In the Toa Payoh flat where I lived, several times I encountered this spirit which at first scared me by its presence. Later, though, I came to understand it and was not so afraid.
My first encounter with it was when I was studying for my first-year Pre-U exams. We were living in a three-room flat, with a divider separating the hall into a living room and dining room area. My younger sister, whose O-levels were coming up, and I usually study in the dining room. One night my sister and I were mugging late into the night, until about 1 am. My block has a small road in front and a car park at the back, so there were some noises of cars returning late and so on, but otherwise it was an unusually quite night.
The two of us got quite a bit of work done, but by the end of our study session the table was quite a mess. Usually my sister is the fusspot between the two of us, and she would always clean up any mess around her. But that night we were so tired from studying that we left everything as it was and retired to the bedroom we shared.
In the morning, at about 5 am, I awoke, hearing some noises in the hall. Not thinking anything much of it, I went back to sleep. I was the first one awake in the family later, at about 6 am. At first I didn’t notice it, then my sister congratulated me, saying, “Good, M, at least for once in your life, you did the clearing up instead of always waiting for me to do it!”
I didn’t know what she was talking about. When I asked her, she pointed to the next stack of books on the dining room table. I thought of claiming the credit for it at first, but as she had not cleared the table, I was curious. Who then had done it? Later, when my mum and dad were up, I asked them if they had done it. They said no, and it was obvious they meant it, because they were very casual about it too, not overly dramatic or anything.
Later, I realised that was just the beginning, because that was when the experiences started.
There was one night I was coming back home with my sister and my parents when I looked up at our flat and I saw a dark, tall shadow watching us through the window grille, with its hands above its head holding on to the grille. I turned to my sister and said our elder brother must be home, because there he was watching us come back. My sister looked up and said, “I don’t see anything.”
I looked up too and the figure was still there, and I said so. My mother, who had heard me, said, “Don’t be silly. G wouldn’t be standing in the kitchen without the lights on.”
I was so sure it was my brother. So, I told them, “You want to bet?”
When we reached home, however, there really was no one there. My sister and I checked everywhere, just in case my brother might be trying to play a trick on us. But he didn’t come back till late. When I demanded to know where he had been, he said he had gone out with some friends. I checked on this another day by calling up his friends. He was telling the truth.
Confirmation that I wasn’t just imagining things came unexpectedly.
I was alone in the house and clearing up the drawers in the divider. For a moment, just out of the blue, I had this feeling that I was being watched. I don’t know, but I looked up and exactly at the right spot too because just for that fleeting second, I saw it.
A dark shadow was looking at me over the top of the divider.
I screamed!
It disappeared, darting through the bedroom door as if it was afraid of me. I quickly went to my neighbor’s flat, not returning home till everybody had come back. When I told them the story, they all scoffed at it, saying it was just me and my imagination again.
They didn’t laugh when one day my cousin brought her friend from Malaysia to the house. The friend was a psychic. She told us there and then, without we even informing her about my experiences that we were having problems with a spirit.
She said she could see it. Standing just there, at the end of the hall area. We, of course, couldn’t see anything, but yes, it was there, she said. The psychic asked us if we knew an old woman who always wore white when she was alive.
At first, we thought she might mean my dad’s auntie, who looked after him when he was young. But then, as my mother, who was there, pointed out, the auntie never wore the kind of clothes the psychic was describing. So, we did not know who it was. The psychic told us the spirit was standing at the far corner of the hall and refused to approach her for fear it might be asked to leave. The psychic assured us this was not a mean spirit and meant no harm to us. Boy, were we glad to hear that? Still, who wants to have a ghost around the house, kind or not.
In the end, we did not have that much trouble with the spirit. Seemed as if I had the most encounters with it but eventually the other members of the family came to believe me too because of other incidents, this time involving them.
My sister said one night she was studying late all by herself, facing the kitchen when she heard someone calling her name. It was soft at first.
Though she was quite sure she had heard it, she chose to tell herself it must be her imagination and carried on studying.
Then she heard it again. This time it was a loud, gruff, deep, strange voice. And it was just behind her. It called her name.
My sister said she dashed into the bedroom, without looking back. That night she slept with the bed sheet over her head.
My parents too were finally convinced when the little sounds that people usually hear in the night that sound as if someone is in the hall but are usually coming from other flats became, one night, noises that were so clearly coming from the hall that they were convinced there was some presence there.
They stayed in the master bedroom and didn’t go out to check to see who it could be. Why? Because they hadn’t heard anyone opening the door and kids were away at a cousin’s place that night. My parents knew they were all alone.
I am not especially psychic or anything like that, and it has been quite a while since we moved out of that house but now, whenever I say I sense something or have heard a strange story, my family listens seriously.
Every time.
To read other ghost stories, click here- https://asiaghosts.com/all-stories/
To visit our home page, click here- https://asiaghosts.com/
Hunt for ghost gifts here – https://payhip.com/asiaghosts
Visit our Instagram Page here- https://www.instagram.com/asiaghosts/
Visit our Facebook Page here- https://www.facebook.com/asiaghosts/
Visit our Tiktok Page here –https://www.tiktok.com/@asiaghosts
To see ghost videos, visit our youtube channel here – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYlC4mk8T7qf90z2zPRkPIQ