Across Asia, from neon megacities to mist-covered mountain villages, women who speak to spirits, hunt ghosts, channel deities and cleanse haunted homes are not fringe curiosities—they are fixtures of cultural life. In an era of viral horror shows and paranormal YouTube channels, the figure of the “female ghost hunter” has acquired a cinematic glow. But long before streaming platforms monetized fear, women across East, Southeast and South Asia were already running sophisticated spiritual practices, blending ritual authority, performance, counseling and entrepreneurship. The names differ—mudang in Korea, miko in Japan, tang-ki in Chinese communities, bomoh in Malaysia, dukun in Indonesia, babaylan in the Philippines, maiba in Northeast India—but the pattern repeats: women mediating between worlds, and often earning a living from it.
In Korea, female shamans known as mudang (무당) dominate the indigenous tradition often called musok. They conduct gut (굿), elaborate rituals of drumming, dance, offerings and spirit possession meant to cure illness, resolve family misfortune or appease restless ancestors. Though stigmatized during modernization drives, mudang have persisted and, in recent years, adapted to social media marketing and online bookings. Many clients are urban professionals seeking clarity on careers, relationships or property decisions. The ritual may look ancient, but the clientele is modern and digitally savvy. A senior female shaman may be honored as a mansin (만신), literally “ten-thousand-spirit woman,” suggesting both spiritual breadth and social prestige.
Japan’s spiritual landscape presents a different but equally compelling archetype. The miko (巫女), historically shrine maidens serving at Shinto shrines, once included women believed capable of spirit possession and oracular trance. While today’s shrine attendants are typically ceremonial assistants, echoes of the older mediumistic role survive in rural traditions and in popular imagination. In Northern Japan, especially in Aomori and Akita, blind female mediums called itako were known for summoning the spirits of the dead during memorial rituals. Though declining in number, they remain potent symbols of women’s ritual authority. Contemporary Japan also hosts a booming market of female “reinōsha” (spiritualists) who offer ghost-clearing services, aura readings and haunted-house exorcisms, blending Shinto, Buddhist and New Age elements.
In Chinese cultural spheres—Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and diasporic communities—female spirit mediums operate within temple networks and household shrines. Some are known as tang-ki (in Hokkien), mediums who enter trance states and allow deities or spirits to speak through them. In Taiwan especially, women mediums may perform spirit-writing rituals, diagnose spiritual afflictions and prescribe offerings to wandering ghosts during festivals such as the Hungry Ghost Month (Zhongyuan Jie). Though male mediums are common, women frequently serve as temple custodians, ritual specialists and trance mediums, particularly in community-level worship.
Southeast Asia offers some of the most vivid examples of female ghost hunters as community healers. In the Philippines, precolonial societies revered the babaylan, often female or gender-nonconforming spiritual leaders who conducted healing rites and mediated with ancestor spirits. Spanish colonization suppressed but never fully erased these traditions. Today, in parts of Mindanao and the Visayas, women continue to perform ritual healing that blends Catholic symbolism with indigenous spirit cosmology. The babaylan has also become an icon for feminist and queer revival movements reclaiming indigenous spirituality.
Indonesia and Malaysia maintain expansive networks of women practitioners operating under labels such as dukun or bomoh. While these terms encompass various specializations, many women focus on spirit-related afflictions—possession, curses, haunted spaces. In Bali, female balian (healers) diagnose disturbances attributed to bhuta kala (malevolent spirits). In Java, women dukun may conduct ruwatan cleansing rituals. Malaysia’s female bomoh might recite Quranic verses to expel jinn, combining Islamic theology with older Malay animist layers. Payment structures vary from modest offerings to formal consultation fees, and urban practitioners increasingly maintain social media pages advertising services discreetly.
Thailand and Cambodia also host female spirit mediums known for trance possession during temple ceremonies. In Thailand, mae chi (lay Buddhist nuns) are distinct from spirit mediums, but separate female practitioners may channel local guardian spirits during ceremonies tied to land, business or personal protection. Cambodian kru khmer healers include women who interpret dreams and perform rituals against malevolent spirits. In Vietnam, female mediums play a central role in Đạo Mẫu (Mother Goddess) worship, where lên đồng (spirit mediumship rituals) involve elaborate costume changes, music and offerings. The ceremony is theatrical, devotional and economically significant, drawing large audiences and patron donations.
