The security guard & the cleaner

About this story

This story took place in a government building in 2005, and what baffled me was that the building was rather new. I heard about it from various sources – the new security guards, the cleaners and the building management people – and the story was rather consistent. However, because the security guards in the story have been transferred out to another site and the cleaner involved had resigned almost immediately (plus there was a change in the cleaning contractor), none of their newer colleagues knew exactly where this incident took place.

Lim (not his real name) was one of the security guards on night duty when the building was newly opened in 2005, and his shift would start in the evening and end at about 8am the next morning. He was stationed at the command centre at the ground floor, which was next to the receptionist counter, and one of his duties involved scanning the security monitors for suspicious activities.

Lim was in the last hour of his shift and the cleaners would usually report for work at about 7am.

It occurred to Lim that he could perhaps alleviate his boredom track a random female cleaner as she made her way around the building as she did her job, and he picked the youngest lady in the group who was a quiet Malay girl.

From his command post, his gaze followed her as she came in from the entrance, walked past him into the lift, going into the storeroom to her equipment, etc etc. After a while, Lim lost track of the Malay cleaner as another colleague spoke to him for a short while.

As he resumed his voyeuristic pleasure a while later, he found her again in one of the security monitors. She was in a rather small room, vacuuming the carpets.

And then it happened.

An unseen force suddenly slammed the cleaner to the wall and seemed to pin her to it. Though the security system had no audio facility, Lim could literally ‘hear’ screams in his head.

Without thinking, Lim grabbed his walkie talkie and rushed to the room to rescue the cleaner.

By the time he got there, he found the cleaner slumped on the floor and in a shock.

“What happened?” he asked.

But the girl was too terrified to speak.

“Is it still around?”

She shook her head in terror.

Lim radioed his colleagues for help and 2 of them responded within minutes.

They helped the cleaner out and to the command post on the first floor. Lim walked over to the security monitors to playback the horrifying sequence he saw a moment ago.

But strangely, the entire segment had somehow been erased.

 

The Malay girl quit as a cleaner on the same day, and Lim stayed on for a few more months before his team got transferred out.

By the time I heard this story, it was about a year after the incident had taken place, and rumours began to spread as to the exact location of the incident. Some have said that it was one of the meeting rooms while others claim it was a filing room. But no one knew for sure which room it really was….

Can fantasy RPGs kill?

I was perturbed when I read this report (appended below) in The Straits Times recently. What’s more, there’s speculation on the local blogs and discussion forums that it could be due to the negative influence of MMORPGs, which in this case, was World of Warcraft. This reminds me of a similar hue and cry in the local media and church circles about ’satanic’ fantasy role-playing games in the 1980s, and the games targeted in the media back then included Ultima IV and Dungeons & Dragons. In fact, things got so bad that the local TV station pulled the D&D cartoon off air after the 2nd episode!
 

I discussed this SLF case with some of my friends and the consensus was, “Isn’t it more probable that Ku Witaya’s role as a practising medium a more probable cause for suicide than RPGs?”

 

 

Aug 24, 2008
 
2 boys die from fall

By Aw Cheng Wei 

Two 16-year-old schoolboys were found lying at the foot of a block of flats in the Eunos Link area early yesterday.One of the boys, Ku Witaya, was pronounced dead after paramedics arrived at 5.30am at Block 667 in Jalan Damai.The other boy, Sia Chan Hong, Ku’s classmate at Tampines Secondary School, was still conscious. He was sent to Changi General Hospital but died at 7.50am.The boys are believed to have fallen from the ninth storey where Ku lived with his parents, younger brother and sister, and grandmother.
It is believed that the two boys had been with two other friends in Ku’s bedroom on Friday night till early yesterday morning.

The two friends later went out to buy food. On their return, they found the duo missing and saw their bodies at the foot of the block.

Ku’s parents were at work when the tragedy happened. His father, who is said to be of Thai lineage although the boy is Singaporean, is said to be in the construction business and, according to neighbours, his mother is a factory worker.

Except for Ku’s younger brother who was out at the time, the others in the family were asleep during the incident.

Tampines Secondary School’s principal Neo Tick Watt visited the homes of both boys yesterday. He said that the school will provide whatever support that is needed. ‘We will also identify those close to them and recommend counselling sessions.’

He added that both boys were good students and that Chan Hong was a class chairman and a school basketball player.

A neighbour on the fifth floor, who wanted to be known only as Mrs Yen, said she knew Ku’s grandmother and had seen the boy last Friday morning with her. She described him as a ‘tall, skinny and very handsome’ boy who was filial and often accompanied his grandmother to the market.

