The End Of A Bogus Master (假大师的下场)

A cook, Mark from Sabah felt his job as cook cannot make big money, so he moved to Ipoh with his wife. After some thoughts, Mark decided to become Sifu (Master) Mark as this would enable him to make easy and quick money. In order to become a real master, or at least to pretend to be one; Mark bought many Feng Shui and Taoist ritual books to learn up the trick of the trade. Further, this Brother Mark also collaborate with his wife where Mrs. Mark would become a spirit medium or a ‘tangki’. So this husband and wife gang converted their house into a small shrine in the name to save all lost souls.

One day, a victim known as Mr. Fisher (Mr.水鱼先生) who was in very poor health came to Sifu Mark for help. This Mr. Fisher always thought that he was being cursed and possessed by evil spirits so Sifu Mark tried to wriggle his way through playing along with Fisher’s psychology. Sifu Mark first suggested Fisher’s house Feng Shui was bad and it was full of wandering ghosts. Further, Mr. Fisher’s ancestor spirits has no place to sit and that they were all standing at Fisher’s door step because his house has no altar for the ancestral spirits.

Further to strengthen Sifu Mark’s claim, he asked Mr. Fisher to come to his altar so that he can receive further guidance from his spirit medium wife. In a state of trance, Mrs. Mark said Fisher was possessed by many evil spirits and feeding on his life energy. In order to get rid of those spirits, Mr. Fisher must pay Sifu Mark MYR2,000 plus a ‘ang pow’ (red packet) for exorcism service. Even though Fisher has paid for Sifu Mark’s service, he was never healed until later he consulted a medical doctor; and was told that his sickness was in fact curable by modern medicine.

A few days later, another person; Ah Beng came to Sifu Mark claiming that he was disturbed by an evil entity. As usual, Sifu Mark asked his wife to pretend to be possessed by spirit so that he could squeeze some money from Ah Beng’s wallet. However, things didn’t happen so smoothly this time…

Ah Beng suddenly being possessed by a spirit and his voice changed to a lady’s voice. The spirit claimed it was a banana spirit (香蕉鬼) and Ah Beng has invoked it for sex and 4D numbers by smearing his own blood onto a banana tree in a plantation nearby. At this point, Sifu Mark and wife knew that this is a case if they do, they will die; if they don’t, they also die. So die-die the husband and wife tried all available methods to cast out this banana spirit. They chanted mantras but that didn’t work and the banana spirit shrieked furiously. Then the couple remembered the old method of using a pair of bamboo chopsticks to clamp down Ah Beng’s middle fingers and thank God the trick worked!

Unwillingly, the banana spirit wailed that it would return to haunt Sifu Mark and family until the last person down (家破人亡).

Three months later, Sifu Mark suddenly suffered from stroke and he couldn’t move his body totally. Hi wife looked after him for nine months before he kicked the bucket. Then six months later, their only son suddenly became insane and at time he would claim that he was the reincarnation of Guanyin, and at times; he became the banana spirit that vowed to seek revenge. However, most of the time this son only talk nonsense until finally Sifu Mark’s only son ended up in the mental asylum in Tanjung Rambutan.

Later, Mrs. Mark told people that the curse of the banana spirit did come true and now she was the only survivor. Maybe the series of mishaps were just coincidences, or it was indeed the revenge of the banana spirit? Whatever case that might be, I supposed if Sifu Mark was really a learner; then he would not suffer of such consequence. I have dealt with many banana spirits and am living to tell the stories. So, rest assure that if you are from a proper lineage; then you would be pretty safe.

Hunters Hunted (捉鬼被鬼捉)

This is an interesting story happened to me when I was working in Ipoh Light Industrial Estate.

One night after our overtime work, my buddies and I went to a local hawker stall for a cup of hot tea. While we were happily drinking the ‘teh tarik’ (pull milk tea), suddenly we saw Muthu walked past us. Muthu was our store keeper and he was known to be a boastful person. Once he touted himself as not afraid of ghosts in front of those female operators and we accidentally overheard his boastful remark then.

