Black Cats Are Evil (邪恶的黑猫)

Black cats are important ingredients in eastern and western magic circles.

In the West, black cats are always depicted as companions of evil witches.

In the East, black cat blood is used to break the protective magic of an opponent. Some Indian and Javanese magicians believe that certain bone of a black cat can bestow the power of invisibility. Anyone who wishes to be invisible, then he/she can find a set of black cat bones and test them out piece by piece.

Personally, I think black cats are evil.

During a new year eve, I was driving on trunk road from Taiping to Sungai Siput with full load of relatives. Just as when my car passed through the section of Bukit Gantang, a black cat suddenly ran into the middle of the road and squatted there staring into my eyes. I was about to ram over the black cat until the lady passenger screamed “STOP!”

I had to step onto the brake paddle and the car suddenly came to an emergency stop. Another car that was following closely at my back just had a split second to sway away from kissing my back. If it wasn’t the lady passenger who had over acted regardless of the safety of the whole car; I would have run over the cat. It is not that I was not compassionate about the cat, it was the safety that I was concerned about. So, from then onwards, I dislike taking passengers.

Coming back to the moment when I looked into the eyes of that black cat, I could sense there was evil in its eyes. Further, that section of trunk road was thought to be haunted in the evening. Perhaps the black cat was the pet of some mountain spirit nearby. Since then I would rather take the highway when I had to travel in the evening.

You could perhaps say that I was lucky, but my pal; Eric was not so lucky…

Eric owns a bakery in Simpang Empat and he normally drives his small truck with full load of pre-ordered cakes to his customers in Ipoh and beyond.

One evening as Eric was driving pass through that road section at Bukit Gantang, he heard a sharp meow came from beneath the front wheel. Due to curiosity, he parked his truck on the roadside and went down to investigate.

There Eric saw, a black creature was lying lifelessly in a pool of blood on the road about 50 yards away. I know Eric, he is not those superstitious and timid folks but he claimed that for the first time in his life; he felt scared after running over a black cat.

On the night Eric reached home, he had high fever and subsequently became insane. Eric was normally gentle but that night he suddenly turned violent and his wife was so scared that she asked a few workers to tie Eric in the bed and then sought medical help.

A few days later, Eric was discharged from the hospital. Since then he had acted very strangely for Eric would go out in the evening and returned home at dawn usually with one or two stray cats. Gradually Eric’s house and bakery were filled with stray cats. His wife was at the brink of nervous breakdown then until she remembered that a Tibetan Rinpoche was in town.

After hearing Eric’s ordeal, he then told Eric’s wife that Eric was possessed by a black cat. The Rinpoche would send my bro-in-dharma, Mr. Yong to assist as he would be travelling to KL the next morning. The master further cautioned that black cats have very strong spiritual power so Young must use fire ritual to overcome the cat’s hatred.

Eric was half coax and half dragged to the dharma centre in town where a pacifying fire ritual was held. There I saw Eric gave out a few loud meows and then collapsed onto the ground. When he finally being revived, he told us his story but he couldn’t remember of bringing cats into his premises.

If you ask, I would still run over any black cats that run to the middle of the road for safety reasons!

Spirit Of Horses (鬼马)

This paper horse will send the 9 Emperors back to heaven.

Horses used to have played very important roles in human civilization; this life and the next too.

In Taoist rituals, imaginary horses acted as transportation to and fro the spiritual realm and our human world.

Last Saturday night, I travelled with my bro’s family to the famous Butterworth Taoist temple, the Temple of Mother Goddess (斗母宫). My 7-year-old nephew suddenly pointed to a section of a street near the temple and said:

“I had been to this place before and this place really scared me. I remember to have seen 5 white horses with 5 red riders in a row in front one of the shops…”

Young nephew’s words did give the car load of people a stunt; for this is our first trip to the said temple and it would be quite impossible for this small kid to have travelled by himself to that region logically speaking. Perhaps the horses and riders my nephew meant were the Taoist 5 legionnaire armies; or perhaps he did visit the said place in his past life!

