Thanakorn Theerakarunwong is a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, and is handy with suction cups, ear candles and acupuncture needles. The Thai-Chinese man is wielding a different tool, though, when we meet: a forked wooden rod used in spirit writing. Solemn and bespectacled, Thanakorn, 32, is a tongji , or spirit medium, and is ostensibly relaying messages from the Eight Immortals, from Chinese mythology, through the rod in his hand. The Chinese divinities are about to reveal which graves will need prying open in a small graveyard outside Pattaya, a seaside town in eastern Thailand. Waiting expectantly for the results on this April morning – when Chinese people elsewhere observe the ancestor festival known as Ching Ming – are hundreds of locals dressed in funereal white. They’re queuing up at the nondescript graveyard, which is located next to a well-kept Chinese cemetery with undulating grassy knolls fronted by richly decorated tombstones. Many of the waiting men and women are wearing surgical masks and latex gloves. That’s because they are here to exhume and clean human remains that lie in regimented rows of small identical graves with cinderblock sides and earthen bottoms. Apart for hand-painted numbers on them, nothing sets the graves apart and nothing indicates whose remains they contain. “We don’t know who they are,” says Sinchai Wattanasatsaton, a businessman who is vice-president of a local Thai-Chinese Buddhist charity that runs humanitarian initiatives and organised today’s grave-exhuming event. “They’ve been neglected since the day they died.” The hundreds of graves here are the temporary resting places of people who died in recent years without any known next of kin in Pattaya and elsewhere around Chonburi province. They were undocumented foreign migrant workers, unidentified murder and accident victims, homeless derelicts and elderly people shunned by relatives. Living with corpses: how Indonesia’s Toraja people deal with their dead Local authorities buried them unceremoniously without coffins in case someone came looking for them, but no one has. Nameless and unmissed, they have lain unmourned and unlamented, until now. The throng of locals have come to lend a helping hand to the dead. The spirits of the departed, they believe, have become stuck in limbo, condemned to linger in the other world as despairing spectres or emotionally tormented poltergeists. They are unable to find solace or move on without the aid of the living. So the men and women are eager to indulge the spirits by giving their earthly remains a proper send-off. “These dead people can’t get reborn without earning more merit,” Sinchai says, referring to the Buddhist belief that karmic merit ensures better prospects for the rebirth of a soul. “They can’t do it for themselves so we want to do it for them.” The time for that now isn’t just propitious but necessary. The last time an exhumation like this took place here was a decade ago, and since then all the graves have filled up. Their current occupants will have to be removed and cremated to make way for other dead bodies. “People die every day,” observes Sinchai, whose charity also assists in road accidents, which take a terrible toll on lives and limbs around Thailand, not least in Pattaya, a popular resort town famed for its rowdy goings on. “We need spaces for new victims.” Thailand has one of the world’s highest traffic mortality rates. Last year alone, nearly 22,500 people died on Thai roads, or more than 60 a day on average, according to the World Health Organisation. Violent crime and rampant drug use also claim victims daily. Many of the dead remain unidentified by police, who often conduct little more than a cursory check. Thanakorn and an assistant wield the forked divining rod to relay an auspicious message from the Eight Immortals. It’s spelled out in Chinese characters with spirited tap-tap-taps on a powdered round board placed before a portable Taoist shrine. Then the wooden implement seems to come alive, like an out-of-control dowsing rod. It writhes and squirms in the hands of the two men, who begin sprinting among the cinderblock graves. Zigzagging and stumbling, they keep doubling over to tap on various graves that are then marked with red pennants. “The gods have chosen me for this task,” Thanakorn says between two spirit runs. “If you’re selected, the rod will react to your touch. It pulls me and I follow it.” Once 40 graves have been identified this way, small teams of men and women spring into action. What comes next isn’t for the faint of heart. They remove the stone slabs sealing the graves, whereupon a stench of decay fills the air. They set about picking out the dirt-covered contents painstakingly by hand, depositing them gingerly onto rattan mats: skulls, clavicles, femurs and myriad other bones. Some are still wrapped in fraying bits of soiled clothing, which are also meticulously collected. We don’t turn up our noses at these dead people no matter their condition. Showing disgust would be disrespectful. Sompis Saejew Only random objects provide a few clues. In one grave lies a vinyl wristband that was once attached by a hospital with details of prescribed medications for a patient who didn’t make it. From another grave emerges a woman’s disc-shaped pendant, which was worn as a good-luck charm. Locals remain unperturbed as they go about their macabre tasks. “We don’t turn up our noses at these dead people no matter their condition,” says Sompis Saejew, a middle-aged woman who owns a restaurant in Pattaya and is now handing out refreshments. Like many people here, she’s ethnic Chinese. “Showing disgust would be disrespectful.” Manila’s ‘apartment tombs’, where the poor bury their dead Then the fun begins – for both the living and the dead. Clustering around heaps of bones, the men and women clean the dirt off them with toothbrushes and assemble them into individual skeletons on mats laid out on the ground. Now cheerful, now reverent, they proceed to pamper the spirits of dead people that they believe still inhabit these human remains. They do so by engaging in a fusion of Buddhism, folk religion and Chinese ancestor worship with elements borrowed from Thai funerary traditions and the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival. They dab gold leaf on skulls and cover them with scented talcum powder. They spray bones with perfume and sprinkle them with marigold petals. Then they cover the skeletons in banknotes and burn joss paper to bequeath new wealth to the departed. Halfway through the hours-long proceedings, a tropical thunderstorm erupts. People carry on undaunted, exhuming yet more graves in pouring rain and attending to new skeletons under leaky awnings. A bolt of lightning strikes a nearby transformer with an almighty bang and a crackling sizzle. It does so just as a stylishly dressed woman has picked up a skull to pose for a photo with it. Startled, she hurriedly puts it back down and bows her head, pressing her palms together apologetically. “Forgive me! Forgive me!” she begs the skull. Ghosts may follow some people home from this graveyard. But it’s not to haunt them. It’s to protect them and look after them. Reusak Srikasem In Thailand, a fear of ghosts remains prevalent. Random happenings are often attributed to spectral influences, either benign, or malevolent. “I believe in ghosts. Of course I do,” says the woman, Phailin Keawpan, who has overcome her dread of ghosts today to make merit by helping the spirits of the dead. “Some people here can sense their presence,” she adds. “Ghosts may follow some people home from this graveyard,” says Reusak Srikasem, a 57-year-old minivan driver. “But it’s not to haunt them. It’s to protect them and look after them.” It’s assumed to be a karmic quid pro quo: a good deed from the living for the dead deserves another from the dead to the living. “Lots of people have won the lottery after doing this,” the man says. “Digging for human remains is like digging for gold.” Many of those gathered want to hit the jackpot, too. They’re hoping to divine winning numbers by various methods. One involves adding up the numerous Thai banknotes that people have put randomly on a skeleton. One such tally yields 3,454 baht on remains recovered from Grave #4. “It’s a beautiful number,” a woman enthuses. “It must be a winner.” Uncovering the secrets of the dead by reading their bones Each skeleton is then placed in a sack and groups of people parade around with it under oiled-paper umbrellas mounted on long bamboo poles. The men bang drums and the women ululate excitedly in the style of traditional merrymaking during ordination ceremonies for novice monks. “The dead are happy we’re doing this for them,” says Tanee Yindeepot, a small man with a shaven head who wears a cascade of protective amulets around his neck. “Now they’re at peace in the afterlife, or they can move on to their next life,” he adds.