As a child, I remember reading a series of books called True Singapore Ghost Stories. Sometimes these books were bought for us, sometimes I’d huddle in a corner of MPH, a chain of bookstores, after school to read a few stories, until the frigid aircon temperatures became too much for me to bear. Each collection of stories recounted in spine-chilling detail readers’ submissions of supposedly true ghost stories. My maternal grandmother also recounted kampong ghost stories to us, and this is how I learned about the famous ‘hantus’ (ghosts) of our region- the hantu gala, who towers over you on bamboo pole-like legs, the hantu jerangkung ,whose presence is announced by the stench of rotting flesh, the penanggal, a flying head with entrails attached to it, and the infamous Cik Pon. I still will not say her name in full, because part of me still clings to the superstition that saying her name summons her.
As a child these stories terrified me but also fascinated me. The fact that there was a whole unseen world made everything more interesting. Life was more than just school, family and friends. I’d always been intrigued by anything supernatural or ‘out-of-this world’- ouija boards, alien abductions, mythological creatures. I didn’t know however that one day, I’d get first-hand experience with the supernatural world.
When I was 15, my older sister left for university studies overseas, and I promptly moved into her more spacious room. As soon as I did, my sleep became disturbed. I had nightmares regularly, and each one had a similar theme of my being chased. Every few nights, my dreams would take me to a place where I was being chased by fire-breathing dragons, an axe-murderer, a monster, a ghost, or something of the sort. I attempted to reassure myself that it was due to stress, or the fact that I was sleeping in a different room. At the very worst, I told myself that perhaps what I was experiencing was the result of bad fengshui in the room. But the nightmares persisted, and I began to think that something else was at play.
These suspicions were confirmed about a year after I’d moved into my sister’s room, when I had a peculiar dream. In it, I saw myself in a corner of our living room, observing a scene. It was dark, and I knew it was a few minutes before midnight. I saw my mother fiddling with something in a corner of the living room, her back turned towards me, unware of my presence. Soon, it was midnight. An internal alarm bell rang, as I witnessed spirits materialising one after the other around the room, my mother oblivious to their sudden appearance.
The next morning, as I was getting ready for school, my mother interrupted my breakfast to tell me that the previous night, she’d experienced something odd. As she was drifting off to sleep, she heard loud music start playing through the house. Thinking I was responsible for this, she got out of bed and poked her head into my room, only to realise I was sound asleep, and that the music was coming from the radio in our empty living room. It had mysteriously turned itself on. So, she made her way to the living room with only the streetlights outside for illumination. She pushed the usual button on the radio, which was in its usual corner spot, to switch it off. But it refused to turn off. She pushed it again and again, in vain. Deciding that she must be pushing the wrong button, she turned away to turn the lights on, so she could see better. And the moment she turned her back to the radio, it went off on its own.
I realised that what my mother had experienced eerily matched what I had dreamt the previous night. I asked her if she could remember what time that happened, and she said it was midnight. Midnight darkness, my mother fiddling with something in the corner of the living room… I had dreamt that. I figured that something supernatural was the cause of all of this. (When I grew older, I realised I had probably somehow been observing what was happening through an out-of-body experience)
I told my mother about my dream and she was intrigued. I told her I felt that something was not right with the house, and while my mother did believe in all things supernatural, she didn’t take any action. Perhaps because what was happening wasn’t serious enough to her to warrant any sort of action.
Things began to intensify shortly after, in typical Hollywood movie poltergeist fashion. Sometimes, the lights around the house would flicker on and off. A tap once mysteriously turned itself on. On a couple of occasions, electrical appliances would remain on despite being unplugged. I have a distinct memory of reading in bed before going to sleep one night, only to notice a wardrobe door slowly inch open, then close. Ever so slowly. My father called an electrician uncle to the house, but he could not find anything faulty with our circuits or wiring.
I was convinced the house was haunted but I did not feel unsafe. It was creepy for sure, but I did not feel threatened. Furthermore, while the inexplicable incidents did happen with regularity, they weren’t frequent enough to disrupt our lives. I would be afraid when an incident would occur, but very quickly life would go back to normal. I was slightly ill-at-ease in the house, but it wasn’t affecting my studies, or my health. I just knew something wasn’t completely right in the home.
One afternoon, I came home from school to find my father in the living room, with a guest. My father explained that this man had come to investigate the goings-on in the house. I didn’t know what triggered my father to eventually decide to call in a ‘bomoh’ (medicine man, shaman, healer, witchdoctor-I don’t know which term in English would be the best match really), and I never asked. I was more than excited to have someone around who could confirm my suspicions of the house being haunted.
I sat in the living room as the bomoh and my father discussed the haunting. The bomoh told me that there were several spirits in the home- a few in the kitchen that were easy to get rid of, but the most dangerous one hung around at the foot of my bed, and had been there many years. I felt vindicated- I knew this wasn’t just my imagination. I had an explanation for my dreams and the weird occurrences at home. My nightmares must have been caused by the malevolent energy of the spirit in my bedroom. I asked the bomoh why, if the spirit had been in my sister’s room for years, had it not manifested itself earlier, but only when I moved into the room. He had no explanation.
