opened my mouth to chime in and he seemed to notice that I was about to speak, so he, perhaps preemptively, continued his anti-superstition jeremiad.
“I see you’re about to show me something on your phone,” he said in a mocking tone, nodding his chin at the phone in my hand, “don’t bother, I’ve seen the bullshit footage you post online. I know it’s faked. All ‘ghost’ footage is faked,”
he’d thrown up air quotes around “ghost footage.”
“Amityville House, or should I say, Amityville Hoax, fake. All those paranormal shows, fake. Just doctored images, sounds, permutations of white noise, static. I mean, humans have existed for over 200,000 years, right? Why don’t we ever hear of caveman ghosts? A monkey man ghost outside your house, rubbing sticks together for a fire… Never hear of that. Nope, always some asshole in a top hat.
Only Slash gets to wear a top hat, okay?! Fucking ghost bullshit.
“And how come no animals are ghosts? They don’t get to be ghosts? The chicken you ate for lunch comes back to haunt you? Oh, hold up, it does, food poisoning!”
Jay broke into hearty laughter at his own joke, nudged Amber with his elbow, but she ignored him, scrolled on her phone.
“Have you read Richard Dawkins?” he asked, after catching his breath, his eyes flickering and his facial expression turning serious. Dead serious. Angry even.
“Yes, I know of…” I began to say when he interrupted again.
“There is no God. No ghosts, either. God is the biggest ghost. The best ghost story ever told if you ask me. Don’t tell anyone I said this, though. I can’t have the religious freaks after me. Baptists buy stocks, too, you know. I hope you read the waiver you signed.”
“Sure, I read it word for word, and don’t…” and he interrupted me once more after sinking another double shot of espresso in one swift gulp, sucking it down like it was a shot of whisky.
He smacked his lips loudly and continued, “You’re taking me out on your tour tonight. You meet me at the back entrance of the hotel so we can avoid the press.
I’m planning to only pay you for the tour, but if you really can show me a ghost, even just one, I pay you a million dollars. It’s in the contract.
“But you won’t show me anything. I know you won’t. And you know you won’t.
“You really sure you want to take this challenge? I’m going to post it on Instagram, tweet it, add you to my list of the vanquished. I’ve got like over 40 million followers. You want that heat?”
“I’ve already accepted your offer and am confident I can show you not only one, but multiple ghosts. And, at the risk of sounding cliché, and with all due respect, sir, I wouldn’t live in Bangkok if I couldn’t take the heat, or the ghosts,” I answered and took a sip of the extremely bitter and strong espresso. The stuff numbed my mouth. It was like liquid cocaine.
“I admire your confidence, Jeff. I’ll see you tonight.” Jay said as he reached over the table and gave me a fist bump.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer He and Amber both rose, and she peered up for a second, waved a goodbye with another forced smile, then went immediately back to her phone, glued to it as she walked off, arm in arm with Jay, the couple ushered out of the lounge dotingly by hotel staff wearing bow ties and perfectly creased blazers.
I sat back in my chair, looked up at the stunning architecture of the building, the intricate transoms, glittering chandelier, and assorted black and white photographs hanging on the walls.
I glanced admiringly at a photograph of Somerset Maugham, the famous author who’d suffered through a bout of malaria at this hotel.
I finished my plate of assorted pastries, finger cakes. They were delectable and immaculate. Rich people really eat well.
Gazing out towards the Chao Phraya River, I wondered where exactly Dao had jumped. Was it here? From the hotel? With the hotel’s long history, having been built in 1876, there must be many ghosts around. Maybe Mr. Maugham’s ghost drops by, from time to time…
Hopefully more than one or two ghosts were ready to show up later tonight… A million dollars was riding on it…
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When Somchai and I showed up that evening, around 10 p.m., I could tell Mr.
Palmer was slightly tipsy.
