Thursday, November 3, 2016

Drowned Ghost Vs Ngai (水鬼斗蛊)


My old retired colleague Wong bought a terrace corner house in Ipoh for his retirement. We all were happy for him since Wong likes gardening and his new house does come with a small piece of land suited for his hobby. A month after bidding Wong farewell, he suddenly rang me one night asking for help.

Apparently, Wong’s house was built on a refilled land and this location was originally an abandoned tin mine lake. It is not a surprise because Ipoh areas were once abundance with tin ore and those big and small lakes were the remnants of those once lucrative tin mining industry. So, back to the story proper:

As we all know, where there are waters; there are bound to have people drowned underneath. This is especially true for mining ponds because kids like to swim and fish in these ponds during their free times. Most of the drowning cases occurred during school holidays unfortunately speaking. According to Chinese belief, when a person is drowned in a lake; his/her soul would be trapped in the lake unless it found a `replacement body` (替身). This replacement body would need to find another replacement if it wanted to leave the lake and so on.

According to Wong, two weeks after he moved into his new house happily, he consistently found a pool of water accumulated on the floor of his living room. At first he thought it was a pipe leak or roof leak but after some investigations, nothing was found. Since Wong didn’t install air-conditioners, the condensate from air-conditioning was also being ruled out. Even though he has mopped the water, the water would return at least once a few days.

One night a friend came to visit Wong and they chatted in the living room. Suddenly, the visitor’s eyes were transfixed on something in the garden. Wong turned his head but he saw nothing. When the visitor bided Wong farewell, he cautioned Wong not to enter his garden at night and left. Wong certainly didn’t take his friend’s words too seriously. After sending his pal off, he walked to his garden to take a breath of fresh air; which is his norm.

While Wong was walking towards his gold fish pond, he saw two kids playing in the pond. At first he thought there were neighbour’s kids but when he approached the pond; both kids suddenly vanished into thin air but their disembodied laughter lingered in the air. Though Wong wasn’t superstitious, his body developed Goosebumps and he shivered although outside temperature in the tropics at night would be around 80F normally.

Feeling a little afraid, he hastily returned to his house and went straight to sleep. To his horror, there he saw a lady in white was sitting at the edge of his bed. And there was a pool of water on the floor…

Wong subsequently spent a night in a local hotel and later he contacted me. I met Wong in the hotel he stayed and we returned together to his house. After a walk around the house inside and out, I told Wong that when the developer refilled the minding lake for construction of his house, he didn’t perform any ceremony to remove those drowned ghosts from the lake. So, even after the lake is refilled with sands; the spirits continued to be trapped and turned into earthbound spirits.

There is no way to remove the spirits now except I do a fire offering ritual or I could use a Ngai plant to absorb all of those restless earthbound spirits. The former would mean that I need to construct a fire altar in the middle of Wong’s house which might cause the house to catch fire. The later takes time for all of those earthbound spirits to be attracted to the Ngai plant. The plus side was that Wong need not do anything except to put my Ngai plant near his fish pond and wait.

Wong chosen the Ngai plant because he didn’t want to burn down his house and he didn’t mind to have another plant in his garden provided I would take it away after it has done its job. Then, I borrowed Wong my Ngai plant and according to Wong later; the hauntings in his house slowly diminished and a year later not a single haunting was being sighted. And, no more water pools ever formed in his house…

Perhaps not all evil stuffs are useless after all. Even notorious Ngai plant can be helpful in a way too.

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