The Unseen Evil: From Saloth Sar to Beisac

The Darkest Supernatural Demon of Cambodia

In Khmer folklore, a Beisach is a vengeful, bloodthirsty demon often depicted as a man-eater or a spirit of extreme evil. Many Cambodians and of course the World retrospectively describe Pol Pot as a "demon king" or Beisach to explain the scale of his atrocities in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 which applied to him in the wake of the Cambodian genocide. Because of his violent death in April 1998 and the unimaginable suffering he caused, he is considered by many locals to have been transformed into an immoral, powerful, and malevolent spirit that haunts his last hiding places in the jungle of Anlong Veng near the Thai border—a "master of the land" (or Arak), holding a supernatural influence over the territory. In the years following his death, strange cult-like activities surrounded his grave, where he was worshiped as a powerful, demonic, evil, spirit. The description of his transformation into a "post-mortem" entity often parallels the idea of a demon or evil spirit from Cambodia that cannot rest, a being that is both a victim of its own karma and a source of continued terror both inside and outside Cambodia to the world. The memory and folkloric of Pol Pot became part of a haunting, spiritual, and supernatural landscape where his actions are perceived as a form of lasting, demonic, and paranormal trauma after he was buried in the remote jungle area of Anlong Veng. The word Beisac (often transliterated as Peisach or Beisach) refers to a hungry ghost or a demonic entity.