“Too many glasses of red wine at Le Normandie,” he grunted. His blond hair was combed and slicked back neatly, and he’d changed into blue jeans and a black Guns N’ Roses t-shirt.
(I was surprised he was into classic rock. I thought he’d be more into mumble rap, for whatever reason…)
I passed him a motorcycle helmet to wear. I’d picked a helmet for him that had a super dark visor, to help conceal his identity from the press, fans.
“And where is Miss Royal?” I asked Jay, who was struggling to figure out how to sit properly on the back of the motorcycle. Somchai rushed over, helped him up and on.
“Nah, no Amber, she’s going to a party, with a Thai princess she’s pals with. She doesn’t want to be outside much anyway, in this heat.
“And I don’t blame her. How could anyone live in a place this fucking hot?
Dammit, the whole place stinks like ass. And just look at that pole up there, the electric pole, all those twisted wires… What a shithole…
“And speaking of shit, Amber said she knows you’re full of shit, and you don’t need to prove it to her. Me, on the other hand, I like a good joke, shattering superstitions. Science is the only truth, Jeffyboy. Let’s do this, bro.”
And with that, we set off into the humid Bangkok night. We rode around the concrete jungle, and Jay scanned around quietly at its backdrop of neon lights and shimmering skyscrapers, bustling city streets.
Passing by a row of street food vendors, Jay yelled into my ear, “Smells great, those noodles. I’d almost eat them if they wouldn’t give me diarrhea. If it wasn’t probably rat meat in there…”
“Thais are a rather cleanly people. The street food here is quite safe, generally.
Even as safe as many upscale restaurants.” I screamed back to him over the din of the traffic…
We hit our top three spots in succession, the Sathorn Tower, the cemetery, the
“Curve of 100 Corpses.” But nothing. For the first time, ever, not a single ghost showed themselves.
We had to dig deeper, so we took him by the “Prostitute Graveyard,” an abandoned brothel where women were forced into sex slavery and many were killed and buried in the yard behind what was now an abandoned building, a rather shoddy structure, that looked more like an old empty factory.
It was usual to hear cries there at night. See the ghost of a crying woman pacing outside the building entrance. But, again, nothing.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer I decided to go with the most reliable ghosts I know. Those living near my apartment.
My apartment is near the site of the infamous Santika Club fire, where 66 people burned to death. At night, it’s common to see ghosts of the club-goers, either on fire, or as charred corpses, running up and down the street where the club once stood, the ghosts probably seeking the exit doors they tragically couldn’t find that fateful night.
We pulled up to the site of the club. Waited.
No ghosts.
Then we drove to the front of my apartment building. My building is one of many on a side street, off Sukhumvit Road, in an alley. The Art Deco style, pastel pink building next to mine was the site of a shocking murder where a British man, angry over his money allegedly being stolen, threw his bargirl girlfriend off the balcony, and she fell to her death in front of my building.
The Brit is rotting in the Bangkok Hilton, but the girl lives on as a ghost, as a
“preta,” a hungry ghost.
Pretas are ghosts of those who were too materialistic or greedy and are doomed to wander as ghosts with small mouths, and elongated, super thin necks. They are always hungry or thirsty, but their mouths and necks are too tiny for them to eat or drink.
The girl thrown off the balcony was supposedly such a preta, and me, the neighbors, would see her wandering the alley both day and night. A tormented ghost, the sun would freeze her, and the moon would burn her. My landlady would regularly say prayers for the preta and hoped the ghost could one day pass on to a new life.
I’d taken a few pictures of the preta, video too, had seen her several times per week.
When we rode into the alley, sure enough, the preta was there, wandering around the spot on the pavement where she’d fallen to her death.
“There, there, look!” I hit the brakes, craned my neck and yelled to Jay. But when I looked back, the preta was gone.
“I didn’t see anything. This is getting boring,” said Jay, flipping up his helmet’s visor and snarling at me with an upturned lip.
