In March 2026, I led a geophysical survey team into the infamous Golden Triangle region of Bokeo Province, Laos. We were working at the invitation of the Lao National Museum and with the encouragement of the most revered Buddhist monk in the region, the Venerated Monk Crom.

Our mission was to locate a temple built more than 500 years ago that had vanished centuries earlier. In that era, only temples were constructed of brick; every other structure was wood. Before excavation crews arrived with track hoes, our job was to survey the ground using electromagnetic metal-detection equipment. Any metallic targets we found would be flagged for careful hand excavation. Survey first, dig second—that was our professional mandate.

Monk Crom, however, felt that understanding the spirit of the place was just as important as understanding the soil beneath it.
When you are a venerated monk in Laos, you have a driver. One afternoon Crom’s driver insisted that I ride with him and Nidda, our translator, to see something nearby. We climbed into the truck and bounced along dusty dirt roads to a small village about ten minutes from our survey site.

At the edge of the village stood a large, fenced enclosure, perhaps two hundred feet square, containing only a single dusty cow, in Lao a Ngoua. As we approached, the animal ambled over to Crom as if greeting an old friend. It turned out that was exactly what it was.
Years earlier, Crom had saved the calf from slaughter in a country where protein is scarce and had instructed the villagers to care for it. Judging by the cow’s comfortable condition, they had honored his request.

Then the conversation shifted to ghosts.

In much of Asia the color of mourning is white. Villagers had a strange concern. At times at night they looked toward the fenced field and saw groups of people dressed entirely in white, wandering aimlessly across the enclosure. Crom advised them to stay away from the place at night because they were seeing spirits.

Every time I travel in Laos I am struck by how thick the country is with spirits. What fascinated me most was how similar our senses are. The Lao villagers recognized ghosts exactly as Americans do, figures dressed in white.

After all, every child knows that ghosts are white. Even we older Americans remember Casper the Friendly Ghost.