'Orang minyak' or literary translated to 'oily man' is a type of half man half spirit creature perhaps exclusively to Malaysian culture only. Its appearance is black and oily and some bomoh (shamans) think that an oily man is actually deviant yogic practitioners as they seemed to possess some magical power to slip through tightly shut doors and windows.
The orang minyak almost exclusively pray on girls and they will leave behind a pile of pull after as their signature sign. It is believed that a oily man cannot be killed by any other means except by his own kind or after beaten by a cane made from petai (bitter bean) wood.
Of course, there were some phony oily men caught from time to time and they turned out to be thieves smeared themselves with lubrication oils so they are difficult to catch...
So said, the Malaysian orang minyak remains a mystery until today.
We probably won't see many orang minyak in modern housing estate but the existence of orang minyak did terrorize many village folks as most of houses in villages are located in isolation, pretty far and between many years ago.
Orang minyak didn't really trouble the rubber plantation that I once lived in but a Malay kampong adjacent to the plantation was hit many times by so-called notorious orang minyak.
Some legend has it that an oily man must have sex with 21 virgins in one week or he will be punished by the Satan personally...
As I heard that a few households were attacked by oily man who normally operated after midnight. Due to the fact that there was no physical boundaries between the kampong and rubber plantation, the kampong headman invited the rubber tappers to join the night watch for mutual safety and benefits.
Occasionally the sighting of a black shadow was reported and that did stirred up quite a commotion and panic for days.
Finally, an old bomoh taught the villagers to keep a piece of bitter bean wood measuring about 3 feet in the house especially in the ladies' bed for protection.
The orang minyak incident persisted for a few weeks and just as when everybody became a little relaxed, one night watch by the name Ali saw his neighbor's window being opened by a black figure.
Ali immediately notified the other watchmen and they surrounded the house. Almost all of them were holding a piece of petai wood in their hands.
Some of the crowd knocked on the house door but no one answered. Feeling impatient, they rammed the house door until the door swang opened and the oily man was seen in the daughter's bedroom. There was a pile of shit on the floor.
Luckily the lady was not molested but she seemed to be unconscious.
The oily man tried to barged his way through the crowd. Someone tried to catch hold of the oily man but he was too slippery. Then oily man was beaten down by raging batons.
After the oily man was knocked unconscious by angry mob, someone in the crowd immediately identified the oily man as the son of a farmer who stayed at further end of the kampong.
Strangely too, house owner and his family remained sound asleep and they were not aware of what had happened in their house until someone sprinkled some blessed water onto their faces.
There was no more sighting of oily man in the kampong or the rubber plantations. Luckily for us, this oily man thing has gone extinct nowadays. Perhaps real orang minyak does not exist. That remains a mystery until today.
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