Thai people don’t really care that these spirit houses are totally out of Buddhism. Worship of spirits came to our days from times when nobody heard about Buddha. The funny thing is that sometimes you can see a spirit house at Wat’s territory.
So, why does everybody have the spirit house nearby his home?
Easy – Thai people build spirit houses, so spirits will live there. It’s believed that if there is no spirit house, spirits will come and stay in the main house with people and will make a lot of troubles and problems to humans in the house.
What spirits will live in the spirit house? – those spirits who lived on this piece of land before anything was constructed there. Some legends say that those spirits have lived on the land since ancient times, some – that spirits are souls of ancestors of those who used to live on this piece of land before.
According to Thai believes, spirits can make good or harm to people – depends on their mood. And spirit’s mood is getting bad when people disturb them on their land/trees/water/etc and moreover when people do not show proper respect to them or forget about their existence .
So, humans build houses for spirits to make them peaceful and harmless. Then, they invite the spirit to enter the spirit house and settle there.
The spirits will be too happy with there new house and such an attention from human beings, that they would prefer this spirit house to the people’s one and plus will start to help in business, bring good luck and so on and so forth.
Offerings are to make spirits remember that people loves them and respect, so the spirits will remain in peaceful mood and won’t forget to perform their duties by keeping the place safe and wealthy.