So, in the midst of the night that we had caught Muthu passing us; we certainly didn’t want to miss our opportunity to make fun of Muthu. At least we would like to see him pee down his pants for that night. Call us good for nothing, but that’s how good buddies are; at least to spice up out conversations when we returned to the factory. And also to make fun of Muthu in front of his lover, Cindy. After we had an exchange of eye sights and some whispers, Ali called out: “Hey Muthu, come and join us for the tea session. We have something to discuss with you!”

Muthu seemed to have nodded at a far and he walked towards us. Soon, Muthu was beside our table and we invited him to be seated.

Ali continued: “We heard you are very brave. So, are you willing to accept our challenge to go inside the house of a deceased bomoh (shaman) just off Kuala Kangsar Road and spend one hour there?”

Muthu looked at Ali, without any facial expressions but he appeared to have nodded his head as agreed to take up our challenge.

Having accepted our challenge, we led Muthu to the said almost ruined wooden house and saw him entered into the house alone while the whole gang waited outside at a distance.

Soon an hour passed and there was not a single sound came out from the house. I got a little agitated and afraid of Muthu’s wellbeing. No one wanted to see a friend got into trouble for sure, so I yelled at the house: “Muthu! A…r...e y…o…u o...k?”

There was no answer from the house. We looked amongst each other and before I took a second yell, suddenly a horrific voice came out from the house “Yeeak!!”

We thought Muthu was perhaps in trouble or something like that and all of us rushed towards the house. As we approached the front of the house and Ali kicked opened the wooden door, to our horror; Muthu was not in the house! He seemed to have vanished into thin air!

We then searched inside and out of the house, Muthu was still nowhere to be found. And suddenly, Saiful who was outside of the house pointed his finger towards the roof and shouted: “Muthu! What the hell are you up there on the roof?”

Hearing Saiful’s words, we rushed out and saw the figure of Muthu on the roof but before anyone could utter a second word; he jumped down from the roof into a bush just beside the house. We were all terrified and went for a frantic man hunt in and out of the bush but found no one there.

Feeling almost despair, I picked up my handy and called Muthu in the hope that it was Muthu that was playing planks on us. After the phone rang for a while and someone answered the phone. “Hello, Liew! What’s up? It is midnight now! Didn’t I tell you that your item is in storage compartment A?”

I couldn’t believe what I heard. So, I asked again: “Where are you?”

Muthu said: “In my house sleeping with my wife of course!”

After Muthu said the words, he hung up the phone.

We looked at each other and stayed there dumbfounded for quite a while, and finally Ali gave us all an eye sight hinting: “Let’s get the hell out from there!”

None of us talked about the incident and certainly not in front of Muthu for no one would believe that it was in fact the hunters being hunted by the ghost!

Bruising Marks (瘀青)

It may seem to be a stupid question to ask what can cause bruises to our body.

Naturally if our body knocked onto something heavy and rough, bruising mark shall surface on our body as some dark green or purple spots. It may be out of the blues for some of you who are more scientifically minded to say that spiritual attacks too will produce bruising marks. The difference between an actual bruising and a spiritual bruising is that physical bruising will remain on our body; the spiritual bruising marks will disappear within a few days or almost overnight after a spiritual cleansing ritual.

Having hag-rides and being assaulted by house ghosts are nothing new as I myself have come across many of similar cases. Below is a true case happened to Jessica Leong who happened to have stayed in a haunted house somewhere in Pennsylvania in the turn of this century. In Jessica’s own words:

I sought refuge under the True Buddha Tradition and I can see ghosts. At times, I could see those ghosts wandering in my house pretty clearly. I normally see them standing by my bed at night staring at me. Sometimes they would just jump into the bed and sleep with me.

Being hag-ridden at night during my sleeps were nothing new. My personal experience is that my whole body was transfixed in my bed in such a way that I couldn’t move my body or shout but I knew what was going on around me.

