That Secretary Downstairs (楼下的秘书)

Lily is a secretary of an investment company located in a multi-story building in the heart of KL finance centre.

One morning, Lily was a little late for work so she hurriedly on her way while crossing her fingers that her boss would also be late as usual. A big plus for a secretary for big boss is that she would know almost all details of her boss and takes this information to her advantage.

When Lily finally arrived at the building reception hall, she was a little calmer as there was no sign that her boss had checked in to work yet. So, Lily walked to the lift lobby to get a lift. Less than a minute later, the lift arrived and Lily stepped into the lift compartment. As she was turning around, Lily noticed a nice lady also rushed into the lift. By Lily’s hunch, the lady must also be a secretary of some VIP judging from her attires.

Politely, Lily asked the lady: “Which floor please?”

The lady replied: “14^th floor. Thank you very much.”

Lily nodded politely and started the conversation: “I have not seen you around. You must be new here? I am Lily working with Mayflower Capital Investment on the 15^th floor.”

Lady: “Oh, I am Linda. I am an old timer here. My company is the Sunshine Trading on the 14^th floor.”

In a jiffy, the lift arrived at 14^th floor, and Linda stepped out. Feeling curious, Lily too followed Linda’s step and exited the lift. Lily was curious about this Sunshine Trading as she has not heard the company before since she started work with Mayflower two years ago. Further, Lily figured that her boss must be drunk again and he would not show his face before lunch. So, she has a lot of time to find out more about this old timer Linda.

Lily started the conversation: “I need some exercise, let me walk you to your company… maybe we can have lunch together later?”

Linda smiled politely but kept silent. Both of them walked to a corner where the Sunshine Trading Company was situated. Looking through the glass door, no one was at the office yet. As Linda went into her office, Lily too started to proceed to her company.

As what Lily has expected, her boss was not in the office.  So she could take her sweet time to go about her business as usual. Then Madam Yao knocked on Lily’s door and then she came in. Before Madam Yao could speak anything, Lily asked: “Hey, Madam Yao. Since you have been working fairly long with this company, do you know a secretary by the name Linda downstairs?”

Madam Yao stunned for a while and finally uttered some very soft words: “Linda whom I knew committed suicide in that office block three years ago because her boss wanted to break their secretary-boss love affairs. Linda returned to the office one Friday night and consumed a large quantity of sleeping pills. Her bolted and decaying corpse was discovered by an office worker after 5 days’ long holiday. Maggots were crawling all over the place.

Linda’s restless spirit started to haunt that office ever since. Her boss can’t stand the pestering of the ghost and sold his office. Now the office block is owned by Moonlight Travel Agency… We all thought Linda’s ghost was gone with her boss but unexpectedly it is still around…”

Feeling disbelieved, Lily managed to persuade Madam Yao to go with her to down to the 14^th floor. Indeed, the signboard in front of the office block in the corner where Lily bid Linda goodbye less than an hour ago is now Moonlight Travel Agency. Baffled and disbelieved, Lily returned to her office. According to Lily, a few days later while she was parking her newly bought car, she accidentally stepped onto the accelerator and her new car rammed into her boss’s new Mercedes Benz…

Was it the working of Linda? We probably would not know.

The Barber (理发师)

Alopecia Areata is also known as spot baldness in which localised hair lost is normally experienced on a patient’s head. The Chinese gave it a scary name ‘ghostly head shave’ (鬼剃头). Although this phenomenon can be scientifically explained, there are certainly some inexplicable cases that warrant our attention. I am sure you will not be able to solve the below case by any scientific means:

A friend’s distance relative, the late Mr. Lee had experienced one of this bizarre experienced in the 70’s. He used to have a head of thick hairs before this bizarre incident and after that he lost all the hairs on his head including the hairs on his eye brows too…

Mr. Lee was staying in Hong Kong and worked as a chef. One day he went to Macau to work as guest chef with a local restraint.

After the work, he thought of going for a haircut since he felt his hair was long enough. So before he returned to Hong Kong, he strolled in Macau town near where the jetty was. After walking for a while, he found an old fashioned barber shop still opened for business. Happily, Mr. Lee walked into the barber shop and a middle aged plum looking barber greeted him and invited Mr. Lee to be seated ready to be served.

During the haircut, the barber suggested Mr. Lee also to patronise a tailor opposite to his shop. According to the barber, Mr. Lee would look very handsome in a nice new suit. Apparently Mr. Lee dislike the plum barber’s busybody suggestion so he only replied: “mind your own business!” Thus ending further conversations.

Right after the haircut, Mr. Lee hurried to the jetty and he was on time to catch the ferry back home for dinner.