While we are still on the topic of horse spirits, I remembered quite a famous ghost story started during early Hong Kong establishment. This story happened at the central district and related to a renowned bank. If you pass through the front of two banks in Hong Kong, you shall notice that there are two lion sculptures being placed on both sides of the main entrance. Old local folks believed that there are hidden agendas; but we could just treat the legend as just any sort of urban legends.

According to this particular urban legend, that section of central street where the Queen’s Road (皇后大道) passes through had seen strange happenings in the midst of the nights. Many drivers have claimed to have seen a white horse galloping in the middle of the road which had caused panic amongst them. This phantom white horse could occasionally be seen and yet at times, people could just hear the noise of horse galloping beside them. At that time, that particular spot had become an infamous accident hot spot. Rumour has it that this phantom horse came out from the said bank and after it had satisfied with its exercises, it would return to the bank.

Since the appearance of this phantom horse had caused panic and casualties, the management of the bank decided to place two lion sculptures on both sides of the entrance to prevent this phantom horse from running out. Apparently the measure did work and the white horse never appear on the road again. Of course, I am not sure if this white horse still galloping the inside of that bank at this time. One thing for sure is that the pair of lion sculptures are still there to date.

Babies Of Higashi-Shinjuku Station (新宿地铁的婴儿)

Those who has visited Tokyo must have also visited the Higashi-Shinjuku Station. Many tourists especially like the Shinjuku underground street because of lower item prices and that most of the shops concentrated to a place; which make shopping easier. Where the underground and the underpass met, some temporary storage safes are setup for tourists to safekeeping their belongings. The cost per use is not too expensive as it only costs 100~200 Yen per use until 11pm of that day. Beyond 11pm, all storage safes will be automatically unlocked for cleaning work.

Many people believe that some of these safe boxes are haunted by baby spirits because there was a spree of past incidents that dead abandoned babies found in these safe boxes.

As the story goes, one night when a cleaner was cleaning one of those safe boxes; he found a stiff and cold dead baby wrapped in a plastic bag in one of the boxes. After that, more dead babies continued to be found at nights and at the same time sightings of baby spirits started to be reported. News of dead babies and ghosts did scare away many of those potential customers but such news also attracted other types of enthusiasts. Many local paranormal enthusiasts chosen this place to do their research and many photos were taken. This place too was also the focus of some TV programs some time ago.

Some passer-by claimed to have heard voices of baby crying could be heard came out from these safe boxes and they could feel the surrounding became cold when they tried to approach the source of cries at night.  Yet some people said that they felt their coats were pulled by invisible forces and when they turned their back, they could feel a cold breeze and faintly in the air; disembodied laughing voices of baby giggling could be heard in the air.

My friend, Yuko said that she passed by the place one night and she could hear the sound of a ball bounced at her back. The sound of the bouncing ball seemed to have followed her from far to near as she could faintly deduce as the sound of the ball hitting onto the ground was getting louder by the bounds. At times Yuko did turn her back but she found nothing behind her and the stretch of passage behind her was in dead silent; of course no ball was also seen.

As Yuko came to a junction exiting the station, she felt something jumped onto her back but again; she found nothing when she used her left hand to brush her back…

Stranger thing happened when Yuko tried to flag a few taxis outside of the station. All of the taxies at first approached Yuko slowly at first but when those taxi drivers saw Yuko, they suddenly stepped onto their gas paddles and sped off. As it was approaching midnight, Yuko had no choice but to call her colleague to fetch her. Luckily her friend picked up the phone and Yuko waited.

Same as with the reactions of those taxi drivers but Yuko’s friend didn’t speed off. The car stopped after some hesitation and Yuko hopped into the car. None of them have spoken to each other and Yuko was too tired to notice anything. The car finally stopped in front of Yuko’s house and Yuko alighted. Before she wanted to thank her friend, this long silent friend finally blurred: “I hate to ask this… but who is the baby on your shoulder all this while?”

Before Yuko could make any sense of what her friend meant, and before she could bid ‘good night’; the car suddenly sped off.

