Return My Head To Me! (还我头来！)

This is a real story happened in the 90's to my gravedigger friend, Ah Kow.

 

For those folks who are old enough to remember things in the 90's, they will know that occult practices were at their height then. Real human skulls were in demand then as well as now. There are mainly three ways one can get a real human skull: purchase, steal and by accidental.

 

A human skull could be purchased near Malaysia and Thai border fairly easily back then. Now I heard that a real human skull can fetch up to $1000. If the person cannot afford to buy, then he/she may resort to dig out others graves or people can also find a skull by chance in the jungle too!

 

Since Ah Kow is a gravedigger, he has all the opportunity to get to a human skull. There is a type of Taoist magic known as 'five ghosts fortune' (五鬼运财) and the main ingredient is five human skulls. So Ah Kow was constantly approached by those gamblers and black magicians to instigate him to get some human skulls for them.

 

Ah Kow resisted the temptation of good money at first, but succumbed to monetary gains as the price of one human skull almost equal to digging 5 graves. A gravedigger's advantage is that he knows which grave is unattended or abandoned and which grave is suitable for magic.

 

One day the opportunity came and Ah Kow found a grave of a young lady who had committed suicide at the age of 18. Since the deceased was an illegal immigrant, her grave was naturally unattended. Hence Ah Kow went to the grave and dug out her skulls that still have some long hairs intact.

 

After Ah Kow got the skull, he immediately went home and hid the lady’s skull under his bed while waiting for potential bidders. Immediately on that night, Ah Kow had a nightmare. In the nightmare, a headless lady in white came to Ah Kow demanding that the head to be returned to her.  A hollow voice kept lingering in the air: “Return my head to me!” After some struggle with the spirit, Ah Kow woke up from the bad dream soaked in a pool of cold sweat.

 

At first Ah Kow thought it was just a bad dream. However, the same dram repeated for several nights until he gave me an urgent call one night. I went to Ah Kow’s place and he showed me the skull and told me his story.

 

I told Ah Kow that he has two choices: either he go back and dig out all the remains and wrap it in a piece of black cloth, or he must return the skull to its rightful owner in the grave. Ah Kow didn’t want to see his good money fly, so he had chosen to go back and get the whole skeleton. I in turn, seal the lady’s spirit inside the skull so that she will go with her new owner.

 

Well, that was my crazier younger years. I would not have done so if the scenario repeated now days. I heard there were people got mad or involved in serious accidents after Ah Kow’s incident. But none of us wanted to bring up the old story again.