After the dinner, Mr. Lee slept early as he was exceedingly tired until early in the morning when he was startled by his wife’s shriek. He immediately got up and found a lot of hairs spread around his pillow. Apparently, Mr. Lee has become bold overnight!

Thinking something might be wrong with yesterday’s barber, Mr. Lee returned to the barber shop in Macau. To his surprised, the location where he thought where the barber shop should have located was only a row of brick wall. So said, the old tailor shop opposite where the barber shop should be still existed and in business.

Feeling confused, Mr. Lee entered into the tailor shop and enquired about the barber shop opposite. The answer of the old tailor really baffled Mr. Lee because according to the old tailor, indeed there was a barber shop opposite his tailor shop. But since the barber was found dead in his shop purportedly be caused of heart attack; the shop was sealed by the barber’s son with brick. And, no one has attempted to reopen the barber shop for many years.

Still baffled and disbelieve, Mr. Lee asked: “Was the barber pretty fat?”

The barber looked at him and replied: “That’s the man alright. And you are not the first one who got bold and came to me…”

As the story goes, Mr. Lee never successful in getting his thick hair back until he met his end.

Now I have finished the story, maybe you have a better explanation…

The Granny (老婆婆)

Actually, the West has its fair share of ghost stories too. Many ghostly encounters by local Malaysian students were told to me after they returned to homeland. I will share some of those ghostly they encountered in foreign lands just to make my ghost story collection more complete.

Jenny returned from US a year ago and she told me her personal ghost story during her last Christmas eve in US:

Jenny stayed with an American family in a double story wooden house of about 3,000 square feet in Ohio while she studied in a university nearby. In normal days, the family of four would stay upstairs while Jenny stayed in a small room downstairs. This is for the convenience of Jenny as she could enter and exit her room through the backdoor without disturbing her host.

It was the habit of Jenny’s landlord to travel to a nearby town for the Christmas and New Year celebrations leaving Jenny herself all to herself. Likewise happened during Jenny’s last Christmas eve in US. With her landlord’s family gone, she sat alone in the living room reading novels. It was around 5pm and just as Jenny was about to prepare for her dinner, she heard some squeaking noise upstairs as if someone was walking around. Jenny sworn that she couldn’t have made a mistake as you know dried wooden floor can make quite loud squeaks when someone walks on it.

So, Jenny decided to go upstairs to investigate as she was warned by her host to keep the window and doors secure at all times due to recent occurrences of house break-ins. Flight by flight Jenny ascended the staircase until she got to the master bedroom. This is a place Jenny would not normally venture into. After some rounds of searching, she found no traces of intruders. Feeling satisfied, Jenny turned around and walked towards the staircase. Just as when Jenny turned her back, she heard a weak but audible sigh: “Hai…”

Jenny immediately turned her head but saw no one around. At the same time, Jenny’s phone rang, it was her boyfriend who called to wish her merry Christmas. So, Jenny thought it would be a good idea for her to get a company in view of a series of strange events. At this point, she has not thought of anything supernatural as yet. Of course, Jenny’s boyfriend quickly agreed and he suggested to bring Jenny out for a sightseeing trip so that Jenny would have a good memory of her last Christmas eve when she returned home. He promised Jenny that he will be around in half an hour’s time.

Soon Jenny heard the noise of car engine approaching and halted in front of her house. She opened the door and ran towards the car to welcome her boyfriend. Suddenly the guy opened the car door and shouted at Jenny: “Hey, Jenny! Are you bringing your landlord’s mother as well?”

Jenny abruptly turned her head and saw an old lady stood right behind her without any facial expressions! Panicked, Jenny jumped into the car, slammed shut the door and the car sped away… Both of them only dared to return the next morning.

When Jenny’s landlord returned after the long vacation, it was time for Jenny to leave too; so her landlord volunteered to send Jenny to the Airport. And after Jenny bided farewell to her landlord for the last time, she suddenly remembered the old lady and asked: “Was there an old granny staying in that house before?”

A little astonished that Jenny brought up such a question, the man bit his lower lip and then said: “Oh, that was my mother… she died on Christmas eve a few years ago. I thought she has moved to the other side. Is she still around?”

The Hua Guo Cinema (华国戏院)

The Hua’guo Cinema is one of most haunted place in Tao’yuan (桃园), Taiwan. It burnt down in early 1990 and taken many lives. However, the locals believe that this cinema still in operation every night and for very specific audiences only. This Hua’guo Cinema has been topics for many paranormal shows in Taiwan and Hong Kong. You can search it out in the intranet. I have not been to Hua’guo Cinema but my friend, Raymond who is an American did managed to ‘watch’ a movie and lived to tell his story…

Raymond has a Taiwanese sweetheart, Mei’mei and they got to know each other when Raymond was sent to Taiwan to perform a contract work. When he returned to US, they kept in contact. A few years later, Raymond decided to visit Mei’mei again to catch up. Mei’mei stays in Tao’yuan so once Raymond touched down, he immediately went to Tao’yuan to see his long time no see sweetheart.

