Three of my girlfriends and I booked into a chalet
in Changi—this was many years ago and those chalets,
the old bungalow types, are not there anymore— and
that was when we had the fright of our lives.
We aren't superstitious people and since that
incident we have tried to explain away what happened,
but that night you couldn't blame four teenage girls for
being scared to be alone in a chalet in lonely Changi
with hardly anyone else around.
I remember that we asked the keeper if the
place was haunted, because it looked so creepy from
the outside. He never made any reply, making it all the
more creepier. It made us a bit more sorry that we
hadn't invited any boys along to stay with us—this was
supposed to be a sort of pyjama party.
Anyway, we managed to settle in after a
while—no barbecue, we had decided that by
consensus—and we were starting to get chatty and
beginning to make some noise when one of the girls
said she heard the front doorbell ring. From where we
were in the living room we could see the porch outside.
There was no one there so we thought she must have
been mistaken. She too said, yes, we were right, she
must have imagined it.
We were chatting away again, chewing the cud,
rather loudly I might add, when she said,
"There it goes again."
This time we were all quiet and looking hard at
the porch from where we were. There certainly was
no one there. We could see the porch clearly Mom
where we were. If there were anybody out there
ringing the doorbell, we should have been able to see
the person for sure. So what could she have heard?
Then all of us heard it. Loud and clear.
It was the doorbell.
One of the girls screamed but we quickly hushed
her. Then we heard it again, and again and again, each
time getting louder and more insistent as if someone
was angry and demanding to be let in.
We didn't know what to do. Everybody froze.
All our eyes were fixed on the empty porch where the
buzzer was. After a little more of the insistent ringing,
the bell stopped.
Then we heard it.
The back door was creaking open.
All of us screamed and ran out through the front
door. We didn't stop running until we reached the next
chalet. We banged on the door, thumping away without
caring about anybody, afraid like hell. The man who
opened the door was in his pyjamas and he looked a bit
nervous. All of us pushed past him and stumbled into
the living room. There were four other men there, all of
them also like the one who had opened the door. They
were seated around the table and they clearly had been
gambling.
"Uncle, uncle," we cried, explaining what had
happened and begging to be allowed to stay
in this chalet with them for the night. They looked at
each other as if they thought we were mad, but finally
one of them said, okay, we could stay.
I can tell you, that night we hardly got any sleep.
When one of the girls wanted to go to the loo, she
forced me to go along and stand guard outside. From
where I was, I could hear her singing Amazing Grace
to give herself courage while doing her business.
FIRST ON THE BLOCK
Office attendant, male,
45
I am quite used to returning home to my Bedok
flat very late at night without incident, but there was
one evening at about 11 pm, when something happened
to me that I will never forget for as long as I live.
I had finished work and had gone to visit a friend
in another area before returning home because that
evening my wife and the children were going off to her
parents' house so there would have been nobody home
anyway.
I got down from the bus at the Bedok Reservoir
area and was walking up the path to my block, which
was a little distance away. As it was quite late, I was
not surprised to see that there were not too many
people around. But there was one girl ahead of me,
with very long hair and a good figure.
Of course, like any other male, I wanted to
have a look to see if she was as pretty in the face as
she looked from behind. So I walked a little faster to
overtake her.
When I passed her, I gave a quick glance
backwards to see what she looked like. Not bad. A bit
pale, but can do. Since I was in front, I just carried on
straight to my block, not turning to look back because I
didn't want to make her nervous by thinking I was
acting suspiciously.
By the time I reached my block, I had lost her.
Instead of waiting for the lift, I decided to climb the
stairs to the fourth floor.
As I reached the fourth floor and turned the
corner from the stairs, I looked up and I saw her! The
same girl who was behind me all along. Standing in the
corridor. Waiting for me.
She smiled.
I ran.
I didn't stop until I reached the next block where
my friend's family was staying. That night, I refused to
go home.
Thank goodness nothing like that ever happened
again in my life.
HE WASN'T PREPARED
Former university lecturer, male, 32
I remember when I was in the scouts as a little
boy, one day I had to come back home late by myself
after scout practice. I got down at the bus stop near my
place. Between the bus stop and my home, I would
have had to pass by the
Kampung Java cemetery.
This was many years ago, about 20 years ago. I
was walking alone and there was no one near me.
Suddenly, for no apparent reason at all, I felt very
scared. Then, in front of me, I remember I saw a hazy
white shadow near a tree.
I couldn't move.
I just stood there and cried.
Later, someone came along and took me home.
My parents took me to bomohs and all that. I don't think
any of that helped. It took me quite a long time to get
over that incident.
