Are You Afraid Of Ghost?

For me, the answer is a resounding YES!

I guess I can consider myself lucky that I don’t get to meet them all that often. XD

Foong commented in one of my post about why I never blogged about my encounters after I shared my experience in his post about a haunted hotel in Penang. The answer to that will be I’m too much of a scaredy cat! LOL I think until I put up another post after this one, I would not visit my own blog at night!

To start my story, I guess I have to go way back when I was a toddler. Yep, that long ago. My parents used to live nearby to my great-grandfather and grandfather’s house. My late great-grandfather was a landlord and he had a cluster of houses for rent and some of these houses were for his children.

1.
I barely remember this incident, but my aunts and uncles would be quick to tell the whole story should one ask. One of my late great-grandfather’s tenants was into black magic and he can actually turn to “Harimau Jadian”. I don’t know what would be the English term for this, but put simply he can turn into a tiger. (Think Manimal but more sinister). One dark, stormy night, he turned into one after an argument and came barging to the family house. Bear in mind, traditional Malay houses of yesteryears were built on stilts and are very high above the ground. In order to save me, my aunt actually grabbed me and jumped out of the window. Luckily, my great-grandfather was a man who can handle spirits (evil or otherwise) – what we Malay would call “ada ilmu” – and managed to subdue the guy.

2.
Another time when I was about 6 or 7, along with some relatives, I went for a day trip to the beach (Morib or PD, I forgot) and came back to Raub rather late at night. If anyone had ever use the old road (the one going through Sungai Chetang and Kampung Sang Lee) would know how scary and dark the road would be at night. The car broke down somewhere along Lurah Bilut and we were pretty much stranded. The road was deserted and dark. Some of us got out of the car to stretch out. Within minutes, one of my uncles ushered us to quickly get back in the car. Out of nowhere, there were sands being thrown at us. This went on for a few agonizing minutes, but it felt like a lifetime. Then, rain came down. What make the rain so scary was, it was raining just around the car and not elsewhere! We went through this ordeal until a car passed by and the driver kindly allowed us to hitch a ride. Only the ladies and children hitched a ride while the men (my uncles) stayed behind. The next morning, my uncles told us that afterwards, they saw a “batu nisan” or headstone came rolling down in front of the car. Scary!

3.
At this same stretch of road, my late grandfather witnessed a “pontianak” chasing the car while I was sleeping at the back seat when we were on our way to KL from Raub. Eeeeek! You think that Proton ad about the Pontianak not wearing a seatbelt funny? Not for me!

4.
In the old house my family used to live in, and in my old room – several people (all men) complained of being sat down while they were sleeping. My cousin told me that he saw a beautiful woman sitting on top of him and was very heavy; so heavy that he had a hard time breathing. Even my brother experienced this when he took over my room after I went to study in boarding school. Also, there were stories of how my room would smell like Bunga Tanjung. This flower is synonymous with Malay gravesite as they are planted abundantly there.

5.
Boarding schools are where there are plenty of ghost sightings. I was lucky that while my roommates experienced a lot of scary incidents, I went through 5 years of boarding school without ever directly meeting a ghost. (Zaini said it was probably because I was a "hantu" myself. LOL I admit I was no angel when I was younger) One time, when I was 14, my roommate who shared the bunk bed with me (I was on the top bunk and she was below), told me that her bed was shaken violently while I was completely oblivious of it. Another roommate had the luck of witnessing Japanese soldiers marching down the dorm when she was staying up late to study. There were stories at my school about some students having met a long haired lady brushing her teeth in the middle of the night and when she turned around to face the students, one would see that she was brushing her teeth with a knife and blood would be streaming down from her mouth. Which is why, I would rather have kidney failure and avoided going to the toilet at night rather than face this “lady”.

6.
The only really scary experience I got during my schooling days were hearing a dragging sound outside our dorm late at night. The sound was like a woman who had a really heavy leg and was trying to walk from Point A to Point B with great difficulty. Was it a fragment of the students’ imagination? The school administration actually organized a Yassin (Quranic verses) reading every night to counter this unseen visitor. I think those in Kuantan in 1988 would remember this event. I heard that this "lady" came visiting all the places that she visited during her life.

7.
Do you know that I never ever sleep without a blanket to cover my feet? No matter how hot the night would be, I will still cover my feet, else I will have a restless night. The reason? I don’t want to wake up with a feeling of something squashy and soft lying near my bare feet only to discover that it was a Hantu Pocong ever ever again! So there!

What's your ghost story?

p.s. none of the above story are fiction.

Foong, you think the "good spirits" in my house scary. They were nice, compared to all of the above!