Pelesit the Bound Spirit

Pelesit the Bound Spirit

A Pelesit is a spirit or supernatural being that is bound to a master, often inherited or passed from person to person.

The pelesit is kept in a small bottle or jar in the masters home, once a month the master must feed the pelesit a few drops of their own blood to keep it bound to them.

Pelesits in the Past

In the days of yore, social hermits also kept pelesits as protection, once people found out that they owned a pelesit, they were left alone and were safe from prosecution or any form of petty crime. Most often they would be kept by females as a form of protection.

Pelesits in Modern Times

It is believed that pelesits in modern times are predominantly owned by unscrupulous Bomoh's (witchdoctors) to fleece innocent victims of their money. The bomoh's would sic their pelesit on random people, causing havoc in their lives, they would then step in and offer to exorcise the evil spirit in exchange for a paltry sum of cash. The bomoh would then perform a fake exorcism, while in reality recalling the pelesit back to its jar in his home.

Tale Told to me by a Bomoh

I met this bomoh in Butterworth, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia. He was introduced to me by a mutual friend. While we were having lunch one day, my friend brought up the fact that I was interested in the supernatural. The bomoh, then told me about the history of the pelesit and that he himself owned one.

I wanted to view the pelesit or at the very least the bottle it was contained in, but the bomoh told me that was not possible. He told me that the pelesit was a burden that had been passed down from generation to generation, he wasn't sure which one of his ancestors summoned the pelesit.

There was no way that he knew of to exorcise the demon so he fed it regularly to keep it contained and planned to pass it on to his son when he became of age.

He told me that there was a story passed down to the males of his family.

One of his ancestors didn't believe that the pelesit was a real and didn't feed it, on the next full moon, the village was plagued by weird accidents, dogs howled every night and the stores of produce were all stricken by a blight, but the straw that broke the camels back and made his ancestor a believer was when one of his neighbors children was possessed, the child shrieked out that it was hungry and needed to be fed. The bomoh's ancestor started dripping blood into the pelesit bottle and almost instantly the villages problems seemed to disappear.