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Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I Heart Radio.

Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the Art Effect, a short forum series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing in on particular objects, ideas,

and moments in time.

In the absence of modern medicine and sometimes in conjunction with it or in spite of it, cultural practices around the world have long looked to supernatural causes of illness.

In some cases, the source of the illness is identified as an aferious witch or wizard.

But other times, the culprit is seen as a demon or evil spirit, inevitably such identifications come with means of driving the spirit away.

Perhaps it is exercised from the individual via the consumption of sacred substances locked out of homes with special rights or driven off into the bodies of beasts.

Or you could send them away aboard sacred model boats.

This practice and vestiges of it can be found throughout Southeast Asia with many variations turning up in Malaysia.

As outlined by Prince John Lohanstein in the journal Atropus in 1958, Malaysian evil spirit boats or Kapal Hantu

were neither toys nor full-scale ships but sacred vessels of magical significance.

They range from small wooden boats to larger vessels, splendidly decorated with sails and wooden crew members, depending on the stature of the afflicted individual or the overall scope of the misfortune to be exercised.

It might be the illness or misfortune visited on a particular individual or upon an entire community, but the evil spirit would be lured onto the vessel with offerings and then set a drift, either down a river or out to sea.

As reported in the Mele male in December of 2020, one of the most important surviving ceremonies of this sort is the Wang Kang or Barge Festival,

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