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Of Ghosts, Spirits and Possessions

Sample Stories from

The Book

“School StoriesTravel Tales

Hotel Happenings”

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‘Was It A Haunted Toilet?’

We hear of so many stories of haunted places, haunted mansions, haunted hotels, haunted rooms, haunted roads and even haunted toilets! Are there logical explanations for ‘hauntings’ or are there really spirits and ghosts that haunt certain places? Honestly, I don’t really know for certain. Let me tell you of a most strange happening that took place in a hotel. It was in the early 1980s when some of my family members and I decided to go for a short holiday in Penang with a 2-night stay in one of the hotels along the famous Tanjung Bungah beaches. There were altogether six of us, including my parents. We started our journey in the morning after breakfast. We made a short stop-over in Ipoh to pay a visit to one of our relatives. When we arrived at Penang we took our lunch at one of the well-known coffee shops along Penang Road. We really enjoyed the various types of hawkers’ food.After the lunch we did some shopping, mostly for eatables.It was about 3 something in the afternoon when we drove to the Tanjung Bungah area to seek out the hotel we had earlier booked for a 2-night stay. When we arrived we registered at the reception counter and were given our room keys to 2 adjoining rooms on the ground floor of one the blocks of the hotel. We tugged our luggage along to our rooms. When we went into one of our rooms, we suddenly heard a rather loud sound of a glass tumbler shattering. My brothers were a little shocked. We realized that the loud cracking sound had come from the attached toilet in the room, a little distance away

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from the beds, a double and a single bed. We went to investigate the cause of the glass tumbler shattering. When we opened the toilet door and looked inside, we saw the broken pieces of the glass tumbler, some around the basin area and some on the floor.“How did the glass break by itself?” one of my brothers asked nervously.“Probably a cat went in and toppled the glass over,” I said.“Don’t be ridiculous!” my brother said. “You can see that there is no cat around and the toilet door was locked. And the inside of the toilet has no opening for any animal to get in.”“Could it be a case of resonance causing the shattering of the glass?” I ventured to give an explanation.“It cannot be resonance,” another brother said. “The conditions for resonance are simply not there.”“We’d better call the housekeeper over to ask for the reason,” I said. It so happened that there was a housekeeper making her rounds nearby our block. It was a Chinese lady in her fifties. Using the Penang Hokkien dialect, we called loudly to the housekeeper to come to our room. She came and entered the room. We explained to her what had happened. She went into the toilet to check out for herself and when we asked her what had caused the glass to break, she looked puzzled and said in Penang Hokkien dialect, “It’s really strange. As far as I can remember in my years of work here, it is not this room that is ‘dirty’ ( In Hokkien, the use of the word ‘dirty’ in a context like this means ‘haunted’ ). It should be the room at the other block,” she said pointing out a hotel building block opposite ours. “Anyway, I will clean up the toilet for all of you.” She went to bring a broom and scoop and cleared the mess in the toilet. When she had left, all of us were getting a bit uneasy and jittery.

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“I think we should ask for a change of our two rooms,” my sister-in-law suggested. My two brothers immediately agreed. So we went to the reception counter to request for a change of rooms. Unfortunately, this was not possible as all the rooms were fully booked. So there was no choice but to stay at least for one night.We settled into the rooms. My parents, my youngest brother and I had to occupy the room where the strange happening occurred. My other brother and his wife occupied the adjoining room There was a connecting door between these two rooms. After we had taken our baths, we drove to Gurney Drive to have our dinner at the many hawkers’ stalls all along the Drive. After dinner, we strolled along Gurney Drive enjoying the cool breeze and watching people taking it easy.We went back to our hotel at about 10.30 pm. The thoughts of the strange incident in the toilet still filled my mind. I think my brothers and sister-in-law also had such thoughts. We retired to bed after cleaning up. As it had been quite a tiring day, all of us soon fell asleep. My parents occupied the double bed; I took the single bed while my youngest brother slept on a thin mattress placed on the floor.I had some short weird dreams which I cannot recall now. It was around 1.00 am that I got up as I had that strong urge to urinate. My parents and brother were fast asleep and the room was filled with the snoring sounds of my father and brother. I lay on my bed, awake with thoughts of the incident that happened in the toilet. Thoughts like “What caused the glass to shatter?” “What was the housekeeper trying to tell us?” “Is this room haunted?” “Is the attached toilet haunted?” raced through my mind uncontrollably. To be honest, fear went through me. I was reluctant to get up and visit the toilet but the urge to answer Nature’s call was

