KUALA LUMPUR: One of the 10 most haunted spots in Asia is in Malaysia, specifically Penang.
The War Museum in Bukit Batu Maung is located on a hill, which used to be a war zone during World War 2.
When the Japanese occupied the massive fort, it was used as a torture chamber and many were beheaded at the site.
A one-lane road leads to the hilltop. A high-rise condominium is being built nearby, oblivious to the dark past and its neighbour’s reputation.
Privately owned, the museum has the settings of a horror movie — a torture chamber by the Imperial Japanese Army, tunnels, a grave, artefacts from the war and even pre-war days.
The woman who manned the counter at the entrance insisted that visitors look at historical facts and stop being too obssessed with rumoured sightings of ghosts.
“This is a war museum and not a ghost museum. There might have been encounters in the past, but isn’t it better to learn about the atrocities of war rather than be obsessed with ghosts?”
But after the National Geographic channel declared the 8ha museum as one of the most haunted places in Asia, one can’t help but seek the unseen, right?
There are many tunnels there, one of which is one-way, dark and gloomy.
There is also a locked underground tunnel and no one is allowed to enter. It was said that some workers had tried to venture into it.
I spent three hours exploring the grounds, alone, as there were other visitors then, but the only “ghosts” of soldiers I saw were in life-size cutouts.
I then drove to the heart of Penang island and visited the Ghost Museum. Penang is filled with ghosts if the exhibits are anything to go by.
But they were all mannequins depicting ghosts from across the world. Perhaps the scariest hantu in the museum were the Chinese ghosts.
This was probably because of the Hungry Ghost Festival celebrated this month.
Which leads to this question: “How many of you are lucky (or unlucky) enough to have seen a ghost — a real pontianak, since Photoshop was unheard of then, standing on a tree, cackling loudly and then flying off?”
We had that blood-curdling experience when we first moved into our house in Taman Sungai Abong, Muar, Johor many years ago. With only a handful of neighbours, the housing estate was covered in darkness after dusk, no streetlights unlike now.
It was a double-storey brick and wooden house. Ours was by the main road, separated by a five-foot drain, and a bridge shared by a few houses.
It was a malam Jumaat (Thursday night). It was almost midnight when my cousin, Rahim, sent my mother home after a visit to her brother’s place in another part of Muar.
My mother went into the house and Rahim was locking his Mini Cooper across the drain. Suddenly, we heard him screaming and a shrill cry coming from outside, all at the same time.
Rahim ran into the house. He was holding a torchlight. He told us to go upstairs. Kak Tah, Kak Wai, Shidah, my mum and I rushed upstairs and we gathered in front of the window of the master bedroom.
Rahim shone the light to where the sound had come from and there it was, a figure resembling a woman, with long hair and in a white robe, rocking what looked like a cradle.
It was a good three minutes before she flew off the tree. The next day, our neighbour told us something was scratching her roof at midnight.
The pontianak returned to haunt us for a week, jumping from one house to another and stopped only when we organised a yasin recital.
Apparently, that fateful night, Rahim heard a woman’s voice and when he looked up, saw the figure in the tree.
That encounter prompted him to jump across the drain filled with water unscathed.
Nothing is scarier than that.
This writer is an ardent fan of Stephen King and loves to visit places with dark history