Friday, March 11, 2016

Who Is Maryann? (谁是马利安?)

In case you are not aware, college students are indeed good ghost story tellers. In fact, many of the popular ghost stories in circulation originated from these groups of people. I know of a young lady by the name of Diana and she told me of her strange experience during her first year of study in a local university in Kuala Lumpur.

As per local university rules, first year students are normally required to stay in campus hostel. It is only on the subsequent year that they are allowed to stay outside perhaps due to insufficient hostel space.

Diana was accountancy undergraduate and she was assigned to stay in hostel block B. Malaysian universities have very strict rules about male and female hostels and no male or female can step into hostel of opposite sex. Whoever breaks this rule will have to face with very serious consequences.

Block B then was surrounded by many tall trees and those people from that university would know which building I meant. Block B was reputedly to be haunted by a restless spirit of its old tenant. Of course, it is now abandoned as I was told but I am not sure if it is still around.

Life in the hostel wasn’t too bad as there was a small canteen downstairs students can purchase food during lunch and dinner. Well, according to Diana that no one would literarily visit the canteen after 2 weeks because the foods would always be the same.

All of the hostel residents would need to share a common toilet and bathroom. It was quite a distance from Diana’s room. She had to walk pass a long and narrow passage way in order to get there. During peak times, one even needs to queue up to use the toilet. Except when there are morning lectures, Diana would normally wait for a good time when the toilet is not too crowded as she hate to walk all the way to one end of the building carrying all her stuffs and back.

So the best time for Diana is during late evening after 8pm when there would not be so many visitors. That was when Diana could take her sweet time to do her business. Now comes the interesting part…

A week after Diana stayed in Block B, during one of night visits to hostel toilet; Diana suddenly noticed there was another girl washing her face beside Diana. They nodded to each other at first politely and went on to their business.

Somehow Diana was curious about this girl but she didn’t have her name, so after coming across the girl a few times; Diana ventured to the girl and introduced herself. And the girl responded politely and said her name was Maryann. According to Maryann she was also studying accountancy. Though Diana felt strange because the name Maryann didn’t ring a bell to her as she didn’t recall the name Maryann appeared in the student list. As usual, Diana found herself some excuses to dismiss her doubt: perhaps Maryann is a transfer student from other university she thought.

Soon Diana got acquainted with Maryann as she always appears in the toilet at night. One night, Maryann invited Diana to have an evening walk around Block B and she agreed. Since the evening walk, Maryann told Diana about her side of the stories, mostly her relationship with her boy friend. After that, both of them frequently walked around the hostel at night.

Then after one of such night walk, Diana’s concerned roommate, Lian pulled Diana aside and asked why Diana usually walk around the hostel alone at night. She cautioned Diana that the hostel was haunted; especially under one particular banyan tree outside the toilet.

Diana became curious and told Lian about Maryann whom she met in the toilet at night. Lian exclaimed:

“Whooah! There was a girl by the name Maryann who used to stay in Block B. But she hung herself during her birthday after being jilted by her boyfriend two years ago!”

On hearing Lian’s words, Diana felt dizzy and fell onto the floor unconscious. After that, Diana had to rest for another two weeks in her hometown before returning to the university. Since then, Diana avoided the toilet at night until the end of her academic year when she was permitted to stay outside. 


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