Apa Raya?

It seems that there is a black-out in our blogs these days, so much so people are sharing ghost stories. Not exactly the picture I want to have in my night runs :D. But thanks Tsar... you had it going on :D

There have been may short stories in my life, but until an incident in college, I was not a believer of the spirit world. Crossing an open-to-sky wet kitchen en-route to the toilet at 2 a.m. did not fluster me then, but not now. 

Growing up, I heard many shares of stories, mainly from my grandmother. Once, when I was 7 (I think), she pointed a shadow of gigantic set of wings flapping (like of an angel etc) outside my aunt's house, I just laughed at her.

In boarding school, my first encounter was waving and talking to my best friend in the toilet as I was heading out, only to find him laying on his bed above me. We had many series of hysteria etc, I saw my friends - the so-called otais who gave chase to this 'figures' in black and in white, and be possessed themselves... friends playing the alphabet-ghost-calling (Spirit) game, only to find out we were locked in our study room with loud slams on our glass shutters... and a group of friends practising their silat at midnight, not asking for permission, fought with the 'spirit' and lost the battle. From our room, we only heard this guy fighting, opening his 'bunga silat' etc, and fought no one.

One of the guy was bedridden for a week.

We once entered the girls dormitories (real privilege being a Committee :D), walking in single file, only to have extra follower on our back, and we scampered upon finding out. 

Ah, sweet memories... 

When I got to college, it took a horrible turn that particular 2 weeks. It was a Chinese New Year break, and our polite friends from the hostel squatted our house. We played Metallica, SubCulture, Nirvana etc sampai pagi... Rock lah katakan. Synonymous to our major, we were like vampires, sleeping during the day under the full-blast ceiling fans, and rise up for dinner and rocked the night.

A week of that, the friends went back, and we were left in a wooden single storey house, next to a swamp, palm oil plantation, behind a laundry and apparently quite near to some angry neighbour.

The very next day, the guys at the back room started to experience 'tindih' - a term of being  squashed by extra-heavy something. One by one got that on the same night like a serial rapist on the go. 

The next night, we would hear spoons and forks being arranged in the kitchen, opening and closing of the windows. Kalau do the dishes tu bagus lah jugak...

The third night, water taps opens and closes in the shower. Water flushing in the toilet. We no longer go to the toilet past 8p.m. alone. The guys at the back room experienced 'tindih' everytime they went to sleep, and has since pushed the 2 single bedframes in our middle room. The 6 of us would sleep very closely at night (and I remembered Joe being super heavy and his hands travels too to the warm places hahahah... we should be scared of him!).

The fourth night, we heard scratches on the walls outside our walls. 

The fifth day, I had my first 'tindih' when napping just before maghrib. I woke to a sight of dark shadow above my right body, fuzzy on edges.

That very same night, after maghrib when we were sitting outside swapping the current scary stories, we heard our silat housemate opening his silat in the front room, as in a fight. He was 'hiap-hiap' and there were sounds of him jumping off the bed etc etc, for we knew, alone in the room. Half an hour later, he came out all sweaty and breathing laboured.

In short, he said, he was fighting with a 'spirit'. With no further explanation, he called another silat housemate into the room, and instructed us to switch off all lights and not saying a word, no matter what. In that situation, and some alone 6 18-year-olds with no parents or teachers, we were damn terrified!

Half-heartedly we obliged, although risking whatever things to be next to us in total darkness was not my ideal way to spend the night. Within seconds we heard laboured breaths for a couple of minutes, and all a sudden, there was an old guy with an Indonesian accent talking to my other silat friend. That old man was, apparently angry, and catching his breath after a fight. He was talking loudly about the Hantu Raya he was fighting. 

When asked, he said one old lady neighbour has sent the Hantu Raya in a paint pail outside our house, next to the swamp. Apparently, our Hollier Than Thou bad karaoke did send her sleep in tatters the whole week, and she sent one of her pets to play with us.

We did not see the actual ghost (thank God!), but when my friends came back from throwing the pail somewhere in the border of N9 and Melaka (right at midnight), he said the journey out was unbearably heavy, but surprisingly light on the way back. He busted many steel spokes on his tyres due to weight, as we saw it.

We have been very civil lads thereon, for we know of a single old lady living some 200 metres directly from our house.

There were many more from Uni days, with some bizarre reports. But being nocturnal that we were, there was a classic saying that the ghosts are more afraid of us hahaha... it was also common understanding that because we stay up all nights catching up with our crits and presentations etc, our mental wave went below the sane wavelength, dipped under at the same level with the paranormal, and then our paths crossed.

We also dedicated one Multimedia night to the many ghost stories in our campus. One friend did a Momok video, with a scene of Momok crawling out of a supposed grave, with the undaunting long hair, and apparently hitching a ride from the palm oil plantation (they shot that video at 3 a.m. from within the plantation, and the location we all know by heart... cheisss!) on the bonnet behind cars. One scene showed the ghost riding pillion (facing backwards of course) on the many bikes. Yeah, I did not use that route for many months... I kept looking behind and put one hand behind my butt to ensure nothing was there. Suffice to say, many had Al-Quran verses on when driving at night past that particular stretch :D.

Oh apparently, the ghost was hitching a ride to get to the 7-11 downtown, where it tries to buy a Jalur Gemilang for the Independence Day celebration...

Hamjadah betul lah... takleh terbang ke?

Happy Merdeka Day, everyone!