Found across Asia, these popular theme parks began as temple gardens that warned visitors of Buddhism’s many levels of hell—and the gruesome fates that awaited them there.
Singapore’s Haw Par Villa theme park has more than a thousand statues and 150 dioramas, some which depict gruesome versions of the Buddhist underworld, such as demons eating humans. It’s one of the dozens of Buddhist “hell parks” across Asia that aim to teach people about morality and sin.
Not all Buddhist temples are Zen-like experiences with manicured gardens and meditative art. In countries like Thailand and Singapore, travelers can visit Buddhist “hell parks.” Once used to warn parishioners about the punishments that awaited them after a life of sin, hell gardens are now more like B-movie horror theme parks.
Guests creep past life-size plaster dioramas and gruesome statues that show demons torturing humans who were reborn into the lowest Buddhist realm of existence. In some depictions, screaming sinners are boiled alive in peanut oil in a giant wok..
Today, families come to popular parks such as Hell’s Museum in Singapore for a kitschy good time (think bug-eyed selfies as they pretend to be chopped in half). But these gruesome illustrations of the afterlife historically had spiritual importance, and they provide a deeper understanding of perceptions of death and the afterlife in Asian cultures.
Buddhist underworld
Buddhism, like Christianity and other religions, often uses art to relay information to worshippers, especially illiterate ones. According to John Skutlin, whose anthropological work in Japan has covered views of devils and hell across cultures, “conceptions of the afterlife have long been mined by artists for their rich imaginative potential. Buddhism, with its roots in Hinduism, is no exception.”
Buddhist texts and art traditionally depict the cyclical nature of the universe as a wheel containing six worlds. “While the upper levels are surely magnificent, it is the lurid depictions of the lowest realm of hell—known as Naraka—that have produced the most shocking and fascinating artworks,” Skutlin says.
In early Buddhist texts, Naraka is described as a dark underworld ruled over by Yama, the god of death and justice, according to the Hindu Vedas. Around the first century B.C., the concept of multiple hells within Naraka took hold with increasingly creative and gruesome descriptions of the agonies within each. The Devaduta Sutta, for example, details a level called Excrement, where torturers with needle mouths bore holes into your marrow.
Artistic depictions of Buddhist hell also grew more vivid over the centuries. In Tibet, Yama became a monstrous figure with a fanged red face and crown of skulls, while a 13th-century Japanese scroll shows demons wielding hammers and tongs in a sea of fire. “These graphic depictions served as both spectacle and as inducements to live a moral life, or else suffer ghastly consequences,” Skutlin says.
The emergence of hell parks
In line with this tradition, some small temples in Japan, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam erected educational dioramas of scenes from Buddhist hell, often with elements of local folklore about evil spirits and underworlds. However, it was Myanmarese-Chinese entrepreneurs Aw Boon Haw and Aw Boon Par—the brothers who invented the pungent pain reliever Tiger Balm—that took hell gardens to the next level.
The businessmen opened Singapore’s Haw Par Villa in 1937, one of the few recreational spaces geared toward the Asian community during the nation’s colonial era. It’s aim was to teach the public about Asian history, religion, and folklore in an entertaining way. The most popular section, “10 Courts of Hell,” was particularly graphic. “There were dioramas of sinners being decapitated, being tossed into a pool of blood, and so on,” says Cherylyn Tok, research manager at Haw Par Villa. “It was both repulsive and yet strangely attractive.”
Two years ago, Haw Par Villa revamped its original 10 Courts into a 40,902-square-feet Hell’s Museum, making it the largest hell park in the world. In addition to the classic gore, “curated displays provide insight on how religions and communities worldwide draw meaning from death and the afterlife,” says Tok. The new Hell’s Museum draws in a monthly average of 6,500 visitors and has become one of Singapore’s most popular attractions.
Several Thai temples were inspired to build extravagant Naraka parks, playing up the grisly and campy factor to attract crowds. In 1986, Wang Saen Suk in Chonburi Province received international media attention for its towering hungry ghosts with floor-length tongues and of naked figures being sliced and diced. In 2010, Chiang Mai’s Wat Mae Kaet Noi set out to make the most hellish park yet, with scenes including an orgy between a well-endowed man, five women, and a banana.