Ed: There are a lot of stories built around
what scientists call "ignus fatuus", which is
Latin for something like "foolish fire". in the
West they call it the Will-of-the-wisp or Jack go
lantern. This is a natural phenomenon which
occurs in marshy, damp ground, such as
graveyards. It is a sort of purplish flame that
twirls around and hops about low on the
ground.
Scientists explain that when bacteria rots
the corpses underground, they produce a gas
called phospine. And when this gas seeps up
through the ground and meets the air, it ignites
spontaneously. If there were any methane on
that same ground, perhaps produced by
rotting vegetation, that would ignite too,
looking like all the spirit world has arrived to
dance on the graves.
But this doesn't explain the next story...
SLAPPING SOME SENSE OUT
OF HER
Technician, male, 30
This happened about 15 years ago. I have a very
good friend and I know most of what happens in his
family.
One day his sister was going to work in the
factory behind the kampung where my friend lived. It
was about noon.
She thought she was alone, but she heard
footsteps behind her on the path. she didn't turn to look
because she thought it was just another worker.
Then she heard her name called softly behind
her.
When she turned to see who it was, she was
slapped hard on the face. The slap was so hard that
she fainted. Luckily she was found by some other
workers who knew her. They rushed her back to her
home in the village.
She was about 30 years old at the time and just
married. I knew her quite well as the elder sister of my
good friend. But I did not recognise this new, strange
person that now lived in my friend's house.
The slap had left the mark of five fingers on her
face. she began acting demonically. Have you seen
the film, The Exorcist? Well, she was just like that.
Using abusive language, really foul language at
everybody. And she spoke in languages she could not
possibly have learned, particularly Thai.
She would roll her eyeballs until you could
almost see only the whites. Her tongue would go in and
out like a serpent and she would scream suddenly in the
middle of the night, giving us all a shock.
My poor friend's family brought bomohs to see
her, and the bomohs said prayers and burnt sandalwood
and everything but she just screamed abuse at them in
many languages and yelled at them to get out.
Finally, they brought in a Thai bomoh. He spoke to
her in what must have been Thai and she replied in the
same language. It turned out that the spirit that
possessed her wanted the child that was in her body.
The spirit was that of someone from Thailand but there
was no explanation why it had been present in this
neighbourhood. The bomoh tried to appease the spirit
and tried to talk it out of her. I can't remember exactly
what ceremonies he performed, but I remember there
was a lot of burning of joss sticks and he used flowers
and everything. I wasn't allowed to watch the whole
ceremony, but he was the one who finally managed to
exorcise her.
Today she is all right.
LOST SOUL
Temp clerk, female,
My elder brother was a cynic when it came to
ghost stories until one day something happened to him.
He came home with a strange
I look on his face sometime during the Hungry Ghost
Festival two years ago. I remember it quite well. There
was a sort of worried frown on his face, but at the
same time he looked a bit puzzled.
My sister and I asked him that night what was
wrong because he seemed bothered all through dinner
and later. He wouldn't tell us at first. But the next day
he let it slip that he felt there were two eyes attached
to the back of his head. My sister and I laughed and
cracked a lot of jokes about it, teasing him, but we soon
realised this was no laughing matter.
As I said, my brother is usually a levelheaded
sort of guy, but he started acting odd that week. He
would mutter in his sleep and toss and turn, sometimes
waking up the rest of us with these antics. Then he
started losing weight, and his attention would waver
even as you spoke to him. It really got us quite worried.
We spoke to a good friend of his, who came over, took
one look at him and said, "This is serious."
My brother's friend took him to see a couple of
people who his family always turned to when it came to
handling strange things like this. one of them told my
brother that this was what had happened:
The day my brother had come back home feeling
that there was a pair of eyes attached to the back of
his head, he had, on his way back after work, stepped
onto a trail of papers left at a funeral site for the spirit
to find its way into the other world. When my brother
had stepped on the trail. the Ghost which
has
been on its way into the other world, found its journey
interrupted. Confused, it had attached itself to him.
Now it was lost.
It wanted to continue its journey as much as my
brother must have wanted to be rid of it. The solution,
therefore, was for him to retrace his steps, find the
exact spot where he had stepped onto that paper trail
and stand there again. The spirit would then gladly
leave him.
My brother took this advice seriously. He went
back to that paper trail, which fortunately was still there
and found the spot where he thought he had stepped on
it. He told us later that at that moment he suddenly felt
this great sense of relief and when he came home, he
left behind him that feeling of a pair of eyes attached to
the back of his head.
