The existence of ghosts may be debated. But the impact of traditional Asian beliefs on Thailand's tourism trade since the December 26, 2004, tsunami appears indisputable.
Tourism from Europe, Australia, and the United States has rebounded since the disaster. But tourist arrivals from elsewhere in Asia have plummeted since the tsunami and have yet to bounce back.
Industry observers cite Asian tourists' fears of ghosts in tsunami-stricken areas as the main reason for the decline.
The tsunami claimed more than 215,000 lives in 11 countries around the Indian Ocean and left another 50,000 people unaccounted for.
Sopaporn Chompradit's mother, SaLee, is among the missing.
Sopaporn and her mother had been running a restaurant, the Cat Bar, for the past two years at the beach resort of Khao Lak, just north of Thailand's popular Phuket Island.
On that fateful December morning Sopaporn was driving with some friends to the town of Phuket when the tsunami struck.
The group escaped unhurt, but the restaurant, along with the rest of Khao Lak, was leveled by the huge wave. Scores of people, most likely SaLee included, were swept out to sea.
A year later Sopaporn and her Swedish boyfriend Johan Gratschev have moved to Phuket, where they recently bought a house. Like most small business owners from Khao Lak, she has no plans to go back to the seaside resort.
"That place is haunted," Sopaporn said. The Thai businesswoman, who is Buddhist, means that literally.
Buddhism and other Asian belief systems hold that if bodies are not recovered and properly buried, their spirits restlessly wander the Earth. Many Asians believe that lost souls try to drag living beings into a spiritual limbo.
"Please tell your fellow Japanese and Chinese back home to stop fearing ghosts and return to this region again," Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra reportedly told tourists last week after a memorial service to commemorate the victims of the tsunami.
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