As the conversation continued, I was distracted by a strange sound coming from our window. Singaporean flats often come with aluminium window sills and grills. It sounded like a slow creak, like sand being dropped over the aluminium window sill, and lasted half a second. I turned to look, and what I saw still gives me goosebumps to this day when I think about it. I saw a hand, gripping the window sill from the outside, as though someone was trying to climb into our third-storey flat. The hand was skeletal, and had dry reddish-brown skin stretched over it. The best description I can think of is that it had the colour and texture of beef jerky. The vision lasted a few seconds and although I was terrified, I could not avert my gaze.
The bomoh noticed me staring at the window sill. Surprised, he asked “Oh, you see what I see. There are spirits trying to come into the home. They are attracted by me. But I am keeping them away.” He added that either I had a ‘gift’ or this was a fluke. Perhaps I had seen something I was not meant to see.
The hand was the first sighting I ever had with my naked eye. From that point on, I would occasionally see spirits in the same manner, just as I would see a regular, live person. That type of vision thankfully didn’t last very long. Soon, I started sensing presences and ‘seeing’ in my mind’s eye. Distinct images would pop into my mind, feelings, and thoughts, that I knew were not mine. I still do sometimes see things as I would see you, or any other object, with my naked eye. The last time I saw something in this manner was probably about two years ago. It was a tall (maybe 8 ft) humanoid creature loping past our flat, in the corridor outside-not to freak you out or anything, but not all entities out there are human.
Getting back to my story.
As I recovered from the shock of my first ‘sighting’, the bomoh explained that he would conduct some rituals to cleanse the house. He emptied a plastic bag full of flowers, limes, and other items, then asked my father to get him some water which he blessed with chants. I don’t quite remember the details, but the entire process of cleansing the home took about an hour. When he was done, the bomoh told us he’d come back for a follow-up.
The next day, I called a good friend, to recount to her the exciting happenings at home. The phone was located outside my room, across from my door, which was wide open. I could see directly into my room from where I was if I turned my head left. As I was telling my story over the phone, through the corner of my eye, I saw a tall dark figure cross my room. It was a male, taller than my door. I can’t tell you how I knew it was male because it was a shadow. I couldn’t see any of its features beyond its general outline, but I just knew it was a male. I turned my head to look, and saw the figure stop in its tracks, in the doorway, and turn to look directly at me. I sensed surprise as if it was telling me ‘you can see me?!’ and before I knew it the shadow had disappeared.
I told my friend over the phone what had just happened but skeptical, I put it down to my eyes playing tricks on me. After all, the bomoh had removed the spirit in my room, hadn’t he? After my phone call, I told my mother what I’d seen, but put it down to shadows cast by the ceiling fan in my room, even though I knew that it wasn’t turned on at the time.
The next night, I had another terrifying nightmare, and this nightmare was like none other that I’d ever had. It was of blackness, and a man’s face appearing through that blackness, screaming in pain, as though being swallowed by a void. His entire face was covered in blood and I could not see his features.
Two days later, the bomoh returned to our home, for his follow-up. Before inspecting the home, he asked if anything had happened since his last visit, and I decided to tell him that I had seen a figure in my room. He asked ‘Was it a tall man? a very tall man? ” I nodded yes. Then I told him about the nightmare I’d had of the bloody faced man that I’d had. He exclaimed “My trap worked!'“
The bomoh explained that the spirit in my room was stubborn and would not leave, but after negotiation, it did. Not believing that the spirit had left permanently of its own accord, he set a ‘trap’ for it in my room, that would prevent it from leaving if it dared return. I do not know the nature of this 'trap’ nor the mechanisms behind it, and haven’t really thought about it much since then. And so, when I told him about my vision and the nightmare I had, the bomoh figured it must mean that the spirit had returned and had become stuck in the psychic trap, represented by the blackness in my nightmare, that he had set for it. I wondered why he hadn't told us about this trap earlier, but figured he probably didn’t want to worry us about the possibility of the spirit returning.
The bomoh then told me that I must really have ‘the gift’, since I’d once again seen the spirit and dreamt of it. He proceeded to get rid of the spirit but I have no recollection as to how this was done.
This whole experience was a lot to take in for my 15/16 year-old self, but did mark the beginning of my journey into the world of spirituality and discovering my abilities. In my teenage years, I knew myself as someone who would occasionally see and sense spirits. I had various other experiences with the supernatural in the home (not related to the spirits I mention in this story) and outside it, many involving my dreams. They seemed to be the dimension in which a lot of communication with spirits happened. This is still the case for me as an adult, but my abilities have opened up (working with energy, channeling, etc) and other avenues of communication are now available to me- although communicating with spirits isn’t something I do often.
The memory of that bony hand gripping our window sill from the outside still sends chills down my spine, but in hindsight, it could have been a lot worse. Nobody at home was affected mentally or physically, and what I experienced wasn’t traumatic. This was the universe rather gently making me aware of my own abilities. Living in a haunted home was not one of the highlights of my adolescence, but it proved to be a defining point in my journey towards becoming an professional intuitive healer.