The first thing he did was have a shower. The
next thing he did was have a good sleep. We were all
glad for him that his torment was over.
UNREGISTERED
OCCUPANT
Kindergarten teacher, female,
23
In the Toa Payoh flat where I lived, several times
I encountered this spirit which at first scared me by its
very presence. Later, though, I came to understand it
and was not so afraid.
My first encounter with it was when I was
studying for my first-year Pre-U exams. We were
living in a three-room flat, with a divider separating the hall into a living room and dining room area.
My younger sister, whose O-levels were coming up,
and I usually study in the dining room. one night my
sister and I were mugging late into the night, until about
1 am. My block has a small road in front and a car park
at the back, so there were some noises of cars
returning late and so on, but otherwise it was an
unusually quiet night.
The two of us got quite a bit of work done, but
by the end of our study session the table was quite a
mess. Usually my sister is the fusspot between the two
of us, and she would always clean up any mess around
her. But that night we were so tired from studying that
we left everything as it was and retired to the bedroom
we shared.
In the morning, at about 5 am, I awoke, hearing
some noises in the hall. Not thinking anything much of
it, I went back to sleep. I was the first one awake in the
family later, at about 6 am. At first I didn't notice it,
then my sister congratulated me, saying, "Good, M, at
least for once in your life, you did the clearing up
instead of always waiting for me to do it!"
I didn't know what she was talking about. When I
asked her, she pointed to the neat stack of books on the
dining room table. I thought of claiming the credit for it
at first, but as she had not cleared the table, I was
curious. Who then had done it? Later, when my mum
and dad were up, I asked them if they had done it. They
said no, and it was obvious they meant it, because they
were very casual about it too, not overly
24
dramatic or anything.
Later, I realised that was just the beginning,
because that was when the experiences started.
There was one night I was coming back home
with my sister and my parents when I looked up at our
flat and I saw a dark, tall shadow watching us through
the window grille, with its hands above its head holding
on to the grille. I turned to my sister and said our elder
brother must be home, because there he was watching
us come back. My sister looked up and said, "I don't
see anything."
I looked up too and the figure was still there and
I said so. My mother, who had heard me, said, "Don't
be silly. G wouldn't be standing in the kitchen without
the lights on."
I was so sure it was my brother. So I told them,
"You want to bet?"
When we reached home, however, there really
was no one there. My sister and I checked
everywhere, just in case my brother might be trying to
play a trick on us. But he didn't come back till late.
When I demanded to know where he had been, he said
he had gone out with some friends. I checked on this
another day by calling up his friends. He was telling the
truth.
Confirmation that I wasn't just imagining things
came unexpectedly.
I was alone in the house and clearing up the
drawers in the divider. For a moment, just out of the
blue, I had this feeling that I was being watched. I don't
know, but I looked up and exactly at the right spot too
because just for that
fleeting second, I saw it.
A dark shadow was looking at me over the top
of the divider.
I screamed!
It disappeared, darting through the bedroom door
as if it was afraid of me. I quickly went to my
neighbour's flat, not returning home till everybody had
come back. When I told them the story, they all
scoffed at it, saying it was just me and my imagination
again.
They didn't laugh when one day my cousin
brought her friend from Malaysia to the house. The
friend was a psychic. She told us there and then,
without we even informing her about my experiences
that we were having problems with a spirit.
She said she could see it. Standing just there, at
the end of the hall area. We, of course, couldn't see
anything, but yes, it was there, she said. The psychic
asked us if we knew an old woman who always wore
white when she was alive.
At first we thought she might mean my dad's
auntie, who looked after him when he was young. But
then, as my mother, who was there, pointed out, the
auntie never wore the kind of clothes the psychic was
describing. So we did not know who it was. The
psychic told us the spirit was standing at the far corner
of the hall and refused to approach her for fear it might
be asked to leave. The psychic assured us this was not
a mean spirit and meant no harm to us. Boy, were we
glad to hear that. Still, who wants to have a ghost
around the houses kind or not
In the end, we did not have that much trouble
with the spirit. Seemed as if I had the most encounters
with it but eventually the other members of the family
came to believe me too because of other incidents, this
time involving them.
My sister said one night she was studying late all
by herself, facing the kitchen when she heard someone
calling her name. It was soft at first. Though she was
quite sure she had heard it, she chose to tell herself it
must be her imagination and carried on studying.
Then she heard it again. This time it was a loud,
gruff, deep, strange voice. And it was just behind her.
It called her name.
My sister said she dashed into the bedroom,
without looking back. That night she slept with the
bedsheet over her head.