Looking back at Jay, I was ready to reaffirm what I’d seen, when behind him, the preta had reappeared.
She’d grown too, was over 7 feet tall, and was cupping her palms to her face, like a scream mask. Her belly was growing as well, was terribly distended and her skin was pale as bone and mummified.
Somchai jumped off his bike, took several steps back, held up his amulet.
“She’s… Behind you…” I whispered and pointed in the direction of the ghost.
“No, no, she’s not,” Jay shot back, with a tone of exasperation.
“I swear. She is.” I affirmed, “seriously.”
Jay shook his head derisively, sighed and shifted around in his seat, looked back.
As soon as his gaze turned in her direction, the preta vanished into thin air.
Jay let loose a shrill burst of sardonic laughter, shifted back and checked his phone to take a look at a stock ticker, then switched to YouTube, showed me a clip of Bill Maher.
“This guy is such an asshole, Bill Maher, but he gets it. He gets the human condition, the stupidity of human beings, people like you. He gets it probably better than anyone, except Bill Hicks, or George Carlin.”
“You’re oh for six, Jeffyboy. It’s a double strikeout. Oh wait, maybe you can show me a snake that crawls up from a toilet! I hear that happens in Bangkok, like you’ll be on the toilet, and a cobra pops up, bites you in the ass! I’d say that’s probably more likely than a ghost… Can you show me that?”
Something like that had happened once or twice since I’d been in Bangkok, though fortunately not to me. I was about to reply to Jay, along those lines, and opened my mouth to speak when he beat me to the punch…
“Nah, forget about it,” he sneered, his New Yawk accent really coming out, “you can take me back now. I knew this was fake. Hold on, I’m gonna call Amber before we go, I’ll have you drop me off at the party. You’re basically my chauffeur at this point. I fucking OWNED you, bro…”
He brought his phone up to his face, tapped on it and the image of the heavily made-up starlet appeared on the device’s screen.
“Hey, Amber, what’s shaking, sugar tits…”
His voice trailed off a bit as he walked down the alley, yapping to his girl on his Bluetooth headset. I could see her at a party, in a glitzy club somewhere, next to her was an impossibly gorgeous Asian girl I recognized, who I think was Lisa from the K-Pop girl group BLACKPINK…
Somchai told me that there was nothing we could do to prove ghosts to Jay.
Not because ghosts didn’t exist, but that Jay didn’t believe in them, and not just didn’t believe, but didn’t want to believe. As long as he held such a determination to not believe, his energy, his cynicism would force away ghosts, especially the non-malicious spirits.
Fear attracts ghosts. Disbelief, and cynicism, pessimism, especially, repels them.
This is what Somchai had always told me. It was seeming to be right.
I checked my phone and noticed that I had thousands of messages on Twitter. Our company was being bombarded by trolls mocking us. Jay had been tweeting his experience the whole night, ruthlessly roasting us.
At first, I felt a spear of pain, was hurt to see hundreds of tweets full of invective, belligerence, stuff like “fuck u” “scamers”. Worse was the racist language against Asian people. But when I noticed our company’s follower count had gone from around 5,000 to 90,000, in the span of a couple hours, I felt better.
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Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Jay ended his facetime call with an air kiss, sauntered back over to us. I thought we’d take him to wherever this party was, but with an annoyed expression, he made one final request.
“Okay, so one of Amber’s Thai friends, some model floozy, actually believes in this bullshit. She was all worried that we might have gone to this abandoned mansion.
We didn’t, though, and she’s like saying something in Thai, which was translated as warning me ‘never to go there’…
“So, of course we have to go there. Then after that, you take me to the party.”
“Was it the Thawi Nakhon Mansion?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
Jay peered down at his phone, scrolled through a Google map, looked back up at me.
“Yup, that’s the one. Let’s go,” said Jay, strapping his helmet back on.
Somchai was staring at me intently. I stared back. It was our last chance for one million dollars, Somchai, come on!
