Siriraj medical museum, Bangkok, the body of serial killer Si-Oui and Chulalongkorn university museum of bodies exhibit

A while back I visited the Chulalongkorn university medical museum in Bangkok, Thailand.

As you can see in my photos below they had a lot of skeletons and wet specimens of both humans and animals.

That was a while back, and I haven't been since, but after googling "medical museums" in the hope of finding another interesting place to spend a day I saw that they had a new exhibit of amazing plastinated human bodies on display.

 I found these images on the official website for the university and also on another bloggers page (He has a really informative post regarding the history and process which I urge you to check out if you want to know more) 

I also visited a few similar places including the Siriraj medical museum. 

The Siriraj Medical Museum is often treated as a macabre stop for tourists bored with temples and shopping malls, and is a gruesomely fascinating formaldehyde pickled nightmare world for the curious.  

It includes a gallery of suicide (photos of death and a description of the cause), an exhibit of Siamese twins in jars, forensic evidence from crimes, cadavers cut in half and heads in jars. 

Although extremely valuable and educational for students in the medical field, it is not for the faint of heart. 

The hospital is also home to the preserved body of Chinese immigrant and serial child killer cannibal “Si-oui” (or Si Ouey) who stands tanned and varnished in a big glass display box, staring out at visitors with his sunken hollow eyes. 

(Pic: trip adviser)

Si-oui (often spelled Si Ouey) is probably Thailand’s most infamous serial killer, responsible for the deaths of half a dozen young boys. He suffocated them and ate their hearts and livers as he believed the consumption of the organs gave him special powers.

If you want to visit the museum for yourself you can find it here:

2 Wanglung Road Khwaeng Siriraj, 

Khet Bangkok Noi, 

Krung Thep Maha Nakhon 10700,

 Thailand

Check if it's open or not before you go, because I went there once and it wasn't. Boo.

Satanic slayings in the land of smiles

(Images blurred for Gore. Violent content in article) 

 The lead vocalist and bass player of Thai metal band “Surrender of divinity” was only 36 years old when he was brutally stabbed to death in his own living room while his wife and child were upstairs. 

Samong Traisattha, informally known as Avaejee, was murdered by Prakarn Harnphanbusakorn, who dropped by his house in Sai mai, Bangkok, under the pretense of silk screening some T shirts and having a couple of beers.

 Samong’s wife left the room to put their child to bed and returned to a bloody murder scene. He had been stabbed a total of 30 times. 

Self-proclaimed “Satanist”, Prakarn Harnphanbusakorn, who went by the Facebook username “maleficent.meditation”, posted an update on his page confessing to the crime, along with a gory photo of his handy work. 

In a wall of text he confessed that the reasons he committed the murder weren’t relevant, as he was planning to commit suicide. However he did go on to elaborate that the reason for the slaying was because Samong wasn’t a real Satanist. Harnphanbusakorn claimed to have real faith in the Devil and admitted the he was going to kill 30-50 more people, but his plans were foiled by the police check points that had been set up around the city. 

He described his actions in detail, commenting on how much better it is to kill with a knife than it is with a gun. Although the media reported that Harnphanbusakorn was a fan, he denied it and along with the comparison to the death of John Lennon, and claimed it was nothing of the sort and that he didn’t even like the band. He finished off the post by thanking those who had read it in its entirety, and said that he hoped to be with Satan soon. 

Prakarn Harnphanbusakorn is currently in prison serving a 20 year sentence.

sources: http://www.bangkokpost.com/archive/singer-slain-over-satanic-verses/390422

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17/samong-traisattha-murder-satanism_n_4618142.html

http://www.metalinjection.net/metal-crimes/satanist-murders-black-metal-vocalist-because-he-wasnt-really-a-satanist

Holiday in Cambodia:

The Dead Kennedys are an American hardcore punk rock band from San Francisco.

In May 1980 they released a single called "Holiday in Cambodia". 