My parents too were finally convinced when the
little sounds that people usually hear in the night that
sound as if someone is in the hall but are usually
coming from other flats became, one night, noises that
were so clearly coming from the hall that they were
convinced there was some presence there.
They stayed in the master bedroom and didn't go
out to check to see who it could be. Why? Because
they hadn't heard anyone opening the door and kids
were away at a cousin's place that night. My parents
knew they were all alone.
I am not especially psychic or anything like that,
and it has been quite a while since we moved out of
that house but now. whenever I
say I sense something or have heard a strange story,
my family listens seriously.
Everytime.
UNWELCOME VISITOR
Relief teacher, female,
19
We have a spirit in our house that we know exists
because sometimes you can sense it, but it has never
done anything bad to us. Unfortunately, I cannot say it
has been as kind to an auntie of mine, who used to visit
us frequently.
This auntie is very helpful to our family, but she
has never felt very comfortable about staying in our
house at night. One day, however, she had to stay over;
there was no choice because we had a lot of
preparation to make for a family occasion the next day.
That night, we went to sleep quite late. We were
all very tired when we bundled into the small bedroom,
very contented that most of the work was done. That
was when it happened.
It must have been the early hours of the morning
when I was awakened by this horrible sound. It
sounded like someone was choking.
When I opened my eyes and looked, I saw my
auntie talking in her sleep, mumbling incoherently and
making sounds as if she was gasping for air. What was
really horrible to see was that she had both her hands at
her throat and she seemed to be trying to pull off
someone's hands that were choking her.
She was making so much noise that my parents
rushed in from the next room to see what was
happening. There we were, all of us witnessing what
looked like a strangling right before our very eyes, but
none of us dared to interfere. Finally, my auntie
somehow shot awake by herself. Her eyes were
bulging and there was fear written all over her face.
"My God," she said, her voice itself frightening
us, the way she spoke hysterically. "I felt something
was choking me! I felt something was choking me!"
Yes, we had seen it ourselves or we would not
have believed it, but what could we do? None of us had
had any experience of such a thing. We did our best to
calm her down but I don't think any of us got any sleep
that night.
My auntie never stayed overnight in our house
again.
HANG-UP
Truck driver, mole,
37
I stayed in a rented house with my wife and child
for a short while, waiting for our new flat. I have a
hard job, so I am quite tired by the time I return home
and I usually sleep soundly. This rented flat that we
were staying in, however, always made me uneasy. I
hated to be alone there, especially at night.
One night I awoke in a sweat. And there right
before my very eyes I saw the most hor
oa
rible sight. Hanging from the ceiling, a dead body was
swinging. Shocked, I turned to my wife and shook her
awake.
But when she woke up, there was nothing. Even I
could see nothing.
That doesn't mean I imagined it all. Next day, my
wife was talking to the neighbours about it and they told
her that one of the previous occupants had hanged
himself in that very house because of his dehtR
HELLO, MY NAME IS...
Doctor, female, age undisclosed
I had a patient, a middle-aged expatriate, who
was brought in after he had collapsed of a heart attack
while jogging around the Botanical Gardens. There was
nothing we could do to save him.
Then many months later, this happened:
It turned out that a middle-aged couple had
moved into the house where the expatriate had been
staying before. They had no idea of what had happened
to the previous owner. But one day, when the woman
was in the shower, she screamed and rushed out. Her
husband, who was at home because it was a weekend,
quickly rushed to her side to see what was wrong.
On her right arm, scratched into the flesh were
the words, "I am David."
Her husband immediately rushed her to our
hospital. Just by coincidence, or at least I
believe it was coincidence, I was on duty that night and
had to examine the woman. I couldn't understand how
those markings on her arms could have come about.
But when I had a look at the woman's admission card, I
recognised the address. I checked back with our
records.
The first name of the expatriate who had died
was "David"
FOUR-DIGIT
DISASTER
Teacher, female, 48
I was in the staff-room when my colleague in the
afternoon session rushed in, asking to see another
teacher who was the uncle of one of her students. She
said the student was behaving very strangely, claiming
that he could see a bearded old man in a samfu
standing outside the class and beckoning to him.
The uncle quickly rushed to the class and he
took the boy home straight away. He called the parents
at work and they rushed home too but found there was
nothing they could do; the boy kept insisting he could
see this old man right in front of him, beckoning him to
follow.
The uncle kept me and my colleagues informed
about the progress of this case. He told us the parents
took the boy to several bomohs and other medicine men
but they could do nothing to help him. He refused to eat
properly and was feeling pains all over. Finally, out of
pity, I asked the uncle to bring the boy to my house to
see my husband, who might know someone who could
help him, although we didn't like to get involved in these
kinds of things.
