Sathorn Unique Tower

An unfinished 43-storey skyscraper in Bangkok, left incomplete in an economic crisis. People in nearby communities believe it haunted or unlucky, pointing to a former graveyard under it and its shadow on the temple Wat Yan Nawa.

Sathorn Unique Tower is a 43-storey building in Bangkok's Sathon district that was never finished. Gizmodo (2014) linked its fate to the economy: towers going up during a severe economic crisis can stay incomplete for good, and this one did. Gizmodo's headline calls it an abandoned, half-finished ghost tower.

Wikipedia says people in the surrounding communities hold several superstitions about the tower. Some think it is haunted because it probably stands on an old graveyard. Others say its spot is unlucky, since its shadow falls on the neighbouring temple, Wat Yan Nawa, and they blame that for the building never being completed.

In 2014 Thairath Online ran a series on the tower in which a well-known feng shui master explained the site. He said one of feng shui's ten rules forbids building near a temple, because temples are tied to death. He added that Wat Yan Nawa was once used for many burials, that a large rite was held there to release spirits and dig up the dead, and that the tower's land was part of that ground. In his account some spirits remain bound there as guardians of buried wealth, and some cannot receive the merit they need to be reborn.

The Nation reported in 2014 that a man's death at the building drew attention to how people got into the tower, and that Sathon district officials planned to check the tower's safety and whether the owners had to enforce existing safety rules.