But Somchai wanted no part of it. He shook his head, got on his bike, and zipped off.
Jay held up his phone, shoved it at my face, on it was the 1980s music video for the song “Ghostbusters,” and he jokingly shimmied and sang along to it.
“I ain’t afraid of no…”
One million dollars was on the line. Although Dao might not show herself, given the fate that’d befallen everyone who’d disturbed her, I had to make it clear to Jay what he was getting into. And I did. I explained Dao’s story and clearly told Jay what happened to the teenagers, to the Italians, and about the medium’s dreams and warnings.
Jay laughed through the whole thing and snapped back at me, “Look, I don’t believe a word of that. With the way I’ve seen the Thais driving, anyone anytime could be killed in a traffic accident. And I know, for sure, and more so than ever, after tonight, that ghosts are BULL FUCKING SHIT.
“But, you know, I admire your patience, persistence. I can’t tell you how many arguments I’ve been in with people over this subject, fucking whiny little bitches.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer And here you are, a gentleman the entire time, even looking out for my well-being after I shit on you all night, destroyed you on Twitter, got millions of people laughing at you right this second, on their phones…
“So, here’s what we’ll do. We’re going to that house, and get this, if I die, within the next month, in a ‘tragic’ accident, you get one million dollars. Hold up, I’ll have a lawyer put that in writing right now.”
Jay made a quick facetime call to his lawyer, who was eating breakfast, and had the old guy draw him up a contract. Then we sat for a few minutes watching Anthony Jeselnik’s comedy special “Caligula.”
“Ah shit, that holocaust joke is gold. A Nike factory,” Jay guffawed, and then showed me the contract stipulating that if he died in the next month, in an accident, I’d get the one million dollars.
“You sign it AFTER we see the mansion. AFTER you drop me off,” Jay said, slipping his phone into a front pocket of his jeans…
We drove out there, and as with the other sites, nothing happened. No light went on in the house. It was just an old mansion to Jay, who quipped that maybe he’d buy the house, turn it into a museum about ghosts, and that probably lots of people would be stupid enough to pay to visit it.
“Hey, what’s with the little temple type house over there? I’ve seen a buncha those…” asked Jay, pointing over at the spirit house on the side of the road.
“That’s a spirit house. It’s common here in Southeast Asia. The locals set them outside their houses, businesses, to honor and shelter whatever spirits might be in the surrounding area. They figure it’s better to have them in the spirit house than have the ghost coming into their house or apartment. You’ll see people go out there in the morning, bringing gifts of juice or fruit for the sp…”
“You believe that shit, Jeff?” Jay asked, cutting me off, walking up to the small brown wooden spirit house that sat atop a dais. He stuck his face up close to it, had a long look around its inside.
I was about to answer when he yelled out, “I don’t see any ghosts in it! Hey, ghosts? You there? You there?”
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Then he grabbed the spirit house, shook it.
“Maybe I can shake the spirits out! Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
“Jay, please, stop, if a local drives by and sees you doing that, he might…” I pleaded.
“IT’S BULLSHIT!” he screamed and shoved the spirit house down. It, along with the offerings of fruit and plastic bottles of juice, crashed to the ground.
“See, no ghosts! If they existed, wouldn’t they show themselves after I trashed their house?”
“Jay, no, you can’t…” I begged him, stepped towards him, about to yank him away, when he unzipped his pants, and screamed out, “Fuck your ghosts! I’m Jay FUCKING Palmer, bitch! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”
Then he flung out his cock and began to piss on the spirit house.
I stood frozen in disbelief, grimaced, shut my eyes and hung my head in shame. I couldn’t even comprehend how many visits I’d need to make to the temple to atone for this…
He finished his business, zipped up his fly and proclaimed, “Now, take me to the fucking party. I’m sick of this charade…”
I clutched my protective amulet tightly, hurried over to my bike. Jay jogged over, jumped on the back and we rode off…
Riding to the nightclub in lower Sukhumvit where his party was, I rode the motorbike like a grandma, extra careful.