One night, when I was about to fall into slumber, I saw two ghosts jumping on my bed. One male and the other female ghost. After jumping for a while, the male ghost suddenly jumped onto my chest and pressing on me until I was nearly suffocated. Just before I became breathless, the ghosts seemed to be satisfied and left me alone. By then it was already dawn.

I woke up early in the morning to find many black and purple bruising marks all over my body. The marks looked like something have kissed all over my body and strangely speaking, I was wearing pyjamas all night long. It looked like ghosts can penetrate my clothing to do the assault. The special character of these bruising mark is that the centre of the bruising spot would appear deep green or purple and the colour gradually became paler as the spot expended around the centre. These bruising would disappear over a few days’ period without being treated.

Some parts of my body especially my buttock, waist and chest areas are favourite spots of the male ghosts. Every time after those ghostly attacks, large bruising marks could be found on those areas until so much so that those areas of my body became numb and hardened. I couldn’t feel a thing even being hit by my own fists… I am pretty sure those male ghosts that attacked me are quite lustful ones.

I tried many methods to exorcise the ghosts but they seemed to return after a while. I performed the boundary protection ritual at night and that had prevented the ghosts from harassing me but when I turned my body and moved outside of the protected boundary, the ghosts would continue to suck on my exposed body parts. Then I sought help from the lineage guru but all of those methods were quite useless…”

After hearing Jessica’s story, I said to her: “Sister, you got all the tantric ritual wrong… Most of all, you had followed the wrong tradition to begin with otherwise you would not experience those ghostly attacks. From the hear of it, looks like you really enjoyed the process too… Ha! Ha! Ha!”

It Is Only Business Transaction (商业交易)

Perhaps now you don’t really think too much about Thai amulets or statues after reading MagicSEA. To me also to many others who had spent a fortune on these magical items, would not take a second look at those ‘holy’ items turned ‘commercial’ products. However, if you are still not convinced; let me share one of those stories from Edward:

A Malaysian couple, the husband is a Malaysian Chinese while his wife is a Thai.

During one of the trips accompanying his wife back to Thailand, they went to Bangkok and visited many Buddhist temples there while ‘invited’ many Thai amulets. After that the couple proceed to the Northeast part of Thailand and visited the famous Butterfly King Temple.

Happily, they arrived the Butterfly King Temple and as they entered into the temple, the abbot of the temple whom is known as the ‘Butterfly King’ came out and persuaded the couple to buy claimed to be very powerful temple made amulets. But the couple felt that since they already had a handful of amulets in their collections from last Bangkok trip, they declined the Butterfly King’s offerings.

Seeing not able to strike a (business) deal on his amulets, the said Butterfly King immediately shut his mouth, turned his back and walked away.

The naïve couple still oblivious of the Butterfly King’s dissatisfaction and went on visiting the temple and taking photos. After walking the temple for a while, as a customary practice; the couple decided to seek the blessing of the abbot by chanting and sprinkling of holy water.

At this point, the Butterfly King turned his black face towards the couple and very reluctantly, he simply chanted in a very rude manner. Such a haphazard action from the abbot has certainly angered the couple. And after the couple returned to Malaysia, they told their bad experience of dealing with this money minded monk and until today; they still couldn’t understand the behaviour of this monk.

This is how I heard the story. And, let me reiterate that Thai amulets or any amulets in this manner has no real power, the real power is with the money. If you have got the money, you have got the power; at least you can buy the smiling face of the Butterfly King in this case… Perhaps I should just say that it is best just to frame up your money and pray to it every day. If that doesn’t work, at least you can still take it down and buy something for yourself!

Black Hound Blood (黑狗血)

Animal bloods are used extensively in folk magic of the world for various purposes: from increasing a sorcerer’s power to exorcism; and from cursing to breaking black magic.

In Taoist Yin Magic (阴法), the blood of snake, chicken and eel are mixed with rice wine to increase a sorcerer’s soul power. In Java, black cat’s blood is used to defeat a person’s protective magic but in Taoism; the blood of a black cat can be used to cause a temple to be void of gods and goddesses. Just a little quantity of black cat blood will prevent any Taoist gods and goddesses from descending down to that particular temple.

