I am born and raised a Catholic and this religion ran deep in the family, even my ancestors all the way from China!

After few decades, majority of our family members are still Catholic and one of my uncle even end up serving the church as a priest. Point of saying this is, the teaching and beliefs of this particular religion is fairly strong in the family.

So this a story, about what happen, 18 years ago, a night before my grandma passed away. She had suffered diabetes more than 10 years before her passing, on top of the diabetes, she also suffered from terrible leg ulceration, to be honest, I do not know whether that is even the exact term for it, but her legs are pretty much, swelling, with wounds here and there and blackish in color for as long as I could remember. Due to diabetes, all these wounds would not heal and doctor said no choice but to amputate.

The night before the surgery, my uncle and my cousin were keeping her company in the hospital. It has passed visiting hours, so hospital is fairly quiet except for the noise of cars passing by on the street outside. My cousin and uncle were having conversation but through whispers since both of them are not sleepy and they have to be awake anyway, in case of anything.

I could not remember the exact time, when I think according to my uncle, it was rather late, or nearly midnight, when the both of them, saw and heard, the ward door swayed and remained open, as if there were someone that came through the door and stood there. But…there was no one there. What’s weirder is, the ward door, is an automated door. Both of them stopped talking and just stare at the door, they were thinking, could be doctors or nurses that is coming through and they open the door somehow. But the door remained open, with no one passing through, for 5 minutes or so, and it closed back by itself, like how it used to be.

Right at the moment when the door was closed, my grandma opened her eyes, with the widest smile, she called my uncle and said, “you know who came to visit me just now?”

​My uncle then asked who. “It’s Jesus and Mother Mary…” said my grandmother. Obviously, my uncle and cousin looked at each other puzzled and thought, she’s just dreaming. Grandma then continued saying, “They said, my legs are healed and I may come home” and obviously she’s very happy to hear that. No one in the world, no matter how bad is your condition, wanted any parts of your body gone. Uncle then told her, “good lah like that, then tomorrow we can check out and go home! But now, you have to sleep, cause now is still nighttime.” She went back to sleep.

The next morning, she woke up around 5 in the morning, feeling all happy after what she experiences the night before and told the story all over again to my uncle and cousin that is still there. She drank some water and then went to back to sleep, feeling all joyous. She never woke up. She passed away that morning, just a few hours before doctors could cut off both of her legs.

It’s a sad news for our big family, her 13 children and over 30 grandchildren were all notified and asked to return home immediately. Dad, uncles and aunts went to the hospital to bring her body back for funeral. And this is the last part of the thing that we could not explain, when she is home, her children put on her favorite cheongsam as her last attire before she was placed in the casket. As they were dressing her, they found… no more swells, no more wounds on her legs and the color? It looks as white and as soft as a baby’s skin.
​
This is when my uncle told the story of the night before. Maybe the higher power did visit her. Maybe her leg was really healed. Maybe she is really coming home. Just that, it was not our home, it was her forever home.

It was loud enough to echo through the empty foyer. I paused my game and looked around. I was sure I heard a laughter. The sound of laughter is very distinct. It's not a bird or a sound that came from outside. This laughter came from inside the building. 

I waited for a while expecting to hear any follow up sounds but there were none. I shrugged off that experience and went back to my game, and that's when I heard the laughter again. This time I chose to ignore it and continued to play my game, but I must tell you, inside I was freaking out. About 5 mins later, the laughter echoed again. This time I got pissed. You can say that way I handle fear is to replace it with temper. I jumped over the counter, not even bothering to walk around it, and ran towards the direction of the sound.

I stood there in the dim light and shouted into the dark corridor all the vulgarities that came to mind. After that I did not go back to the counter. I went out of the building to smoke the adrenaline away. For the rest of the night, I stayed at the counter. 

Later on I found out that the building had a lot of weird incidents and according to the guards who had been there longer than me, the experience I encountered was not uncommon. There was another incident where a sleeping security guard woke up to find three ghostly apparitions in soldier's uniform scolding him in Japanese. So far the hauntings had not been malicious. With regards to my experience, I felt that the ghosts were more playful and just trying to get my attention. For most of us who had an experience in that building, it's usually just through sounds and feelings only. There were rumours that this building was built on old cemetery grounds and that the spirits are anchored to this place.

Most places in Singapore, to be honest, have their own stories and hauntings lah so it's no point shifting job to another place either. Who knows what I will experience there. Maybe I may not be so lucky. Like they say, better a hantu you know than a hantu you don't. ​

So as a bit of a backstory, my dad was a regular in the "house flipping" scene. It basically meant buying properties at good prices, getting it done up and then reselling it at good profits. It also meant we never stayed in one place for very long. If memory serves, Tanglin Halt was either our 3rd or 4th home.

I will refrain from revealing the block number but it was close to the church and the old railway track.

We first moved into a higher floor of that block and lived there for a couple of months before the real estate agent told us that a floor below us in the same block was selling for cheap - plus it was a corner unit. Naturally my dad's interest was piqued and within months we had yet moved to another home. On hindsight, no free meal in the world and cheap houses usually come at a nasty cost.

In the beginning, everything started off small. Incidents that weren't so big that you could brush it off as your imagination or a coincidence.

1. As I mentioned we lived at the corner unit and because it was a common corridor, when watching TV we would be facing the corridor and without fail at 8pm every night, a dark shadow would fly past our corridor and "disappear" into the wall. My mom chided us and said it must have been a bird of some sort.
   
