Gruesome 'hell garden' at Buddhist temple in Thailand shows sinners being tortured in the afterlife

A gruesome "hell garden" at a Buddhist temple shows how followers believe sinners are tortured in the afterlife.

The bizarre attraction, called the Wang Saen Suk Monastery Garden, is found near the religious temple in Chonburi, eastern Thailand.

Monks have built dozens of gruesome figures - including people being boiled alive, tortured with machines or with the heads of animals.

One terrifying statue even shows demons sawing off a man's genitals while another shows a crow pecking out someone's intestines.

A pair of 20-metre-tall statues show a man and woman with their tongues stretched - the punishment in Buddhist hell for lying to parents.

Another statue of a person with a pig's head features a plaque warning that the punishment for corruption is people in h ell with live as pigs.

Buddhists believe that sinners who commit evil will encounter such punishments in the afterlife before they can be reborn.

The temple garden is divided the area into three zones including the Buddha's journey, the Heaven and the most graphic section - the Buddhist h ell, also known as Naraka.

It has also become a tourist attraction, with visitors travelling the 100km from Bangkok to see the horrifying images.

The monks who created the 'h ell garden' said they had done it for educational purposes and to warn followers not to commit sins.

One tourist who visited wrote on TripAdvisor that it was ''probably the strangest attraction I visited in Thailand''.

Another added: ''The sculptors have let their imaginations run riot on the range of torments and tortures facing the damned.''