The story of "Mae Nak" (แม่นาค) is perhaps the most famous of all Thai ghosts.
A famous shrine in Bangkok (ศาลแม่นาคพระโขนง) is located near Sukhumvit Road, Soi 101, inside Wat Mahabut. It is containing the grave of the dreadful ghost "PHI PHRA KHANONG" (ผีพระโขนง). This ghost has frightened Thai people since almost a century.
Last century, during the reign of King Mongkut (1851-1868), when Bangkok was still called the "Venice of the Far East", a woman called "NAK" was married to a man called "TID MAK". They moved into a house in Bangkok's Phra Khanong district, near Wat Mahabut. After a while her husband was called off to war. Alas she was already pregnant.
While her husband was away, she died with the baby still inside her body. So as Thai people believe, a woman who died with her baby creates a powerful spirit called "PHI TAI HONG THONG KLOM" (ผีตายโหงทองกลม). She became a ghost. As she still loved her husband deeply, she took a form of human being and waited for "Tid Mak" to return.
Her husband didn't know anything about his wife's death. So when he came back home, his wife was waiting for him. Many persons did warn him that his wife was dead and that he was living with a ghost but he did not believe them.
One day when "MAE NAK" was preparing the dinner and her husband bathing himself in the bathroom, a lemon fell from her hand. As the house was a Thai traditional house, it was built on piles and so the lemon fell on the ground 2 meters lower than the house's floor. So the ghost "MAE NAK" made her arm longer in order to get it.
But her husband saw that, he understood that his wife was now a ghost. He managed to flee from the house and took refuge inside Wat Mahabut. "MAE NAK" terrorised the local population as an expression of her anger with them for helping her husband.
Thanks to a monk, the spirit was imprisoned in an earthen pot and thrown in the river. The monk covered the bottle with a cloth. On this cloth was written Pali language in order to disable the spirit from going outside the bottle. But the legend is not over. Two fishermen trying to catch some fish got the bottle and freed "MAE NAK".