The Sea Full Of Ghosts (满海是鬼)

Debora and a few of her friends from Hong Kong went to Phuket for their long yearend holidays and also to escape the winter chillness somewhere around Christmas of 2006. The gang stayed in a budget hotel near seaside and they planned to have barbecue session at the seaside at night and perhaps to swim in the sea to enjoy warm tropical experience. Everything proceeded as planned and Debora et al enjoyed their stayed so far.

Soon the sun started to set and the sky gets dark fast towards the end of the year. In order to escape the disturbances of other holiday makers, the gang have chosen a more remote spot of the beach some distance away from their hotel. Although they were being warned of the safety concerns, since some of the members were martial arts exponents and some shen’gong (神功) masters; so the group thought they should be alright. After all, they only planned to stay on the beach for a few hours or so.

The gang proceeded as planned and while the gentlemen are preparing for barbecue session, the ladies were either helping out with the food or strolling along the beach. Debora likes to swim at night because according to her, warm sea water coupled with cool sea breeze give her different type of sensation every time. Further, shark attack is rare in this part of waters. So, Debora was the first to jump into the sea while others were preparing for the food.

Debora planned to swim to a buoy about 50m away from the shore and returned. The sea was relatively calm with gentle sea breeze blowing at her face and she could hear her friends’ voices on the shore singing and shouting. As Debora was approaching the buoy, she suddenly saw the shadow of a man clinging onto the buoy and waved at her as if asking for help. Feeling a little scared and insecure, Debora decided not to reach the buoy instead but to swim to the shore to get her companions.

While Debora was swimming towards the shore, she suddenly noticed many translucent people: men and women of all nationalities surrounded her and at the same time waved at her as if asking for help. All of a sudden, the sea around Debora was filled with those ghostly figures almost all of them appeared in decaying bloated bodies with bulging dead fish eyes. The apparitions tried to grab hold of Debora as she swam passed them. As Debora swam, she smelled foul odour of decaying dead meats surrounded her making her almost vomit in the sea.

At one point, Debora felt she just couldn’t make it to the shore, she started to wave at her friends on the shore. Luckily, her best friend, Lisa noticed something was wrong with Debora. She immediately asked a good swimmer to help Debora to the shore. A few minutes later, Debora was escorted to the shore safely.

Before Debora could speak out what she thought she saw, she instinctively turned her head and looked at the seaside. She was stunned. There Debora saw the beach behind her was filled with uncountable translucent people crawling from the sea toward the beach. After Debora thought she really had seen enough, she asked Lisa: “Did you see what I saw?”

Lisa who had psychic eyes and she is also a Shen’gong practitioner, replied: “Yes. Maybe these are the victims of past tsunami and now is the time of their anniversary. They probably followed you to the shore… We should just pretend that we have not seen them for our own safety.”

So, the ladies pretended as if nothing had happened and joined the barbecue session. Everyone enjoyed the barbecued meat and beers but not Debora and Lisa. Both of the ladies were shivering and they refused to eat anything. Others thought they were sick but they kept their silence. In the midst of enjoying the feast, someone in the group complaint that somehow their barbecued meat contained the flavour of sea water with rotten flesh.

Soon the beach barbecue session ended and the gang returned to the hotel to rest. Feeling a little awkward that Debora didn’t even eat any of those barbecued meat which was supposed to be her favourite, her boyfriend Mike asked Debora: “Are you feeling not well? I didn’t see you eat any of your favourites…”

Upon being asked, Debora replied: “I didn’t want to say this. I saw many translucent folks licking and eating those barbecued meats along with you on the beach. Their sliver and sea water dripped onto those meats while still being barbecued…”

Of course, Mike just thought Debora was merely having a vivid imagination. Having said so, everyone except Debora and Lisa didn’t suffer food poisoning and had to be hospitalized the next morning.