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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