She also said that Ku practised as a Taoist medium and that when she moved in three years ago, other neighbours had complained of noise coming from his flat.

The corridor leading to his unit is adorned with religious artefacts and the boy was said to have conducted sessions inside.

A diary belonging to Ku was found in a fusebox outside the flat. In it, he spoke about how he belonged to a group of ’slayers’ and was part of a group which called itself ’sexy little fellows’.

The police are investigating the cases as unnatural deaths.

The Malingerer

 

About this story

The same friend who told me about the Ghosts of the Confrontation also told me about this strange incident which happened to him & his buddies at Khatib Camp during National Service in the 1990s.

The Malingerer

My friend Sam was a medic sergeant stationed at Khatib Camp during his National Service and he was fortunate enough to be attached to the base medical centre, as this meant that he was not required to follow the soldiers into the field for exercises.

One afternoon, the field medics brought in a certain Private directly from field exercises, and the Private was still dressed in his muddy combat fatigues.

When Sam asked what was wrong with the Private, he was told that the duty Medical Officer  (M.O.) were unable to diagnose the problem, which was why the Private was sent to the medical centre for overnight observation. Apparently, the Private would alternate between lucidity and sudden outbursts and disorientation, and had started when they found him lying on the ground in a wooded area. The duty MO had even considered him to be a possible malingerer as the Private did not exhibit classic symptoms of common training incidents like heat exhaustion, heat stroke or accidental injuries.

Sam did a quick check on the Private and assigned him a bed. Nothing unusual happened for the next few hours and Sam was waiting for his shift to end at 9pm.

At about 8.30pm, a panicky junior medic rushed into Sam’s office and told him to have a look at the Private.

Sam did not expect what he saw in the ward: the Private looked like he was sound asleep but he was levitating several feet in the air, above his bed! The few other sick soldiers who were staying in for overnight observation and another medic were trying to hide behind the dispensary counter.

Suddenly, the Private rotated upright in the air and started to speak gibberish as he drifted randomly in the ward.

At the sight of this, Sam and the medic who had called him rushed back to his office, slammed the door shut and locked it.  

After what seemed like hours, the two of them heard a knock on the office door, accompanied by a familiar voice. It sounded like the M.O. who was on duty that night.

“Open up!” shouted the M.O. as he pounded the door, “What the hell is going on?”

What if the voice was not really the M.O.’s?  He thought.

Sam opened the door with some reluctance, and to his relief, it was the really the duty M.O.

As it turned out, the possessed Private was back to normal and could not remember what had happened before he blacked out during the field exercises.

The M.O. wrote it off as ‘fits’ and returned the Private to active duty the next morning…

 

Ghosts of the Confrontation

About this story

An ex-classmate told me this story when we were both doing our national service in the 1990s.

 

Ghosts of the Confrontation

During the Confrontation between Indonesia and Malaya in the 1960s, a small detachment of soldiers from the Singapore Armed Forces was on combat patrol in Malaysia, to hunt down Indonesian commando ‘volunteers’ who had inflitrated Malaya to commit acts of sabotage.

Now this platoon made camp near a waterfall and while most of them were bathing in the river near that un-named waterfall, they were ambushed by the Indonesian infiltrators and all of them were killed. That wasn’t all: all of the bodies were mutilated and dismembered as a warning to other Malayan and Commonwealth soldiers.

A few days later, another SAF contingent came to retrieve the bodies from the waterfall. They bagged the bodies and transported them back to Khatib Camp. The men then got down to piecing together the mutilated body parts so that their slain comrades could be put to rest. This grisly duty was done in the showers located within the camp.

Not long after this incident, soldiers based at Khatib Camp could hear voices of men bathing in the mdidle of the night, accompanied with the loud splashing of a waterfall. Needless to say, there was nobody in the showers at that time of the night…

 

 

That basement toilet in the Library

I was told about a strange incident which happened about 2 years ago at one of the libraries in downtown Singapore.

A cleaner was doing an inventory check in the storeroom of the men’s public washroom located at the basement early in the morning (after 7am). Althought it was sunny outside, the basement was devoid of natural sunlight.

He then heard a rustling noise in one of the toilet cubicles. So he got out of the storeroom and walked towards the source of the rustling.

The cubicle door was wide open and he was rather surprised to see the back view of a woman in that cubicle. When he said, “Hello”, the woman turned around.

She was beautiful, yet a little pale. She had long tresses and was dressed in a red dress.

The cleaner did not recall hearing anyone walking into the toilet and he did not see anyone when he came in that morning.