Black hound blood is normally used to exorcise a spirit or to coax a spirit out from its grave. In old times when gamblers have exhausted their idea to get the lucky numbers, they would resort to pierce a piece of long green bamboo into the grave of a dead pregnant woman and then pour black hound blood into the grave to force the woman’s ghost to come out to meet them.

However, according to Edward, there is a temple worshipping ‘river god’ once famous of predicting 4D (lucky numbers) around his place. Many people went to the temple to get lottery number predictions and many of those lucky folks stroke a fortune. As I heard, some of the lucky ones even got a windfall of MYR100,000.

As the saying goes: “a person’s meat is another person’s poison”. While gamblers were celebrating on their windfalls, those underground illegal 4D operators were furious about the river god that seemed to be a little generous in giving out those windfalls incidentally speaking had to fork out from those illegal operators’ own pocket. No illegal 4D bosses were too happy of seeing this ‘river god’ became famous in their expenses, so one night; the illegal operators brought some black hound blood and pour in front of the temple.

Unfortunate for the luck number seekers but fortunate for the 4D operators so to speak, since the pouring of black hound blood, all of those lucky numbers predicted by the medium of this ‘river god’ failed to hit any of the targets. Hence, lesser and lesser people went to the temple of the river god to pay their respect.

So, when asked if black hound blood had prevented this river god from possessing the spirit medium? I would think that such blood is only effective in chasing away spirits of lower realms but not to those higher or more powerful spirits. For example, black hound blood cannot chase away tantric gods for sure as they are offered with blood during summoning rituals. Perhaps this ‘river god’ is just a ghost of some sort, and the scent of blood has in fact drawn some demonic entities into the temple. It is actually these demons that had sacred away this so-called ‘river god’. If this is true, then whoever visited the river god temple will experience with bad luck due to the demonic aura in the said temple.

I have seen goats being beheaded and the oozing blood was splashed onto the idol of Kali as offering to this fearsome goddess many years ago in a private Kali temple in Selangor. In this case, the blood is only used as offerings and not as ingredients of any magic formula. In the western magic, pigeon blood is used to attract spirits of some sort. Of course, the most potent blood is the human blood in all magic traditions of the world. So said, human blood sacrifices are against most of our laws nowadays.

On Mantras Matters (佛咒的问题)

There are many controversies about reciting and playing audio recording Buddhist mantras in one’s home. Proponents would say that by reciting those mantras, all sentient beings shall be benefited especially those wandering spirits. But protesters argued that those type of mantras only attract ghosts and unless a real Buddhist scholar, one should not recite or play too many of those mantras over a length of time. While we cannot be sure if those ghosts can be saved from all sufferings, but how sure are we that those Buddhist mantras attract ghosts?

Mr. Edward has brought us his side of the story about his distance relative, Mike as told by his uncle:

Mike is a devoted Mahayana Buddhist. He would go to the temple and become vegetarian during the 1^st and 15^th day of Lunar Calendar. This fellow will listen to dharma talks and he was asked to chant three kinds of mantras to alleviate sufferings of all sentient beings: The Great Compassion Mantra (大悲咒), Amitabah Long Mantra (往生咒) and the Kṣitigarbha Mantra (地藏王咒). He also setup a Buddhist altar with the idol of Buddha, Avalokitesvara (Guanyin) and Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva (地藏王菩萨). Mike will chant the above three mantras before he goes to work in the morning and once at night before he goes to bed. At times, Mike also plays the mantras through audio recorder when he is a little too busy to chant.

One day, a friend visited Mike with his 7-year-old son, Boy. When Boy went into Mike’s house, he started to feel uncomfortable and subsequently cried aloud with fright. The friend had to bring Boy out of the house. When the father and son were outside of the house, the father consoled Boy while asking him what was the reason he cried out loud in Uncle Mike’s house. Reluctantly, the kid started to say that he saw many horrible looking ghosts wandering inside the uncle’s house. Some of these ghosts tried to show their ghost faces to the kid which caused him to panic and yelled out from the bottom of his lungs.

