Strange Things Can Happen.............

Strange things can happen when you always talk about it.......

With family friends when grandma and  my older brother came to visit.

When we moved to Kota Bahru in the 50s, the people who were previously staying at the quarters hinted out at the strange air of the house. Dad just shrug it off as utter nonsense. Mum never utter a word about it to us, kids.

It was a two-roomed wooden house, with a servant's room adjoining the kitchen. In those days a servant's room would just have a wooden deck, about 3 to 4 feet high at a section of the room which may also serve as a bed. All it needed further was a mattress. The two other rooms were on either side of the sitting room. My younger brother and I took the one furnished with two single beds.

For some unexplained reasons we never used  the bathroom adjoining our bedroom. Even when I needed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night I would make a sound till my mum gave me the green light to enter the master bedroom and use the bathroom there. I had always felt a dislike of the bathroom adjoining the kids' bedroom. I can't explain it further except that it gave me the creeps. Surprisingly, my brother who was about 6 years old did not use it either. It was only used occasionally by some people attending the Immigration Office in front.

In the evening, after dinner, mum and dad would often sit atop the front steps chatting away while we kids did our homework or reading in the sitting room. It was much later after we had moved that they related to me what they had seen on some of the evenings. 

Once they had seen a flying thing with fiery trailing tentacle-like structures from it's belly side. They just watched it as they knew better not to utter anything when seeing such a thing. 

At another time they had seen a dark shadow moving under the mangosteen tree on their left. They had bolted into the house before it became clearer what it was!

Those were the golden age of Malay film industry and there were a number of Malay horror movies like Pontianak, Anak Pontianak, Sumpah Pontianak, Dendam Pontianak and  Orang Minyak to name a few. At school, we would spend recess time  discussing the movies we had seen while some would also spice it up with what they said were true experience. I think all these activites somehow affected me in some ways. I had nightmares fairly often. At times I couldn't move my body even when I tried to yell. I often visualise a shadow trying to sleep with my brother across the room.

One day my parents announced that we were going to visit a friend in Rantau Panjang. This place was an Immigration checkpoint near the Golok River. There was no road there and the only way to get there was to take a train. Once we went across the railway bridge to Golok Town on foot. Malaysians loved to go there to buy Thai made tableware and other household items. Crossing the railway bridge on foot was quite an experience ..... just do not look down, they said.

The whole Immigration Dept community lived in the quarters provided. A family friend had had some friends visiting them and his wife had just gone missing. Dad had come all the way from Kota Bahru to lend a hand. A search party was organised but it was unable to find the missing woman. News had it that it was some months before she was found on a tree in a forested area, without a stitch on !