According to Yuko, she felt immense headache on that night and she was subsequently bed reddened for a few days. I only got to know her story when she called me a week later to tell me her story. Of course, her first question was: Is the baby still on her back?

Difficult To Let Go (难放手)

Many people dropped me a line asking me to help. They hoped that I can solve their problems in a jiffy. But… they are wrong.

It is difficult to help anyone with spirit possession issues for a very simple reason: both of the spirits and human might already become dependent to each other.

I have a spirit medium friend, Lam who is also known as ‘tangki’ amongst local Chinese communities. Lam claimed to be the medium of ‘guanyim ma’ (mother Avalokitesvara) and when he was possessed by ‘guanyim ma’, he could possess certain magical power to help those in need. Of course, in theoretical Buddhism; ‘guanyim ma’ is only a manifestation of our human mind. In another words, this ‘guanyim ma’ has never existed. So, it is clear that the true identity of the spirit that possesses Lam’s body is questionable.

About a decade ago, my guru Rinpoche came to Penang and Lam visited him. When Lam saw the Rinpoche, he shivered. Or perhaps should I say that it was the spirit that possessed his body that has shivered.

The Rinpoche wanted to remove the spirit ‘guanyim ma’ but Lam declined to be helped because he said: “The guanyim ma gives me power to exorcise evil spirits and to perform miracles. If this guanyim ma is taken away; it would be difficult for me to earn a living and also to gain respects…”

So the Rinpoche added: “Do you wish that your wife sleeps with a wandering spirit? That also means that you would be sharing your wife with others too?”

Lam followed: “But that is guanyim ma!”

Since Lam insisted to keep the spirit in his body, the conversation between Lam and the Rinpoche yielded no result.

Three days later, Lam suddenly asked me to bring him to the Rinpoche as he wanted to practise the right dharma for some reasons.

After some dharma talk by Rinpoche, Lam’s guanyim ma was exorcised…

A few weeks later, I met Lam in a coffee shop downtown and he looked very unhappy. So I approached Lam and asked: “Are you okay?”

Lam said: “I missed my guanyim ma…”

One month later, I saw Lam back in action in a local Taoist temple possessed by his old ‘guanyim ma’. Looks like by continuous thinking of this guanyim ma too will summon back it wherever it might be. Maybe Lam is willing to share his wife with this spirit of unknown origin for the rest of his life… and he is not too bother with this. Since with power, respect and money; who cares if the ‘guanyim ma’ is authentic or not. Or it really doesn’t matter if the spirit sleeps together with his wife in that matter…

I just want to put the record straight that if ‘guanyim ma’ does exit and it is what it means to be; then no spirit of higher order would possess an ordinary person for any reasons. It would conversely sound odd that if someone claimed to be possessed by Archangel Michael.

Humanity Complexity & Suicides (复杂人性与自杀)

I do not like to be called an ‘exorcist’ for most of the times I only dealt with a person’s complex humanity. It would be utmost erroneous to perform an exorcism ritual and then declare the spirits inside a person had left; and that the person is ‘saved’. Unfortunately speaking, it is not always the actual ‘devil’ that I had to deal with but the inner undisclosed self of the person.

In order to under the underneath complexity of each individual, I would need to do a series of ‘onion peeling’ work similar to the modern psychologist or psychotherapist. Ideally speaking, a person should have undergone reviews of psychologists or psychotherapist first before coming to me so that all those non-spiritual elements are excluded first hand; or I will have to do the analysis from scratch.

Let us go through a fairly recent suicide case said to be due to possession… But was it really because of spirits; or there is indeed something behind the suicide case?

Sometime ago, a lady dropped at my place. According to the lady, her sister; Marian committed suicide believed to be caused by spirit possession. The sister wanted a second opinion on Marian’s death as she was not convinced that some evil spirits were the culprit.

As the story goes, Marian went for a tour to mainland China and her character changed abruptly ever since.

After returning from her trip, Marian started to speak senselessly in a language that could not be understood by anyone. She always overslept until her work was affected and Marian was subsequently fired by her company.

Later, Marian was brought to a few psychiatrists but her conditions flips flops.