Normally I’d never been afraid of ghosts, but after what he’d done to that spirit house, I couldn’t shake the mental image of Dao, enraged, her hair on fire, the taste of blood in her mouth. I felt a change in the air, too; it’d gotten at least 5
degrees cooler once we’d left the site of the mansion; I was getting gooseflesh.
When I pulled up to the front of the club, the bouncers growled at us, their angry eyes like those of mad dogs. One promptly attempted to block us from pulling further towards the entrance.
“Excuse me, can I help you?” pointedly inquired the tallest of the lot, a lanky bouncer with a long scar on his right cheek. He appeared to be French by the sound of his accent.
Not too many of this nightclub’s patrons arrived via motorcycle. Dude probably thought we were deliverymen or in the wrong place.
“I hope you can help me, or else you’d be pretty shitty at your job,” said Jay, flipping up his visor.
“Mr. Palmer, I apologize, sir, I did not…” the Frenchie bouncer started to stammer and stepped back.
Jay hopped off the bike, passed me the helmet, gave me a fist bump.
“As much as I shit on you tonight, this was fun, I must say, riding around, seeing the city. I don’t get out like this too often… Here, sign this…”
He handed me the phone, and I read over and then signed the new contract on his iPhone’s touchscreen, using my finger.
“You been a sport, Jeffyboy. I don’t know how good your reading comprehension is, but hopefully you saw in there that I’m giving you an extra 20k. You probably won’t have many clients after this, so you’ll need the cash. Take care, bro.”
And with that, Jay looked over and nodded to the bouncer who ushered him into the club.
Before riding off, I checked my phone again. It was burning up with tweets, none of them nice either and an online brawl between the comedians Steven Crowder and Nick Di Paolo versus the actress Alyssa Milano had broken out in the thread of comments. The rapper Tekashi69 had even trolled me.
But on the bright side, my followers had grown to over 140,000, and a rep from the Discovery Channel had sent me a DM, asking about appearing on a ghost-themed reality show.
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Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Two days later, as Jay and Amber were outside the Mandarin Oriental, waiting for a private boat to take them on a tour of the Chao Phraya River, a young Thai girl, of university age, plunged from the roof of the building, landed on top of Jay, crushing him and killing him instantly.
The girl had worked at the hotel and had recently broken up with her boyfriend, so it was thought she’d committed suicide. But she’d left no note, not spoken or told anyone of suicidal thoughts and was known as a gregarious, friendly, and optimistic girl.
She’d also been a fan of Amber and had been taking photos of her before she fell, leading some to believe maybe she’d tried to snap a selfie with Amber in the background and wound up falling.
The subsequent police investigation was inconclusive…
Amber’s fame only rocketed after the event, the tragic tale. Her follower count soaring to over 75 million on Instagram, and she did a series of tell-all interviews, launched a new product line of clothing in the months after…
As for me, my business had grown exponentially from the publicity of Jay’s tweets and then even more so after the media firestorm surrounding his untimely death.
We had more clients and deals than we could handle and had to hire additional staff. What’s more, we signed a deal for a series of episodes on the Discovery Channel, about ghosts in Bangkok.
And about 5 months later, I was shocked when I went to the ATM to withdraw some cash and found there was over $1,000,000 that had appeared in the account, sent to me by the late Mr. Palmer’s estate.
With business being as good as it was, and with the TV deal we’d inked, I knew what to do with the cash.
I tracked down the family of the girl who’d died at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, the one who’d fallen to her death. Her family turned out to be destitute, living in a shack alongside the Chao Phraya River, in a slum, on the outskirts of Bangkok.
When I spoke with the girl’s mother, I learned she was a single mom struggling to put her 15-year-old boy through school.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer
Somchai and I took the lady and her son to Bangkok Bank and transferred them $1,000,000.