The black and white image that they used  as the artwork depicts the hanged body of a second year student from Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, being beaten with a metal folding chair by a right wing onlooker as a crowd cheers on and smiles.

The Holiday in Cambodia single was a satirical view on the attitude of a well off, self righteous, blissfully ignorant, American youth, with a false sense of empathy and compassion for third world countries under brutal regimes, much like that of Khmer regime of Cambodia during the 1970's.

The picture was taken by American born photographer Neal Hirsh Ulevich, in Bangkok, during the Thammasat University massacre of October 1976.

The Thammasat University Massacre, or Massacre of 6 October 1976 was an attack on students and protesters that occurred on the campus of Thammasat University and at Sanam Luang in Bangkok. Students from various universities were demonstrating against the return to Thailand of Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn, a former military ruler.

Ulevich shot the image and quickly returned to his office to develop the negatives and send them to Tokyo by telegram, as the Thai government had ordered all photographers and journalists to give up their film.

(Image: Neal Ulevich)

He went on to win the pulitzer prize for the picture in 1977, but until this day the prize winning  picture has not been printed in any Thai publications.The award was mentioned in an English language newspaper “The Bangkok post”, however the picture failed to accompany the text only report.

The official body count was reported as 43 but allegedly the number of those dead was tragically higher.

There was said to have been hundreds of victims and a quick google will pull up other pictures of the event.

Here is an exert from the wikipedia page on the event, as a bit of an insight to the happenings that day:

"In the chaos of the attack, students were shot and hanged, pulled through gates and beaten, dragged across city streets, and bludgeoned with sticks and poles. A few escaped. More than three thousand were rounded up by police, stripped to their waists, and told to lie on their stomachs and await incarceration......kicking, clubbing, shooting, lynching. Youths hurled themselves into the river to keep from being shot. Then the blazing finale as a heap of gasoline-soaked bodies was set afire.About a thousand demonstrators were taken prisoner and humiliated by being stripped to the waistmade to crawl or kicked.Female students allegedly were raped, alive and dead, by police and Red Gaurs....By evening, the democracy was overthrown and martial law was enforced. Many of the bodies were cremated en masse. The true count of those who died will likely never be known.”Even today, the Thammasat University massacre is seldom mentioned."

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Ulevich
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holiday_in_Cambodia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Kennedys

The Death of David Carradine and the haunted closet:

Since I wrote my last post, I’ve been thinking about Bangkok related weirdness that I can share with you guys. 

I know, I know, you’re thinking it’s not exactly difficult to find dodgy stories from the land of smiles, but finding something worth writing about with a bit of a back story and a mystery element isn’t so easy to track down.

So there’s a seemingly endless and fresh supply of daily tales of terror, complete with gory crime scene investigation photos, printed every morning in the tabloids in south East Asia.

But I don't want to write about those. 

I do, however, want to write about this little snippet of spooky that I found whilst on my searches today. I found an older article about the death of American actor and martial artist David Carradine.

Whilst on location, filming his latest movie titled “Stretch” on June 4th 2009, he was found dead in closet in his room, in a hotel by the name of "Swissôtel Nai Lert Park Hotel" in central Bangkok, Thailand. 

His hands were tied above his head and around the closets hanger rail. 

Apparently he also had a cord wrapped around genitals, leading people to believe that his death was accidental and due to an Erotic asphyxiation session gone wrong.

Two of his former wives confirmed that Carradine did have an interest in sexual self-bondage, so the story seemed to add up. 

Case closed, right?

Weirdly, while researching the article for any elements of foul play or mystery, I found a few articles mentioning Carradine’s appearance on a series called “Celebrity ghost stories” some months prior to his death, where he talked of being haunted by a ghost in a closet. 

Apparently it was the ghost was of his wife’s ex-husband, who he thought hung out in the closet where some of his things were still kept.

“The closet doors wound swing open and shut” He said. 

How creepy is that?

Coincidences happen all of the time, of course, but seriously, a closet ghost and then a closet related death only a few months later? 

You couldn’t even write this stuff.