The Jim Thompson House and the mysterious disappearance of its owner
It was Easter Day 1967. Sixty-year-old American Jim Thompson was on vacation in the Cameron Highlands, an area of Malaysia popular with foreigners. He had spent a day like many others. After attending mass at Soul’s Church, he sat under the porch of the Moonlight Bungalow, the cottage he rented with some friends. Many had seen him. He had smoked a cigarette with the cook of the restaurant where he dined every night. A few hours later, the neighbors heard footsteps on the driveway’s gravel that led away from the town towards the forest. But none of them worried. Because Jim Thompson wasn’t just a former architect and wealthy entrepreneur, he was used to moving through the jungle.
The spy who loved the East
Many years earlier, Jim Thompson had left his job at a major New York architectural firm to enlist in the OSS, the U.S. Naval Intelligence Service that would later become the CIA. In August 1945, he flew over central Thailand, leading a group of guerrillas trained to survive in hostile environments. Their task was to parachute into the jungle and organize resistance against Japanese occupation. But the moment the hatch opened and they were ready to jump; the pilot received a message. Japan had surrendered. The war was over.
Jim Thompson went to Thailand anyway. The first time to organize the secret service’s local office, then to start a textile enterprise, the Thai Silk Company. The American became famous as the King of Silk, who revived the declining local silk production and produced luxury fabrics for Broadway and Hollywood. But in Bangkok, the wealthy foreigner was most famous for his home, the Jim Thompson House, also known as The House on the Khlong, the house on the canal.
The Jim Thompson House
In the 1960s, the Jim Thompson House was a meeting place for the city’s high society. Dinners and parties were held almost every night. Guests were fascinated by the teakwood villa on the banks of the Khlong Saen Saep, surrounded by a lush tropical garden and composed of six houses transported there from different parts of the country, a feat less challenging than we might think. In Thailand, traditional wooden houses are not built with nails and have no foundation. They are made interlocking each element so that they can be easily disassembled. If the owner moves, the house follows him.
On evenings with friends, Jim Thompson especially liked to show off his collection of Oriental art and antiques, among the most valuable in Southeast Asia, with works from China, Thailand and Burma. Many of these were purchased without asking too many questions. When Jim Thompson was accused of possessing five stolen Buddha’s heads, he refused to return them. Those works of art, he argued, not only enriched his private collection but were a boast of the entire nation. The government felt the same way, more or less. The police raided the Jim Thompson House, seized the Buddha’s heads and returned them where they belonged: to the National Museum.
An Easter day
On Easter Sunday, 1967, on the porch of Moonlight Bungalow in Cameron Highlands, friends waited a long time for Jim Thompson to return from his walk. Someone entered his room. He had taken away his backpack, but not the cigarettes or medicines he should have always had with him.
The search lasted many months and involved more than 500 people: residents, the police, the Malaysian army, some volunteers from the British military, explorers, even students, fortune tellers and tourists eager to tell their friends about their extraordinary adventure. It was the most massive chase ever seen in all of Southeast Asia. No traces of Jim Thompson or clues were ever found.
Disappeared into thin air
What happened to Jim Thompson? Did a wild animal maul him? But is it possible that no remains were found? Was he kidnapped? Then why has no one ever asked for a ransom? Was he murdered? If so, where did the body go? Maybe Jim Thompson never stopped working for the U.S. government and went off on a secret mission. To this day, there is not a single piece of evidence that can confirm the theories that have followed over the years. Of the 25 probable causes on his disappearance listed in 1967, at least half can be eliminated.
The mystery takes on even more disturbing implications when, shortly after the disappearance of Jim Thompson, one of his sisters was found bludgeoned to death in the house where she lived, in the United States.
But there is still another detail that has never been answered. Why, when Jim Thompson left for his trip to Malaysia, was there only $50 left in his account? Has the entrepreneur spent all his possessions to purchase the artworks he loved to display in his house?
Jim Thompson’s Legacy
The house on the Khlong is still among the most visited places in Bangkok. There are no longer dinners and parties every night, but it’s open to travellers who can only enter by booking a guided tour. The Thai Silk Company still produces luxury fabrics and has three thousand employees. In 1967, when Jim Thompson passed away, there were only a hundred of them; most were artisans living in small workshop-houses in Bang Khrua, on the opposite bank of the Khlong Saen Saep.
Today, in the Cameron Highlands, hikers who dare to walk the trail from Moonlight Bungalow into the forest receive a list of warnings. At the top of it is written: Never walk alone.
To know more:
- Alessandro Pezzati. «Jim Thompson, the Thai Silk King». Expedition Magazine 53, n. 1.
- «Bangkok fortune of silk industrialist is left to nephew». New York Times, 21 March 1969.
- Daisy Alioto. «The Architect Who Changed the Thai Silk Industry and Then Disappeared», Time, 9 May 2016.
- Robert Sam Anson. «Mistery of the Thai silk king». Life, May 1984.
- «Jim Thompson House in Bangkok». Bangkok.com.
- «Thailand: A Walk in the Jungle». Time, 7 April 1967.
