Ghost stories before Christmas

I’m suddenly in the mood for some ghost story telling. When the westerners were busy celebrating Halloween, I didn’t give it too much thought. When there were new horror movies shown in cinemas and getting good reviews, I never jumped in the bandwagon; queuing for hours and  later spending almost 2 hours in the chilly theatre only to learn that the movie was same old, same old story.

For me, what’s more interesting is getting to hear a ghost story from the horse’s mouth – not the ghost itself, but the person who was there during the encounter. So far, I have 3 unforgettable, real ghost stories told to me by people whom I know wouldn’t lie even for the sake of scaring the shit out of me.

 

Story one: Pontianak malam-malam

 

This one was told by my mom. It happened about 3 years ago when my mom was staying alone in her house in Pahang. That night there was a Ceramah Agama held at our kampung’s dataran about 10 minutes’ walk from my mom’s place. My mom is of the strong kind, never weak hearted and certainly not afraid to sleep alone in that 30 years’ old wooden house.

That night, she heard a very loud, shrieking laughter of something inhuman. The laughter was not deafening, it just got to the nerves; telling your senses how evil it could be. Its evil laughter continued for awhile. My mom opened her bedroom window to check where the laughter could have come from. She listened to it as it grew louder while her eyes tried to search in the darkness whether there was any unusual being lurking at the back of her kitchen. After a few minutes she was sure that it came from the top of a coconut tree behind the kitchen, in between her house and our nearest neighbour, Makcu Saodah.

My mom decided to just let the Pontianak continued with her laughs while she retired to bed.

The first thing she did the next morning was to pay Makcu Saodah a visit and asked whether she heard anything the night before. Makcu Saodah and her husband confirmed that they too heard the Pontianak. My mom asked whether they could determine from where the sound was heard, both agreed that it was from the same coconut tree.

The next thing they did was cut down the tree to make sure the Pontianak would move elsewhere.

 

Story two: Tetamu di tengahari

This was also told by my mom some 24 years ago. My father was still alive then and we always went to his kebun sawit/pisang/kolam ikan/kandang lembu which was situated near the banks of Sg Triang. My father built a small house in the middle of the kebun to store fertilizers, medication and some equipment. There was also a TV set, stove and a few plates there so that we could have a simple meal and take a break after sweating ourselves under the tropical sun tending to the cattle or just simply taking lazy walks along the fish pond.

One afternoon, my mom decided to take a nap in front of the TV set while I went outside to play with my brother. Out of a sudden we heard my mom shouted, ‘Bab*, Celak*, Puk*, Menatang Haram!!!’ We rushed back into the house and found my mom sitting upright with a furious face. ‘Why? Why? What happened?’ we asked impatiently. Then she told us.

While she was napping, she was suddenly awakened by a strange feeling. When she opened her eyes she saw that she was surrounded by black mist which later shaped into devilish profiles. We asked mom to describe them; she refused. She told us that she actually asked those things what they’re doing there and they told her that they wanted to disturb her. Mom told them to go away but they refused.

She was shouting every foul word she knew in order to chase those things away. It’s a trick she learned when she was small and it really worked, those things disappeared soon after she started swearing.

Later that evening mom told us that should any of us ever witness the faces of evil, we’d never miss our Subuh prayers ever. Well, as you know whenever there’s Azan at dawn, the devils will start blanketing the bodies of Muslims. And that was enough to send chills down my spine until today.

 

Story three: Kapchai on the hiway

 

This story was from Mrs. S, my partner in crime and regular lunch buddy these days. We first met back in 2005 when we were assigned to a project in Pasir Gudang. So, during the User Requirement Study Phase we decided to carpool with the other team members as none of us dared to drive alone that night. We started our journey at about 9.15pm. The Project Manager was driving and a Pre-sales engineer acted as the co-pilot – both guys were quite a chatterbox, so Mrs. S and I sat silently at the back and tried to sleep.

Perhaps the 2 guys were plain jealous of us acting like princesses at the back, they started exchanging ghost stories. They were mostly stories told by friends whose friends heard them from their relatives’ uncles’ grandmother’s second cousin. Mrs. S and I just giggled to their stupid ghost stories when suddenly the co-pilot tried to scare us,

‘Dayang, what’s that sticking on your window?’ Of course I didn’t buy it but Mrs. S suddenly turned pale. I asked her why.

‘Please don’t do that again, I had a rather bad experience with things outside the window,’ she said. Then she told us her story.

 

She was travelling south on the PLUS hiway in her friend’s Kancil a few years back, her girl friend was driving on the left lane then. In between Melaka and Muar they noticed a male riding a very old kapchai about 20 yards ahead of them. The rider was wearing an old white helmet. The lady driver decided to overtake the kapchai and sped off, doing about 120 Km/h. Somewhere before Pagoh, the lady driver noticed from the rearview mirror, a bike was trying to overtake them on the fast lane. 

 

 

It came closer and closer and when it was finally side by side with the Kancil, Mrs. S and the lady driver turned to their right and saw that it was the same Kapchai with the rider wearing the old white helmet. The helmet was not fastened; they could see the belt blown by the night wind. The lady started speeding again, floored her accelerator but no matter how fast she drove the kapchai stayed next to the kancil. The rider never turned and looked at them. He just rode his kapchai as cool as could be but it was definitely not at the usual Kapchai speed. It didn’t become like a car chase scene, it was as if the Kapchai would just move to whatever rhythm the Kancil pulled.

 

Mrs S and her lady friend decided to just look ahead, read whatever Quranic verses they could remember and never turned to their right for the rest of the journey. They didn’t realize what happened to the Kapchai rider but when they arrived at their destination, he was not there anymore.