Spirit Houses

Hi! This is a picture of the spirit house in the garden at the base of our apartment building. The guys who work the gate at our place said it was okay to take a picture, so I did. I've been meaning to post a picture and tell about these for a while because I think they're very interesting. So far I've learned that Thais believe spirits live in these houses and these spirits protect the building and grounds on which the spirit house is placed. Whoever wants to can place offerings at the house. Often people will put little elephants on the house for transportation for the spirits. They burn a lot of incense, but I don't know what that's for yet. I think it's really funny that people leave fruit and opened sodas for the spirits. It reminds me of leaving cookies and milk for Santa Clause, and how my parents would take bites out of the cookies so my brother and I believed Santa really visited. Deep down I knew it was my parents...I wonder if deep down, Thais have the same doubts and it's just a sort of game. The spirit houses are all over and some are really intricate and beautiful. The belief that inanimate objects have living spirits/souls is animism, and it seems like this is something practiced alongside Buddhism. Of course, I'm not an expert, but here are a couple websites that were interesting. Let me know if you find better ones! Oh, and Pat heard that they don't really like cats here because they say cats have "wandering souls". Hmmm...
http://www.thaiworldview.com/bouddha/animism.htm
http://www.thaiwebsites.com/thai-spirit-houses.asp