Legendary Khun Paen

Khun Paen lived between 1491-1529. He was born in Suphanburi Province (some 70 km. northwest of Bangkok) but grew up in the close bordered Kanchanaburi Province, where the world wide well-known "Bridge over River Kwai" situated.


He was a disciple of Arjarn Kong, a magic-expert guru monk, for magical studies.


Based on old legends, Khun Paen was handsome and very attractive to ladies.
It's so he had many wives, and still many ladies fell in love with him. Khun Paen had magical knowledge. He used magic to make himself invulnerable and unseen to enemies, to change the marching track of the enemies to become labyrinthine field, and to change leaves of the tree to become wasps to sting enemies etc.By his skillful fighting, he was appointed by the king to be Khun or a high ranking military officer.

Once he was ordered to attach the city. The king of that city was the father of his second wife. She wanted to ask Khun Paen to stop attach her father's city but Khun Paen refused. His second wife tryed to poison him but got discovered by Khun Paen, he was very angry & took out a sword & kill her. But then he found out his wife got his baby, he felt vey sorry about it, then he took out the baby corpse from her body & burned it into a dry corpse. He then take this corpse with him wherever he went. He won all the war afterwards. In that time, people believed a dead baby corpse can help everything success. And that's how Gumangthong was found.

Khun Paen had wanted a protective spirit to watch over him in battle. To this end he cut the unborn foetus of his son from his dead wife’s womb and took it to a temple to perform an occult rite.

He wrapped the child’s torso in sacred cloth and roasted it on a fire whilst chanting ritual mantras and dark incantations to create the supernatural being with whom he could communicate.



His biography was far more extended and rather a fictitious story by poetic authors of the early Rattanakosin period or some 180 years ago. His baby-ghost son named Guman Thong, he used magic to create him from a dead baby in the dead Bua Klee's womb. Bua Klee was a Khun Paen's minor wife.

From the end of Ayutthaya legend, Khun Paen was one of best warlord. He was very clever in fighting, spell and flirt. Khun Paen had magic spell. He fosters ghost such as Hong Prai and Guman Thong. He was successful in Nirvana katha. Also, he was successful in the top of soul knowledge.