Hollywood has long dominated films depicting supernatural ghost, monster, and horror themes with such classics as Exorcist, Omen, King Kong, Dracula, Werewolf, and Frankenstein, just to name a few.

But, little known to international audiences, some countries in Southeast Asia have been producing local, melodramatic ghost and horror movies almost as long as Hollywood. Now, in the spirit of ghost globalization, these countries are adapting their own cultural ghost/horror stories to enter the world movie market.

Indonesia and Thailand began turning out ghost films as early as the 1920's based on traditional cultural narratives often involving the ghosts of abused or tragic women seeking revenge for the ills perpetrated against them by evil men. These films also sometimes involved the clash between forest spirits and urban life. These spirits are angry with the incursion of modern society into the tranquility of nature.

These themes and how Thailand and Indonesia are adapting their cultural ghost heritage to develop popcorn potboilers for modern audiences -- and turning this into an economic advantage, was recently discussed at the Seventh Asia Public Intellectuals (API) conference in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The conference was entitled: "Asian Alternatives for a Sustainable World: Trans-border Engagements in Knowledge Formation."

The API Fellowship Program, sponsored by the Nippon Foundation (NF), recognizes that opportunities for intellectual exchanges are currently limited by institutional, linguistic and cultural parameters. Therefore, NF in cooperation with major academic institutions in Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, launched the API program to stimulate creative ideas and research, particularly on cross-cultural themes.

This program is meant to overcome political, economic, and social national boundaries to develop a new pool of intellectuals who are willing to be active in the public sphere and who can articulate common concerns and propose creative solutions.

In a ghosts without borders, cross-cultural theme approach -- one Japanese API fellow presented results of his SE Asian ghost films research at the Yogyakarta API conference. Mr Inuhiko Yomoto, Director of the Institute of Language and Culture at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo, discussed insights and comparisons to the West and Japan in his research of Indonesian and Thai ghost films.

Early Indonesian and Thai heroes in this film genre were based on traditional social models, explained Yomoto. Indonesian heroes were often religious male figures who vanquished pesky ghosts and monsters by such methods as chanting from the Koran, while Thai ghost busters were traditionally saintly Buddhist monks who persuaded angry spirits to move on to the next world where they would find a more peaceful and agreeable environment.

Yomoto points out that traditional SE Asia ghost narratives are now being newly remade with larger budgets and a more outward looking script that takes into account foreign markets and sensibilities. Even Hollywood is taking Asian ghost scripts and rewriting them into English for US and Western audiences.

"In the context of globalization," says Yomoto, "what had once been an individual country's ghost film based in local folklore has achieved a huge transformation."

Asian cultural ghost themes have not been totally sacrificed to globalization, says Yomoto -- SE Asian female ghosts will still fight against male abuse and a suppressive social system to achieve their revenge, but this will be tempered with more affectionate figures who work constructively with the living.

And, the power of religion to solve ghostly problems is giving away to a more contemporary method for dealing with the bad guy as seen in East Asia action films where the supernatural female and male warriors are more likely to be martial arts masters who easily dispense with evil characters.

Ghosts, it appears, will remain alive and well in an Asian box-office context for some time to come.