When she smiled at him silently, he felt a chill within him.

And just as suddently as she had appeared, she vanished in the blink of an eye.

That cleaner tendered his resignation as soon as his supervisor came in.

 

Afternote:

This was related to me by one of the cleaning supervisors. Apparently, the next guy who took over as cleaner in that same washroom called it quits within a week for the same reason too.

 

Room 2234

 

About this story

This incident happened over 20 years ago, when my father was still the general manager of a 5-star hotel mentioned in this story.  

 

Room 2234

A young Japanese couple on their honeymoon had checked into Room 2234.  What shocked the staff was that the wife was found dead at the foot of the hotel the next day.

The police came and combed the entire room for clues to see if foul play was suspected and interviewed the distraught husband.  After a week of investigation, no foul play was suspected and it was ruled as an unfortunate accident, and the sad widower returned back to his home country.

The following week, something bizarre occurred. 

The chambermaids went into that room to tidy up and suddenly one of them started babbling in a foreign language as  if she was possessed.  Her colleagues were terrified and reported the case to her superior who in turn reported to my father, who was the GM of the hotel.

He was at the scene with the public relations manager who could speak several languages and was called to translate what the ‘possessed’ chambermaid was saying. They were all very shocked when the PR manager told them that the chambermaid was speaking in Japanese, and had repeatedly said that was “she” was murdered in that room.

The police were called in and the case that went cold last week was reopened.

Upon closee investigation – and with cooperation by the authorities in Japan - they had found evidence of premeditated murder.  The husband had apparently bought insurance totalling a million Singapore dollars on his wife’s life which he had profited from his wife’s untimely death.

He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

After the case was solved, there were no more ghostly hauntings in Room 2234.

 

Posted by Momma Bear

 

 

 

The Lady of Fort Canning Hill

 

This was related to me by my brother 10 years ago.

It was one of those nights that my brother and cousin went late night clubbing. After their night of partying, they decided to take a walk home instead of driving.

On their way home, they took a short cut through Fort Canning Park. While merrily relating about their army adventures to each other, my cousin caught a glimpse of a woman in white breezing pass him and turned back to have a closer look.

She was dressed in white, had long dishevelled hair and what haunted him till this day were her eyes. Those seemingly large eyes glowed in the dark. He could have sworn that she had no feet and was literally floating.

He tried to scream but he froze. My brother, oblivious throughout this whole incident, broke the silence by asking “Hey, why you suddenly so quiet ah? Tired ah?”

But my cousin was too scared to say anything.

The next day, my cousin was down with fever and was sick and delirious for one month.

After his recovery, he told my brother what happened that fateful night at Fort Canning Park…the woman in white.

 

Posted by Momma Bear 

 

 

 

 

The Gardener in the Greens

About this story

I used to work in an old building which had sprawling grounds, a golf course and several gardens. An old security guard told me this story one day when I shared a table with him during lunch time. Since this story was his to tell, I shall recount it from his perspective… As before. names have been changed to protect the privacy of those mentioned in the story…

This happened about 20 years ago, when I was first posted to this place.

My guard duty was just over and it was nearly lunch time. Rather than walking down the long winding road, I decided to take a short cut through the golf course.

As I passed by the hole which was most densely covered by trees, I saw one of the old gardeners sleeping under a tree. So I approached the tree and barked at him like how I usually talked to the rest of the gardeners and sweepers, “Hoi! Ah Lim! Working hours you sleep, ah! Wake up!”

Ah Lim jerked from his slumber but remained sitting quietly under the tree when he saw that it was only me and not his supervisor.

This really pissed me off, so I yelled at him as I continued my way toward the main gate, “Eh, you lazy bastard. When I come back later, I better not catch you sleeping here.”

Ah Lim smiled lazily and just gave me a wave, as if to ’shoo’ me off.

I reached the main gate about 5 minutes later, and waved at my colleagues who were manning the gates. Just then, I saw something odd:I saw Ah Lim – whom I just saw under a tree 5 minutes ago – walking along the main road which runs along the main gates, and he was carry food containers and drinks in his hands.

“Eh?! Ah Lim. I thought I just saw you inside! How did you come here so quickly?” I asked.

“Huh?! What nonsense are you talking about? I went out to buy lunch for me and my friends an hour ago!” , Ah Lim replied.

We argued for a while and the duty sergeant came forward and told me that Ah Lim had indeed the truth.

“Ah Lim. Do you have a twin brother?” I asked, as I was trying to save some face and not look stupid.

My face turned pale when Ah Lim said ‘no’.