So, the question now is weather chanting and playing Buddhist mantras attract spirts into a house?

The answer is almost definitely ‘yes’. Most of these mantras are recited during Buddhist deliverance rituals and by professionals only. In the event of chanting those mantras without any actual ritual to feed those ghosts and then to send them off, then more and more ghosts will congregate in the house and eventually create trouble to people who stay in that particular house.

Thus, it is my opinion that it is no benefit to chant and play any of the mantras at home unless the chanter knows what to do with the ghosts, or whatever answered those summonses of the mantras. By not knowing how to treat ghosts, it is same as asking someone to come into your house and tell him to wait for nothing. Even a person with patience will get annoyed too so to speak.

The Eternal Drunkard (永远的酒鬼)

My friend, Eric bought over an old shop in Penang downtown for his new gourmet coffee shop. I purposely visited him for a cup of coffee before he closed his business at 11pm at night so that we can chat further. I knew that Eric’s shop would not have too many customers after midnight and he used to knock off at around 2am.

So, I was in Eric’s gourmet coffee shop one night sitting in a quiet corner sipping my cappuccino while waiting for Eric to come for a chat.  There weren’t too many customers around and some of his waiters and waitresses were wiping off spoons and cups at another table. Suddenly I noticed Eric brought a bottle of bear and walked from his casher’s counter towards the back quite secretively.

As Eric passed by my table, I asked Eric: “Hey man, are you boozing in private back there?”

Eric gave me a queer glance and tilted his head hinting me to follow. I was curious, so I followed him to the back of his shop and then went into a small room beside the store room. It was quite a small room almost empty but with a small table in the centre and a chair.

I saw Eric put the bear bottle in his hand on the centre of the table and poured some in a mug which was already there. Then he lit a piece of cigarette and put the cigarette near the corner of the table. After that, Eric held his hands in prayer’s gesture and murmured: “Big sister Chow, please enjoy your bear and cigarette. Help me to boost my business and you shall get more!”

Later, Eric hinted me to go out and shut the room door. We returned to my previous table and Eric instructed his workers to close the shop for the day since there were no more customers around. After seeing the last of his workers left, Eric then pulled a chair and sat beside my table and he told me the story of big sister Chow:

“Liew, you know that my shop was formerly a bar. After I took over the place and converted it to a coffee shop, my workers complaint to have seen the figure of a woman squatting at the back of the shop now taken up by the small room we went in just now. At first, I didn’t believe in what they said until one night I saw the figure myself. She always leaned her body against the wall and with her head stooped. No one has really seen her face as her long hair would normally drop covering her face.

Later, I contacted the former bar owner and he said the ghostly figure is probably a lady drunkard who died in his bar one night after excessive alcohol and drug intoxications. The lady was known only as Sister Chow who was once the daughter of a millionaire in town who was casted out by her father because she was adamant to marry her lover. Sadly speaking, Sister Chow’s lover too abandoned her for another lady a few years later leaving Sister Chow alone.

With nowhere to go, Sister Chow would spend nights boozing in bars until daybreaks and spend the days sleeping. Since she was the bar’s frequent customer, the bar owner was kind enough to spend her night drinking at the back of his bar and spent a night there. Unfortunately speaking, Sister Chow was found lifeless by a bar cleaner one morning. Since then, her restless soul was being sighted many times until he sold his business.

Hearing Sister Chow’s story, Eric originally wanted to exorcise the ghost of Sister Chow but a spirit medium said this Big Sister Chow can bring him money. So, he decided to build a small room for Sister Chow to stay and also to prevent Sister Chow from suddenly appearing in front of his customers.”

I am not sure if this Sister Chow has helped Eric in his business. But Eric bought the shop before Penang became the world heritage with MYR300k and now his property price soared to a hefty amount of MYR1.2 million!