The couple spent daytime together as Mei’mei had a night job selling fast food in local hawker centre. That left Raymond with nothing to do but to linger on Tao’yuan street at night. He normally wandered around the town area until fairly late at night when Mei’mei knocked off from her business. He didn’t want to wait in his hotel room all by himself, after all; Raymond didn’t fly over such a long distance to sleep in the hotel room.

During one of the nights as Raymond was strolling in the street, he suddenly found himself standing in front of a cinema. When he looked up, the sign board displayed ‘Hua’guo Cinema’ and the show time was 7:30pm. Raymond thought that he would just jumped into the cinema and spent about 2 hours there. By the time the movie is over; it would just be nice for him to see Mei’mei again. As recalled by Raymond later, he could only tell the movie he was about to see was a comedy because his Mandarin was not too good; suffice to speak a few sentences and recognised a few characters.

With this thought, Raymond looked at his watch and it was only 7:00PM. So, he approached the ticket counter and purchased a ticket. Before he checked into the cinema, Raymond visited the toilet to relief himself before the starting of the movie. When Raymond just stepped into the toilet, he saw there was a long queue. Having no choice, Raymond fall into the queue and waited for his turn. At the same time his glance fell upon an odd looking old lady wiping the toilet mirror. Half of the old lady’s head was bold with half of her face as black as a charcoal.

Raymond thought the old lady shouldn’t be in men’s toilet, so he habitually turned his head to a person behind him and said: “Don’t you think this lady shouldn’t be here?”

As he talked, Raymond raised his head and looked into the face of the person he talked to and found the person’s face was almost greyish without any facial expression. At this point, Raymond still has no second thought what the person was. Soon, it was Raymond’s turn to use the toilet.

After the relief, Raymond proceeded to the entrance and passed his ticket to the conductor but the conductor just stood still with numb facial expression. He shrugged and entered into the cinema to look for his seat by himself while thinking how awkward tonight’s folks he had come across.  Soon, Raymond found his seat and he quickly sat down and turned his attention to the theatre screen.

The movie started on time. As the movie was showing, Raymond thought it was a little too quiet in the cinema as if he was the only audience. As Raymond’s mind started to wander off, he heard someone was coughing at his back. His reflexes made him turned and there he saw the strange looking old lady sat behind him and grinned at him. This surprise discovery caused Raymond to panicked and yelled: “Yaaak!” twice; and then he stood up.

Perhaps Raymond was better seated because as soon as he had stood up, he found himself standing in total darkness engulfed by the foul odour of decaying flesh. Suddenly, the cinema and audiences had vanished! At the same time, Raymond felt the atmospheric pressure around him increased until he couldn’t move and gradually he became dizzy and fainted onto the floor. He sworn that he could hear people crying and begging for help before he passed away.

The sun was already in the middle of the sky when Raymond finally regained consciousness. And through outside sunlight, he managed to crawl out from the rubbles and returned to civilization once more. Raymond looked at his watch and it was already 1pm the next day. He told Mei’mei about his strange encounter but she just thought Raymond had a cup too many on that night.

When Raymond approached me with his story, I too said to him: “I know you, bro! I have told you to be careful of the Mau’tai (茅台酒) liquor! They could knock you out cold very fast!”

Of course, it is up to you if you want to believe what Raymond said… 

Drowned Ghost Vs Ngai (水鬼斗蛊)

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.

The Deadly Vietnamese Ngai (致命的越南蛊)

Normally Ngai magic is only practised in Vietnam inland areas by very few masters; although there are people using Ngai in the US also.

I have kept some Vietnamese Ngai varieties but the black, snake, tiger and the flying head are my favourites as they have proven records to me at least. Basically the Ngai magic utilises a plant as host to attract wandering spirits to attach to it. At first, a mother spirit (母蛊) is invoked into a plant and with further empowerments, with more and more spirits attached onto the Ngai plant; the spirits devour each other leaving the strongest survivor. This process is continuous as more and more spirits entered the battlefield, hence the form of mother Ngai continues to mutate and change in time. This is the first part of mysterious Ngai magic.

The second part is the production of poisons similar to the Malaysian ‘santau’ in that a Ngai plant, normally with rhizomes are used as the main ingredients is added to a host of other ingredients such as bamboo furs, insect poisons and etc. A mixture of this Ngai poison is normally stored up ready to be used. Once this poison is consumed, then the victim may die over a prescribed time; normally 7 days to 6 months’ period.