After a while, Marian again went for another trip to China with her friends. Since her parents thought it would do Marian good if she could have an environment change.

Sadly, speaking, Marian went back to the hotel she stayed and then committed suicide by jumping down from her hotel room… And that is the end of Marian.

Even though most of us would like to conclude that Marian committed suicide due to spirit possession but let us just hold our horses first at this point.

Although abrupt character change and oversleeping do sound like symptoms of spirit possession, but that could also mean that some incident might had happened to Marian during her first trip to China that had traumatized Marian physically: Perhaps she was assaulted, abused or even threatened; and that she had no way to escape her situations or quit her jobs. Maybe her ego was hurt so much that Marian chosen the ultimate way to escape this physical world. Unfortunately speaking, no one can uncover the truth following Marian’s death.

Since Marian did not seek help physically, I would have guessed the above assumption is true: Someone must have done something on Marian until she thought that she had chosen her final end; which has nothing to do with spirit possession at all. Whatever case that might be; Marian has done herself no favour by bringing her problems to her grave. No justice could be done for her in any case!

Spirit Induced Suicides (附身性的自杀)

There are many reasons why people choose to commit suicide. Amongst the reasons are physical, psychological and spiritual.

People can commit suicide because they are despaired about their living conditions. For example: If a person is heavily in debt and that he/she can find no way out to clear his/her debts; then this person may opt to end his/her own life.

There are also people committed suicides due to mental depression. With no apparent provocative reasons, a mentally depressed person can commit suicide out of the blue. Of course, there are many tell-tale signs that a trained professional can pick up if a patient will try to end his/her own life.

A more debatable attribution to suicides is perhaps a person killed him/herself because the spirit that possessed the person enticed he/she to commit suicide.

What then is the difference if a person committed suicide because of physical constraint, mental depression or that of the spirit possession then?

Through my observations and true cases that I have handled so far, it is suffice to say that:

·         If a person is in real trouble of money matters, then he/she will be less likely to seek help before he/she committed suicide.

·         If a person is in mental depression, then he/she too is likely to kill him/herself without prior warning; moreover, seeking external help.

·         If a person is possessed, then he/she is VERY likely to seek help not once, but many times.

There are many books written on spirit induced suicides but sad to say, there are not many well founded discussions or research in this matter.

I don’t pretend to be experts in handling suicide cases but please allow me kick out some of the real stories that I have saved and failed to save for some reasons:

A married lady was having problems with her marriage life and she thought of committing suicide. She came to my place and told me her own feelings:

“I have no intention to commit suicide but there seemed to have another person inside me asking me to kill myself; the inner voice even taught me how to get a quick kill.

You know that I am staying on the 25^th floor and that I never had this kind of feeling before when I stood in my balcony looking down until recently. This urge of mine of jumping down from the balcony was so strong right after I quarrelled with my husband.

As I was leaning forward on my balcony railing and prepared to make a jump, suddenly a ray of sunlight shone into my eyes and suddenly my urge of wanting of die was gone! Apparently it was the ray from distant setting sun… You see, my balcony was facing westwards and it was around 6:30pm; it was just the right time for the sun to set.

Maybe I was lucky to be saved by the sun that time, but what should I do as I want to get rid of this inner voice?”

After pondering for a while, this was the advice that I gave to the lady:

“You will be on the safe side if you continue to have the urge to live on. But please find a hobby and have some activities to keep yourself occupied. Meanwhile please keep me informed of your progress.”

A month later, the lady finally lost her suicidal inner voice after some rounds of ritual blessings; and after she had some thought about her unhappy marriage life.

Apparently the said lady has overcome her feeling of wanting to kill herself but it is not so with another lady friend of mine, Jennifer who was working in Singapore. Both of the ladies had some similar experience with mysterious suicidal voice but with very different outcome… Unfortunately speaking, Jennifer who also had a very unhappy married life committed suicide by jumping down from her balcony.

