The Story Of Anthill (白蚁窝)

In Malaysia amongst local Chinese and Indians, anthills are believed to be haunted. Some people believe a selected few anthills are dwelled by local spirit known as ‘datuk’. If these haunted anthills are disturbed by anyone; this person may be harmed by these ‘datuk’ spirits.

My Uncle Beng is an ardent angler and he had a scientific minded friend, Jack who was also an angler. Jack was one of those few who don’t believe in ‘datuk’ of any sort.

One day, Uncle Beng and Jack went to Trong just outskirt of Taiping town to fish for kelah fish. Both of them arrived at the Trong riverside where there was a huge anthill. Since Jack was a city dweller, he had never seen things like that. So Jacked asked Uncle Beng to explain some background about this anthill.

Uncle Beng knew Jack would do something funny on the anthill but he warned Jack not to disturb this funny looking anthill as it might be haunted by ‘datuk’. After some conversations, they split to find their ideal location to fish. Uncle Beng went further downstream and Jack stay put near the anthill.

A few hours later, the sky became cloudy. Uncle Beng decided to call it a day so he went to look for Jack. After finding Jack they returned to get the car. As Uncle Beng turned his head, he saw the anthill was almost destroyed. Uncle certainly knew who did the job but he kept silent; there is no point arguing about those matters anyway.

Their returning path wasn’t very smooth as heavy rain started to pour. It was still a long way out to the main road and Uncle Beng started to get worry because the path the car was travelling was getting muddy and this made the car difficult to move smoothly. The situation really wasn’t looking very good and Uncle started to blame himself that he should have driven his four wheel drive truck. The sudden weather change had caught Uncle by unexpected as July is supposed to be a dry month.

Trees on both side of the return path swayed under strong wind and before Uncle could find a safe place to park his car to seek shelter, a coconut tree suddenly toppled under strong gale and quite unfortunately; the tree trunk fell onto the passenger’s seat beside Uncle. Unfortunately too, Jack was hurt quite badly though Uncle was relatively unharmed.

Strangely speaking, the wind suddenly subsided and the sky cleared. Luckily, a truck was seen coming from the opposite direction. So, Uncle waved at the truck to seek help. By the time Jack was sent to the local hospital, he was pronounced dead due to severe head injury.

Although no one can be sure if this accident is caused by angry datuk spirit, Uncle Beng firmly believed the case to be so.

I am sure you would like to ask: “Are all anthills haunted by datuk?”

Well, the answer is no. Not all anthills are haunted. You can almost certain which is haunted when you see one. If you find a single large anthill in a jungle, and there are no other anthills around; then it is likely that it is haunted.

Having said so, there are people in kampongs specifically seek out the termite queen. It is believed that these termite queens are very nutritious if swallowed alive. But I have also heard that some of the termite queens may not die in stomach and I have heard the people died from internal bleeding because the queen had chewed a hole in the person’s stomach.

Whatever case that might be, it would be safe just to stay away from anthill of any kind. However, if they are blocking on your way, please do remove them!