However, mother Ngai can still function without the poison but it will take a longer time to reach the same result. The only record I have is that a Bak-hor Ngai (white tiger) can kill in one year over a distance. Another Ngai such as a Malai Ngai may operate faster though.

One year ago, my pal’s sister was threatened by a local gangster head and in fear of her safety; she asked my help to ‘terminate’ her threat. So I agreed and gave her a small Bak-hor Ngai plant asking her to plant it in her shop. That is all to it on her part. What I was supposed to do was to write the person’s name on a chicken egg and put the egg under my Bak-hor mather Ngai plant. This egg would be changed every month accompanied with chanting.

A favour I asked from my pal’s sister was that she was to keep a watchful eye on the gangster head and kept me inform in due course. A few months later, the lady called to inform that the face of the gangster head looked pretty dark. So, I asked her to keep on monitoring. Fairly recently, she gave me a call and said that the person’s tummy suddenly bloated and his limbs became meatless and dried. Then yesterday, the news of the death of the gangster head reached me. So, it took one year to terminate a person; give and take. Again, there are many factors that can cause a person to kick-the-bucket. And, black magic is just one of the many.

From the feedback I know now that Bak-hor Ngai would attack a victim’s digestive system causing malnutrition and perhaps some sort of stomach cancer. Of course, it is not my intention to kill but to protect. Since this is my first time using Vietnamese Bak-hor Ngai and I was totally clueless of what it can do and the time to take effect. I would certainly be more careful as to which sort of protective magic to use.

Now you have it, a true account of Vietnamese Ngai in action. You are not likely to come across a Ngai unless you are so bad as to have threatened the life of someone. So, for all those big bosses out there; beware for similar incident may fall upon you if you are not kind to your fellow workers.

One Night In Macau (在澳门一夜)

During last Ghost Month, Cynthia and her parents went to Macau casino for a stay with their free-and-easy Macau package.

They checked in a hotel cum casino upon arrival. After dinner, Cynthia’s parents went to the casino to try their luck. Since Cynthia was not interested in gambling, she has chosen just to walk around the place. After a while, she felt tired and retired back to her hotel room. It is her habit to take a shower before sleeping, so Cynthia proceeded to the bathroom. As she was washing her face, she found that the reflection of the mirror looked very dim although the bathroom was quite brightly lighted.

As usual, Cynthia pulled out the shower curtain to prevent the water from wetting all over the bathroom. While Cynthia was showering, she noticed a black figure moving in the background. Though a little frightened, Cynthia continued with her shower as she thought it might just be her own vivid imagination. As soon as Cynthia done showering, she pulled away the curtain and to her surprised; she found the surface of the mirror covered with a thick layer of water vapour with a word ‘HELP!’. There were two things lingered in Cynthia’s mind: since she was taking a cold shower, theoretically not much water vapour should be developed on the mirror; then who wrote the word ‘HELP!’?

Both questions were quickly forgotten as Cynthia developed a sudden headache and she could just lay flat in her bed. Suddenly, there was a series of knockings on the room door followed by the turning of the door handle as if someone was trying to force himself in. At the same time, Cynthia felt a great pressure suddenly fallen on her and she couldn’t move her body at all. Then a scene appeared in front of Cynthia…

A woman looked like a social escort came into the room panicked, then a man was at her back with a machete as if in hot pursuit. Then the woman tripped and fell onto the floor and the man slashed the woman repeatedly. The begging and yelling voices of the woman echoing in the room and in Cynthia’s ears but she could only watch with fright. After a while, the woman ceased to make noise and laid flat on the ground presumably dead. At this point, the man started to chop down the dead woman’s body into small pieces and he started to dispose the body pieces by throwing them into the toilet and continued to flush them down the drain…

As Cynthia kept watching the scene like watching a horror movie, suddenly she felt someone was pressing on her shoulders; she thought the killer had come for her. In a state of panic, she fainted. When Cynthia regained her consciousness, she found her parents stood by her side and her father spoke: “We saw you laid flat in the bed with eyes and mouth wide opened. When we approached you, you didn’t seem to notice our presence. But when I held your hands; your eyes suddenly rolled back and fainted. So, I called the room service for a doctor…”

When Cynthia was quite herself the next morning, her mother told her that a hotel housekeeping lady told her that the room they stayed in has seen a murder case where a woman was murdered. And, her body was cut to pieces. Some of her body parts were being flushed down the toilets. While the remainder of the body pieces were found under the bed. The murderer was a hotel guest who accused the woman of robbing his money.

Maybe the re-enactment of the murder scene was to show that the restless soul of the dead woman still cannot accept her tragic end.