When the boy came, he was such a sight that I
really felt pity for him. He was thin and
haggard-looking, not at all the cheerful fellow that I
remembered. My husband treated him very gently and
asked him to take a seat. The boy refused, he was
scared and said it was very painful for him to sit. My
husband found this hard to believe and insisted that the
boy should sit down, saying nothing would happen to
him.
Looking very scared, the boy looked nervously at
the sofa and slowly bent to sit. As soon as his bottom
touched the chair, he yelled and shot up. He was
clearly in severe pain. My husband felt so bad that he
undertook to take the boy to this person he had heard
about through his friends.
It was fortunate that this time here was someone
who could indeed help the boy. He listened quietly to
what the boy had to say and then announced that he
knew what the problem was. He told us that the father
had taken the boy to a shopping centre and had left him
alone for a minute. At that time, a man had approached
the boy and asked him to pick a four-digit number.
Being scared and not knowing what else to do, the boy
had obliged. The number had struck first prize, said the
medicine man, and now the spirit that had helped that
mysterious man strike the number had come to claim
the boy.
Could the boy be helped? Thankfully, yes.
This medicine man said prayers and made offerings to
the spirit and managed to appease it. My husband tells
me that when the medicine man said he had got rid of
the spirit, the first thing that happened was the boy fell
into a deep and peaceful sleep.
"Don't wake him," the medicine man said, "he's
catching up for all those lost nights."
BACK FOR A LOOK
Education consultant, male, 30
When my father died suddenly of a heart attack,
it hit me very bad. But when things like this happen, it
is often the soul of the person who has passed away
that tries to help the living.
I remember that the night after the funeral, I was
lying in bed with my wife. I could not sleep. I was
thinking about how my father was so close to my son
and how he would not now get a chance to see his
grandson grow up.
My wife too was upset and could not sleep. We
did not speak much because there was a lot on our
minds.
My son was sleeping on a mattress on the floor
next to our bed as he sometimes does when he does
not feel like sleeping in his own room. At the time he
was about three years old.
I looked over to see him and noticed that there
was a lot of expression on his face even though he was
asleep. Then he started talking.
He didn't seem scared or anything, he was just talking
as if to someone in the room. I myself felt a deep
presence then. It was not a disturbing presence, but a
soothing one. I turned to my wife and said, "My father
is here in the room."
She was a bit afraid but I told her not to worry.
Sometimes, even today I can feel this presence in my
house.
A FAMILY ATTACHMENT
Research assistant,
female, 26
My grandmother told me this story.
She began by saying that one should not speak ill
of the dead, but she had to admit that my dear,
departed grandfather was quite a womaniser in his
time. He had three wives, of which my grandmother
was the oldest and so the most senior in the household.
In those days, it was common for a wealthy man
to have several wives, and several households. The
wives often accepted such an arrangement as normal. I
have even heard about one tycoon who bought large
houses for his families all in a neat row, with the most
senior wife staying closest to him. Funny that, I would
have expected him to keep the youngest wife nearest,
but anyway...
My grandmother told me, and I can repeat this
safely now that my other two grandmothers are gone,
that the middle grandma tried to poison off the other
two. My own grandmother, the
eldest of the three, survived of course, or else she
wouldn't have been able to tell me the story, but the
youngest grandmother was not so lucky. Nobody could
point the finger at the middle grandma, however. She
got away with the murder Scot free as there was no
evidence and no one dared accuse her before my
grandfather.
But, my own grandmother told me, when my
grandpa was on his deathbed, all was revealed to him.
This is how the story went:
Grandpa was very weak from some terminal
disease and lying in bed, attended by the eldest and
youngest wives. He had been clinging to life for two
days and was very close to death, when he beckoned to
my eldest grandmother and said, "Who is that?"
"Who?" she asked him, looking around to see
which of the relatives he meant. There were several of
them in the room at the time.
"That one," he said in a hoarse voice, weakly
gesturing towards the youngest grandmother, who was
pottering about getting something ready. "That one
following her about everywhere. There is a dark figure,
see just there right now, following her everywhere she
goes, all dressed in black. Who is it?"
Before he died, my grandfather was told the
whole story. He did not react, he must have been too
weak. He died soon after.
My eldest grandmother made it a point to take the
other grandmother aside later and tell her everything.
She told me, "You should have seen the look in her
eyes when I told her what your grandfather had seen. I
don't think she
had a single peaceful night of sleep after that Served
her right."