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becoming unbearable. I started to pray and do whatever chanting I knew but the feelings of fear were still inside me. I started to reason to myself, “Come on, you are letting irrational fear overwhelm you. Who or what can harm you?”I found that I just had to go to the loo; my bladder was bursting. I got up from the bed. As the room was dimly lit, I could see the sleeping faces of my parents and brother. “Their faces look weird. Do all faces of sleeping people look this ‘scary’?” My mind was playing tricks on me. I walked in a tip-toe manner towards the toilet situated at the other end of the room, near the entrance door. I stopped at the closed door of the toilet. There were still feelings of uneasiness and fear in me despite my silent chanting. I switched on the lights switch on the outside wall of the toilet and started to turn the door knob of the toilet. When the door was open, I looked into the inside of the toilet and my eyes sought out the area where the glass tumbler shattered. Well, everything looked normal and I did not see any spirit or ghost! I emptied my bladder. What a relief! Then I made my way back to my bed and continued my sleep. I had a sound sleep.The next morning I told my family members what happened. I did not have any encounter of the supernatural kind. However we decided to check out that day. We passed the second night in another hotel. It was incident-free.

Reflections

* Strange happenings might have causes other than spiritual or supernatural reasons.* Fear arises in the mind when we imagine or speculate on things which we believe can harm us.* Conditioning during the early years of our lives can cause us to react with fear when unexpected things happen.

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I first came to know the schoolgirl Koh Fang Yee (not her actual name) when she was in Form 2 in the mid 1990s. She had her primary education in one of the vernacular schools and later on continued her secondary education at a quite established secondary school in town. She enrolled in our community motivational and self-development class which was held every Saturday night from 8 pm till 10 pm. I remember Fang Yee as a small-sized, thin and rather shy girl. She would come regularly for classes and she would sit quietly somewhere in the middle of the classroom paying good attention to all the lessons. It was sometime in July that year when she stopped coming to attend classes. After a few weeks of absence, I telephoned her mother to find out what had happened. Her mother told me that Fang Yee had not been well for more than a month already. She said that she would like to see me at our Buddhist Association.On an appointed day, Fang Yee’s parents came to see me in the afternoon. Her mother told me about a most bizarre thing that was happening to her daughter. She spoke in Mandarin and a local dialect. This was her account:‘One evening as usual I went to fetch Fang Yee back from her afternoon school session. She was waiting for me sitting on the ground of a small field located not far from her school. She was clutching very tightly to her school bag, a sort of small backpack red in color. When she got into the car, I noticed that she was not her usual self. She was quiet and would not speak any word at all. To all my questions she

A MostBizarre Thing

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remained silent. She was sitting beside me in the front seat of the car. On the way home, I noticed that she would sway her head from left to right periodically and stick out her tongue.Upon reaching home, her father and I again started to ask her what had happened to her. Did she fall down? Was she sick? Did anyone beat her? Did she see something that shocked her? To all the questions she just kept silent. We knew something was not right. The following day, we took her to see a doctor but the doctor said there was nothing wrong with her medically. He just prescribed some vitamins and mineral supplements.Over the days Fang Yee’s condition deteriorated. She seemed to grow weaker and would remain still for hours with that very strange long lost look in her face. In this state, she had to stop schooling. From time to time, she would undergo a transformation that scared the wits out of us. Her behavior and movements resembled those of a snake. She would go on to the ground and start to wriggle and crawl just like a snake. Her facial features were distorted and her tongue would dart out and in and she would make hissing sounds. She would then glide or wriggle into her room, grabbed her schoolbag and then try to get out of the house. We had to catch hold of her and bring her back into the house before locking all doors. Such ‘attacks’ or episodes would last some minutes before Fang Yee calmed down and remained still. We really could not understand the bizarre thing that was happening to our daughter. We brought her to consult a few psychologists and psychiatrists but all the counseling and psychotic drugs given did not seem to work. Her condition persisted. Days went by; it was really hell for the whole family. Out of desperation we even brought her to get help from some bomohs and mediums in a few temples. Some

