At first glance, this sounds like the kind of story that practically writes its own sensational headline: Buddhist retreats, dozens of human bodies, and a pond containing hundreds of crocodiles.
But the easy version of the story starts to fall apart once the details are checked.
Between November 20 and 26, 2024, Thai authorities investigated three linked Buddhist sites in the central provinces of Kamphaeng Phet and Phichit. Across those sites, a total of 85 human bodies were found.
At one of the Phichit sites, where 41 bodies were documented, investigators also found a large enclosure holding more than 600 crocodiles.
That combination sounds deeply unsettling. Yet there is an important complication: Buddhist traditions do include forms of meditation in which practitioners contemplate corpses, bodily decay, mortality, and attachment to the body.
So the real question is not simply, “Why were Buddhists meditating around dead bodies?” The more interesting question is where an established religious practice ends — and where a modern, site-specific system involving dozens of stored bodies begins.