A few days before Jennifer killed herself, she gave me a call but unfortunately I was in some remote area in Chiangmai, Thailand performing a meditative retreat with my master. When I finally returned to civilization and returned her call, it was too late. It was Jennifer’s sister who picked up the phone and informed me of the sad news.

Perhaps if I would have returned a little earlier, then maybe I could save Jennifer’s life. This incident remains to be one of my regrettable cases in my magical life!

When Kids And Frogs Meet (当小孩遇到田鸡)

There are two possibilities that resulted when kids and edible frogs meet:

1.       The kids caught hold of the frogs and go home happily.

2.       The kids caught something else.

We will come to that ‘something else’ later. For the uninitiated, there are many kinds of edible frogs out there. They are normally larger than the ordinary frogs and only their leg muscles are consumed. They taste like chicken but they are tenderer and sweet. Hence the Chinese call these edible frogs as ‘field chickens’ (田鸡). The edible frogs caught in the wild is normally larger than the ones from the farms. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, edible frogs can replenish energy and treat weak spleen. However, these edible frogs may not be consumed by followers of some religions.

As with common frogs, edible frogs are amphibian animals, they would leave the water to hunt for food at night. So whoever wants to catch these creatures must go to the river banks to catch them. The required tool is only torchlight. Edible frogs could be easily picked up under the torchlight light for they would stay dumbfounded when a torchlight shine at them. It is not too difficult to notice the presence of these edible frogs as their eyes would become red under torchlight.

Since catching these frogs must be done in the dark and in the river, there are bound to be something else around. These ‘something else’ are normally snakes and ghosts. So it is actually safer to go in a group of 3 people. Having said so, when the group is a little large; the frogs would also be scared away. Ideally of course, one should just proceed alone for the frog hunt.

I am not particularly brave but during those days, there weren’t too many things to do at night; catching edible frogs become one of those lucrative past times for kids to venture in as edible frog meat can fetch a high price in local restaurants. So, with so many frog hunters out there, these edible frogs were in short supply. Since these animals were almost hunted to their extinction in more popular locations, the best place to hunt for these delicious frogs at that time was a section of a stream near a Chinese cemetery. This was a place shy away by other frog hunters as the place was believed to be haunted by a pair of mother-son ghosts.

It was said that a pregnant lady hung herself on a banyan tree by the stream and this restless spirit and her stillborn haunted the section of the stream ever since. I was lucky for many times with good catches at that place without any eerie experiences until one occasion however. During that particular occasion, I was extremely happy to have discovered a colony of edible frogs resting on a piece of large boulder.

Just as when I was positioning to make a catch, suddenly a round of extremely sorrowful weeping voice of a woman came ahead of me. The disembodied voice just dangled in the air repeatedly which created resonance in my little heart. Due to reflexes, I used my torchlight to shine towards the direction of the sound but there was nothing to be seen. I didn’t want to lose the pray then, so I ventured forward even I was scared.

Then the weeping voice came again. It was “woo-wooo-wooooo” and I pointed my torchlight to the direction of the voice. Again, nothing could be seen…

My natural reflexion then was to turn around and ran for my life. I swear that I could hear those sorrowful and eerie voice for many nights later. Well, thing would be different if I had some magic training then. Perhaps it was the ghosts’ turn to flee if they didn’t want to be my servant spirits.

Of course, bumping into ghosts are scary but they are certainly not life threatening. The scariest creatures by the river at night is none other than the snakes!

In another occasion I was in the river searching for the frogs. As it was taught by old folks that poisonous snakes and wild animals only hunt by the water, I opted to go straight to the middle of the river in the hope not to come face to face with any of those fierce and poisonous creatures. Maybe I was a little too lucky that night, not long after I was in the river; I saw a coral snake swimming beside me…

A few minutes later, I noticed a swift moving noise came from my back. I could make up that it was a large and fast moving creature but before I could turn my back, suddenly a huge king cobra bulleted out from my back and bit the coral snake. Almost instantly two snakes entangled together but after a few seconds the king cobra wound around the coral snake and started to devour it from the head.

As for me, I quickly turn my back and ran as fast as I could back home. I really hate to see the king cobra again which was about thrice as long as my little self!