Spooky Fever

The Chinese has a belief that during the seventh lunar month, the gates of hell are thrown open, and spirits of the dead are released to roam the earth. To seek protection and ensure one's safety when travelling outside during this month, food, prayers and hell money are offered to these hungry ghosts or "good brothers" to appease them.

Personally, I've not come across anything supernatural before (neither do I want), but as far as I know, there could be two possible ways a person would experience spooky incidents. One, the person has a "third eye". Two, when he/she is down on luck.

I have a friend who told me he could see "things", but will only experience it when his luck is bad. Once at night he was at an ATM withdrawing money when suddenly he saw a pair of hands reaching out from behind, almost seem like trying to grab the money. But when he turned around, there was no one behind.

At my previous job at Robinsons store, I also got to know a guy there who has a "third eye". He stays in Ang Mo Kio and told me about some haunted places in the area. "There's this park facing the MRT station which is very eerie at night," he said. "If you sit at one of the benches there and wait for a while, you'll start to experience a humming sound in your ear like someone whispering to you."

He also told me about Bishan Park in which one time he was there with a group of friends and suddenly blurted out, "Wah... So many..." Immediately he asked his friends to go somewhere else.

It kind of explains why for we know Bishan used to be a cemetery before it was cleared for housing development in the late 70s. With regards to Bishan's spooky past, here's another story I heard of.

Near Raffles Junior College, there is this slip road from Marymount Road turning into Braddell Road. One of my dad's friends say, many drivers who drive through this road late in the night reportedly seeing a white figure standing by the road side. My dad's friend has personally saw it for himself. Under such circumstances, it is said motorists should continue driving and not turn back to look for they might face serious consequences. (For your info, the road is also very near Peck San Theng Columbarium, to where remains from the old Bishan cemetery are exhumed and placed.)

Regardless if you are any of those superstitious kind, I truly believed, if you don't do anything bad, there's no need to be afraid of encountering anything ghostly. Just like the Chinese saying goes,

" 平日不做愧心事，夜半敲门也不惊"

(Translate: if you don't do bad things in the day, there's no need to be afraid of any unexpected door knocks in the middle of the night).