Marc Flemming
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Location: Santa Cruz
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In an age marked by technological breakthroughs and quantum leaps made in the field of science and modern medicine, shamans, mediums, bomohs and other healers amazingly still have a place in society to ply their trade or craft. Believers seek their services, for mending a broken affair, averting bad luck, curing an ailment, or simply in the hope of striking it rich the easy way.
Whether shamans or mediums, their main source of help comes from the spirit world, and they often act as a bridge between the natural and supernatural realm. Then again, there are sceptics who scoff at the idea that a spirit realm co-exists with the material world. Which brings us to the question: do spirits, or even ghosts, exist in the first place? MAJORIE CHEW travels down many spooky trails and emerges - goose-bumps and all - with an account of the paranormal at work.
This Bed’s Taken
LAST year, Jeffrey (not his real name) checked into a room in a hotel in Singapore. He began to have this uneasy feeling that there was someone else in the room and on the third day, his suspicions were confirmed. But the brave sales executive decided to stay on after striking a “deal” with the ghost.
“I booked into a room with twin beds for five days. I slept on one bed, took out my clothes from my bags and put them in piles on the unoccupied bed,” said Jeffrey.
“This is a habit of mine when I travel because I do not want to risk leaving my clothes behind. Once I had to ring up the hotel to keep my clothes for me; I had left them in the wardrobe and had to make another trip to the hotel to collect them.
“The next morning, the piles of clothes were neatly stacked on the floor. I wondered whether I was drunk the night before as I had remembered placing the clothes on the bed.
“So on the second night, I stayed sober. I placed my clothes in piles on the empty bed again. The next morning, the same thing happened. My clothes had again been moved to the floor.
“I decided to ask the hotel staff and found out that a man had committed suicide in the room I was staying.
“On the third night, I negotiated with the ghost. I told the ghost not to disturb me and that I would put my clothes in the wardrobe. Nothing happened.
“I stayed the five days but it was an eerie experience as I also heard the tap running and the sound of splashing water as if someone was washing his face. I also sensed someone walking about in the room and getting into the next bed!
Jeffrey also recounted two unnerving incidents which took place at the Karak highway which many motorists claimed was haunted.
“In the first incident, I remembered a bend at a particular spot along the highway but what I saw in front of me was a straight road. I refused to be hoodwinked and allowed my instincts to take over. I negotiated the bend and was safely on my way,” recalled Jeffrey with a shudder.
“On another occasion, I saw a white apparition in the middle of the road while driving along the Karak highway at night. As I passed the spot, my car suddenly became heavier as if I was carrying 10 fat passengers. I kept praying and urged the spirits to get out of my car. Somehow my prayers worked. All of a sudden, I felt a swish of air leaving the car and the weight was lifted. I sped home, weak in the knees.”
Strange bedfellow
CLARK Lee used to be a sceptic but following several close encounters with the supernatural, he is now convinced that ghosts and spirits do indeed exist.
“I would rather believe in the existence of supernatural beings than to ignore them and get into trouble,” said Lee, a lawyer.
As an eight-year-old, Lee remembered seeing “a shadow on the wall, like a black cloud.”
“But my cousin who was next to me could not see it. It really freaked me out.”
Lee also recounted an incident in which his 16-year-old cousin ran out of the shower in a hotel room, trembling.
The girl had sensed a presence in the bathroom and heard heavy breathing on the other side of the shower curtain.
Perhaps the scariest encounter for Lee was one that took place during a working trip to Paris some years ago. Lee, who had shared a room with a male colleague, woke up in the middle of the night and found that a room light which they had left on was greenish, instead of amber.
“When I glanced at my colleague who was sleeping in the next bed, I saw the face of a pale-looking female. I ran out of the room,” said Lee.
“The next morning, one of the women in our tour group asked me if I had seen a female ghost. She was a psychic and said she could see the ghost on top of my male colleague. My colleague was not the same when he returned to Malaysia. He was a troubled man and kept to himself. Some believed he was charmed as he suffered from a mysterious illness. Sometimes he claimed that he could hear voices. He was taken for exorcism sessions over a period of three months. He was eventually cured and has since become a priest,” said Lee.
Possessed
FAIZAL, a senior executive, believes in spirits, even though he has yet to see any. He had observed his late grandfather, a powerful bomoh, at work and is convinced that spirits do exist.
Faizal’s grandfather, who passed away 10 years ago, was a village chief and silat master. He had 14 children and 54 grandchildren, and Faizal was one of his favourites.
“I was 12 when I accompanied my grandfather to an exorcism session. A woman in her 30s was possessed by the spirit of the legendary Puteri Gunung Ledang. She was hysterical and kept screaming about wanting to return to Gunung Ledang; she had to be held down by several people,” recalled Faizal.
“My grandfather calmed her down as she laid on the floor, and assured her that he would accompany her there. As he prayed over her and recited a few Quranic verses, her body levitated a few inches above the ground. He then covered her with a yellow cloth and recited some verses again to bring her down to the ground. She recovered later.”
Faizal related another interesting incident involving a runaway buffalo. The buffalo, which was to be sacrificed, had broken loose and the villagers were chasing it around. They eventually surrounded it but no one dared to take hold of its horns.
“My grandfather was summoned. As soon as he arrived at the scene, he looked at the buffalo in the eyes, pointed a finger at it, and recited prayers. Strangely, the buffalo walked towards him and knelt down before him,” he said.
“Then there was this woman in her 40s who had been suffering from toothache for a week. When the pain became unbearable, she came to see my grandfather. He went to the back of the house and took out a hammer and a nail,” recalled Faizal.
“My grandfather started to hammer the nail into the door frame as he recited prayers. He turned to ask the woman whether the pain had subsided. When she shook her head, he hammered again and repeated his question. Eventually, the woman told him that her toothache was gone. I asked my grandfather what happened and he told me that he had shifted the pain to the nail!
“I heard that my grandfather kept a pet spirit though I had never seen it,” Faizal added.
Lady in white
PROF Bruno R. Rodrigue’s first encounter with spirits and the paranormal took place when he was a seven-year-old.
He was holidaying in the tropics and stayed in a bungalow overlooking a deserted beach fringed by the jungle. One day at twilight, he saw a lady in white floating from the jungle towards the beach before disappearing into the sea.
“Three other families who were sitting on the balcony also saw the floating figure. When my aunt asked if I had seen the apparition, I was too frightened to reply,” said Prof Rodrigue, an Australian project consultant who travels to Malaysia often on business trips.
He recalled another unnerving incident at a hotel in Bandung, Indonesia. He had checked into the hotel the day before, and at 3am, he was awakened by the sound of the door opening and closing. He could sense a “visitor” had come into his room, but he dared not get up to look around.
Though Prof Rodrigue stayed on for the next three nights, there were no more visitations.
Source: The Star Online
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02-24-2004 08:23 PM