South Asia introduces further diversity. In parts of India, women serve as spirit mediums within village goddess traditions. In Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, female oracles enter trance during temple festivals, believed to channel local deities who offer guidance and warnings. In West Bengal and Assam, women associated with shakti (divine feminine power) traditions may perform exorcisms or spirit appeasement rituals. Northeast India’s maiba and maibi of Manipur include priestesses who enact ritual performances tied to cosmology and ancestral memory. In Nepal, female jhankri (shamans), though less common than male counterparts, continue to practice in Himalayan communities, conducting healing sessions that blend Buddhist and animist beliefs.
Across these cultures, several patterns emerge. First, women’s spiritual authority often thrives in domains where formal religious hierarchies limit female leadership. While major institutional religions—whether Buddhist, Confucian, Islamic or Hindu—have historically privileged male clerics, local spirit traditions leave room for women’s charisma and ritual competence. Second, the work frequently overlaps with counseling. Clients seek relief from misfortune, heartbreak, infertility, exam stress, business failure or unexplained illness. The medium offers narrative coherence and ritual action.
Third, there is a clear economic dimension. Fees, gifts and patronage sustain these practices. In some urban contexts, sessions are priced comparably to therapy appointments. In rural areas, compensation may be symbolic or community-based. The “business of spirits” ranges from informal cottage industry to temple-based institutions that manage significant donations. With digital platforms, some female mediums now livestream rituals, accept online bookings and cultivate followers far beyond their neighborhoods.
Of course, controversy follows. Governments have periodically attempted to regulate or suppress spirit practices, citing fraud or public order concerns. Religious authorities may condemn syncretic rituals as heterodox. Scandals occasionally erupt involving exploitative practitioners. Yet demand persists, often intensifying during times of social uncertainty. Economic downturns, pandemics and political upheaval frequently correlate with spikes in spiritual consultation.
The persistence of Asia’s female ghost hunters challenges a simple narrative of secular modernity. Skyscrapers and smartphones have not displaced spirits; they have merely reframed how spirits are accessed and monetized. For many women practitioners, the role offers not only income but status and agency in societies where other avenues of leadership may be constrained.
Whether draped in embroidered robes in Hanoi, beating drums in Seoul, whispering Quranic verses in Kuala Lumpur, or dancing in trance in a Philippine village, these women embody a paradox. They are custodians of ancient cosmologies and agile entrepreneurs of the present. In their hands, ghosts are not relics of superstition. They are clients, metaphors, ancestors and opportunities—proof that in much of Asia, the boundary between the visible and invisible remains productively, and profitably, porous.
Let me tell you something deliciously ironic: in some of the most patriarchal corners of Asia, the only woman everyone is afraid of is the one who talks to ghosts.
You can deny her theology. You can mock her incense. You can roll your eyes at her trance. But when your business collapses, your daughter won’t sleep, your husband starts behaving strangely, or your house feels “wrong,” where do you go? Exactly. To her.
Across the region—from Korean mudang shaking their bells in neon-lit Seoul apartments to Vietnamese lên đồng mediums dazzling crowds in embroidered robes—women have carved out a peculiar but potent kind of authority. Not through parliament. Not through corporate boardrooms. Through the invisible.
And I adore the subversion of it.
In societies where women are told to be quiet, obedient, rational, modest—suddenly a woman in trance becomes the loudest person in the room. She commands men to kneel, to listen, to offer money, to change their behavior. When she speaks, it is not “her opinion.” It is the ancestor. The goddess. The spirit. And somehow that makes patriarchy step back a little.
Let’s not romanticize everything. Yes, there are charlatans. Yes, vulnerability can be exploited. But show me one industry—banking, tech, religion itself—where that isn’t true.
What fascinates me is the emotional labor. These women absorb fear for a living. They sit with heartbreak, infertility, exam anxiety, business failure, marital suspicion. They translate chaos into ritual. They give people a script when life feels unscripted. That is not trivial work.
And here is the part modern skeptics miss: in an Asia of skyscrapers, stock markets and smartphones, spirits are not disappearing. They’re upgrading. Bookings via WhatsApp. Livestream rituals. Digital donations. The afterlife has Wi-Fi.
The “ghost hunter” label is catchy, but most of these women aren’t chasing shadows. They are managing relationships—between past and present, guilt and forgiveness, fear and hope. They are crisis managers of the unseen.
And maybe that’s why they endure. Because modern life produces anxiety faster than any temple drum can beat. Someone has to make sense of it.
If the only way a woman can command unquestioned authority is by channeling a goddess, then perhaps we should be asking less about whether spirits are real—and more about why society makes divinity the only safe source of female power.
Now that, my loves, is a haunting worth investigating.