The duty sergeant then pulled me aside, and I told him about the other ‘Ah Lim’ I saw in the golf greens by the wooded area.

“I wouldn’t cut through that area if I was you,” said the sergeant, “Do you know part of that golf green was built over an old cemetery? Some of us have seen ‘doubles’ of people who work here, and it’s usually around that area…”

After that, I had fever for two days….

 

The Spirit of Fort Siloso

 

Many years ago, when I was in secondary school, our form teacher brought the entire class to Sentosa  for a camping trip.

 

By the second day, we were all bored as Sentosa was a small island after all, and all the sights and places of interest could be covered within one day.

 

On that same night, our form teacher – a relatively young guy who was in his mid twenties back then – proposed an adventure on a whim: a small group of us could try to sneak into Fort Siloso  under the cover of darkness and experience that tourist attraction from a different perspective at night.

 

About ten of us joined him and off we went on foot to Fort Siloso, since the monorail did not stop over at that station after dark.

 

We climbed over the turnstile with ease and our teacher was right: Fort Siloso was beautiful at night, with all the lights switched on.

 

We soon found ourselves at the main coastal battery, and saw the night lights from the gun emplacements facing Keppel Harbour. That was when things when awry: Someone noticed that a classmate of ours was missing. Let’s call him Taj (name changed to protect his privacy).

 

We whispered Taj’s name several times but there was no response.

 

After a minute or so, Taj appeared from the entrance of one of the lower gun emplacements below us with a smile (remember, it was well lit), for the coastal batteries were on 2 tiers of ramparts.

 

Just as we gave a sigh of relief, we all heard a glass bottle shatter near where Taj was standing. None of us carried glass bottles.

 

Taj was no coward. He turned to the source of the sound and shone his torchlight at the pit where the cannon was emplaced. There was nobody there.

 

Taj went on to search the immediate vicinity for the ‘homeless drunk’ we thought might be hiding in Fort Siloso like us, while we stood above to observe him. As he opened the metal door which he had emerged from earlier, we heard a loud moan which went on and on for at least 30 seconds: “Oooooooo……”

 

We instinctively ran toward the exit and some of us tripped along the way. One of my classmates wetted his pants in fear, while another later told us that he had felt something grab on to his leg as he ran.  Even our form teacher was scared. He later told us that when we ran away from the sound from the coastal battery, his legs felt petrified and he could not even walk without lifting each leg in turn.

 

All of us ran back to camp and told the rest of the class what happened. We struck camp early next morning and went home…

 

About this story

 

This happened in the late 1980s and the author was one of the ten students who ventured into Fort Siloso after dark.

 

The Rock in the Garden

 

There was a rich couple who lived in a three storey house in the eastern part of Singapore who had plans to landscape their garden.

 

However, they felt that the price of ornamental rocks at the nurseries were rather  prohibitive, so they decided to drive up to the east coast of Malaysia to pick a few large  rocks for free.

 

They chanced upon a beach and saw this black rock which was roughly a metre tall by the  beach, and felt that it would fit nicely into their design.

 

As they carted the black rock into the trunk of their car, they heard a commotion. Several villagers who were living nearby had seen what they were doing, and were shouting and waving their hands in the air.

 

Afraid of being hauled to the police station for trespassing (or worse, theft), the couple

hurriedly sped off with the rock in the trunk.

 

Back home, they installed the black rock as the centrepiece in their newly landscaped garden.

 

That same night, the husband woke up from a fitful sleep. As he woke up to go to the toilet, he saw something that sent a cold shiver up his spine: a long-haired woman dressed in white, ’standing’ outside his bedroom window! And I said ’standing’ with inverted commas because the master bedroom was on the third floor of the house, and there was no ledge or walkway outside the window.

 

The husband quickly drew the curtains and hid himself under the sheets.

 

The nightly visits continued for several days until a geomancer they hired told them that the ghost probably came with the black rock. The best solution was to simply return the rock back home to that seaside village in Malaysia and apologise to the villagers.

 

But did the rich couple take his advice? No.

 

They decided that it would be too much of a hassle to drive all the way back to the beach in Malaysia, and risk getting caught or stoned along the way. So they decided to dump the  black rock somewhere nearby: somewhere near Changi Village.

 

So if you have seen any woman with long hair in white robes near Changi Village, and are certain it’s not a transvestite, be sure to look around for you might see the black rock nearby!

 

 

The End.

 

 

 

 

About this story:

 

I heard this from my wife, whose friend’s parents are the rich couple in the story above. I

believe all these happened in the 1990s.