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mediums told us that Fang Yee was possessed by a snake spirit. According to one temple medium, the unfortunate incident happened on that day in the evening when Fang Yee was waiting for me after school. Around the field she was sitting in was a snake lair and as the ‘spiritual level’ of my daughter was very low, the spirit of a snake had ‘entered’ Fang Yee. We did not know whether to believe the medium or not. We just followed what the medium asked us to do …some prayers to the ‘snake spirit’, burning of some paper paraphernalia and some talismans and amulets for wearing and placing in the bedroom of the victim of possession. Despite doing all these things, there wasn’t any significant change in Fang Yee till now.’After I had heard all that Fang Yee’s mother had to say, I could only tell her that my friends and I will pray and chant for her daughter’s speedy recovery. They thanked us and left.A few days later, an Australian monk, Reverend Abhinyana visited our Buddhist Association to give some talks. The Reverand, a monk in his early fifties was quite well-known. He had traveled the world over in his spiritual quest and practices, had written many books and had lots of experiences on spiritual matters. He was a most compassionate monk always ready to counsel and help. ( He passed away in April 2008. May he rest in peace. )When Fang Yee’s mother heard that Reverend was staying at our Association, she came to ask me to help her request for the Reverend to visit her home to pray and do blessings for her sick daughter. Reverend Abhinyana was only too willing and he asked me to go along with him to visit the home the following day. When we arrived at the home of Fang Yee, her parents paid their respects to the Reverend and we then sat on the sofa seats in the hall. Fang Yee’s parents brought her out from her

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room and she sat on the floor near Reverend Abhinyana. The Reverend started to talk kindly to Fang Yee but she remained silent with her eyes cast down on the floor. She looked really weak and sick. Her facial features were quite unearthly, so different from he time when she was a healthy schoolgirl.The Reverend started his prayers and chanting for the poor girl who just sat there virtually motionless. I joined in the prayers and chanting in he best way I could. Fang Yee’s parents just sat nearby and watched in silence.Half-way through the chanting a most bizarre thing happened to Fang Yee. She started to sway her head from left to right and lay plat on the floor in a lengthwise way. She then started to wriggle like a snake and hissing sounds were coming out from her throat. Fang Yee’s parents panicked and her mother said loudly, “It’s here, it’s here again.” She asked her husband to quickly bring out Fang Yee’s schoolbag from the room. ( I learnt later that this was what they would do every time there was an ‘attack’. Sometimes Fang Yee would calm down upon clutching her school bag. )By then Fang Yee, behaving like a snake had started to crawl and heading towards the main door to get out of the house. The parents followed behind very nervously and at the porch area of the house, the parents caught hold of Fang Yee and forced her into their car parked outside. The father passed the school bag to Fang Yee and drove the car away.Meanwhile Reverend Abhinyana still continued on with the chanting. I was still a bit shocked a what I had just seen but I tried to chant along with the Reverend. We then got up from our seats and I followed behind Reverend Abhinyana as he walked all over the house chanting and sprinkling some water from a bowl using a stalk of flowers. We soon finished the chanting ceremony and went back to sit in the hall in silent prayer. It was about 25 minutes or so later when

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Fang Yee and her parents returned in their car. By then Fang Yee had calmed down as if she had been sedated. We learnt from the mother that they had brought Fang Yee to the nearest temple to prostrate before the temple deities. Before long, Fang Yee returned to her quiet and helpless state. She just followed what her parents asked her to do. Most of the time, her eyes remained closed.After the family members had offered lunch to the Reverend and me, we got ready to leave. The Reverend gave some kind parting words of advice as to what they should do in the event of ‘attacks’ arising again.At the Association, I asked, “Reverend, what actually is happening? It’s really bizarre and shocking.”The Reverend replied, “To be honest, I don’t really know. It is very mysterious indeed. Let us pray and hope that the strange behavior will go off soon. Nothing is permanent.”A couple of days later after Reverend Abhinyana had delivered all his talks, he said goodbye to all of us and continued on his travel to another part of the world.Very mysteriously, not long later, I got to know that the bizarre thing left Fang Yee so suddenly just as it had come upon her so unexpectedly. She made a full recovery and and went back to her schooling. What had cured her and how? Well, the honest thing is to say, “I don’t know.” She continued her education right up to university. At the sixth form level she followed my community guidance class.Today, Fang Yee is a successful professional. We have not met for years.

Reflection* At times we can meet with strange experiences and we can only do our best to cope with them and stay positive.* Nothing is permanent. Everything will come to pass.