   
2. As I got older, I started hanging out later and even took up a job at a fast food chain. Some days I had to wake up really early (like 4am) and on one morning while I was headed to the bathroom, I heard someone whisper my name softly in my ear and followed by a laughter. I knew for a fact that nobody else was awake in the house at the time and instinctively, I shouted MOM i forgot my towel can you come here!!! NOW!! All the while hearing that God awful eerie laughter.
   
   
3. I shared a room with my sister and we never closed the door even when we were asleep. One day I got home about 7ish to find the house dark so I assumed nobody was home yet. I headed to my room and found it strange that the room door was shut and locked. Tried the knob several times and heard noises in the room- as though someone was shifting in bed. Thinking that my sis had fallen asleep, I tried knocking on the door loudly and calling out to wake her up but when she didn't answer, I decided to watch tv and wait for her to wake. Imagine my shock when my parents and sister came home 2 hours later and my sister went to the room and went "oei why u close the door for?" and opened it and went inside.
   
   
4. On one occasion, my friend slept over (I had a pullout bed) and the next day she said she couldn't sleep because someone was standing at the doorway staring at us the entire whole night and she was paralysed in fear and couldn't even reach out to wake me.
   
   
5. On another occasion another friend of my stayed the night and in the middle of the night, he recoiled his hand in horror because someone had scratched his palm really hard. He didn't want to wake my sis and I so he only told me the next morning and showed me his palm - of which there were 4 very long and obvious gashes.
   ​
6. When we moved, we also inherited some furniture from the previous owners, one of it was an old cupboard in the bedroom that had a lock and key. We tested the cupboard when we moved in and it seemed to be in good condition so we kept it. Imagine our shock when the cupboard would automatically creak open every night when our lights were off. It didn't matter how u locked it, jarred it, wedged it, the next morning it would be opened anyway.

This was shared with me by a friend who lived in Tanglin Halt, Blk 31. (Very bold to tell you guys the block this time because the incident didn't happen in his house).

My friend worked in the same fast food joint as me but typically preferred to work the closing shift, which meant he would get home sometime around 2 or 3am.

He recalled on that fateful night, there was no change in his routine as he got off the cab. He remembered it being a super hot night and that he couldn't wait to get home to shower.

So in order for him to get to his block, he had to walk this long winding pavement that basically connected all the blocks and ended at the then-existing, Tanglin Primary Sch. (I drew a yellow crisscross line on the map so you can visualize the path he had to take to get home).

He recalled brisk walking to his flat but just furtherup the path he could see what looked like 2 people and they were heading his way fast. At first he brushed it off as 2 other late commuters like himself but quickly got alarmed when they were half a block away and in the dim streetlights, he could make out that not only was one of them inhumanely tall, 1 was completely decked out in a black outfit and the other next to him was quite the opposite - wearing a total white outfit. He recalled the one in white also had a very tall stiff looking white hat which made him look even taller than he already was, and that the hat had some red characters on it. He also held something upright in his hand.

What truly shocked him though, was when he realized the one in white also had its tongue lolling out of the mouth and was so long that it was halfway down its body.

This incident happened not too long ago in April 2019, when my hubby and I booked a hotel staycation around Orchard area. Since it was an award winning hotel, we paid a bit of a premium as we wanted to give ourselves a treat from a tiring week of endless work.
​
I remembered when we first drove into the hotel basement carpark, it was dimly lit and a little rundown. The paint on the walls were peeling and there were some boxes of junk in the surrounding area.

“Is this the correct hotel?” I asked my hubby as I turned the car into a parking lot next to the lift lobby. We paid a bit of a premium for the room and we were having an expectation vs reality moment.

The hotel building exterior looks modern but perhaps, they did not refurbish the basement carpark I guess? I thought to myself.

After I alighted from the car, something in me didn’t feel quite right but I brushed it off quickly as I thought it could be just my imagination.

We entered the hotel lobby and were greeted by the hotel staff who handed us some welcome juice and biscuits. The hospitality of the hotel staff made me feel so much at ease that I quickly forgot about the gut feeling I had at the basement carpark.

Minutes later, our room keys were handed to us and we took the elevator up to our room.

We did what every Asian parent teach their kids to do, which was to knock on the door before entering the hotel room. Upon entering, my hubby slotted in the room card and I excitedly went in to take a photo of the bedroom (refer to photo below) before checking out the rest of the room. ​

The room looks relatively new and clean with a day bed bedside the large glass window. We hung around in the room for a bit and left shortly after to explore the rest of the hotel surroundings. We didn’t return to the room until much later, after dinner at around 10pm. As usual, my hubby slotted in the room card to activate the room lights but it didn’t work. We tried a few times and even tried another card, but it just didn’t work. A few moments later, the lights finally came on. We left the card in the slot and shrug it off thinking it could be an electrical fault without giving much thoughts about it. Funnily, this didn’t trigger any form of uneasiness like what I experienced in the carpark earlier in the day. I guess I was too absorbed by other matters occupying my mind. Hence, I didn’t think much about it.

It was just a normal night, I wasn’t on medication or had any alcohol. Hubby and I were spending some quality time chatting about random things till quite late and we went to bed at around 3am. As my hubby can be quite a heavy sleeper, he was already fast asleep within a couple of minutes. I too, can be a heavy sleeper but for some reason, I felt really drowsy but couldn’t fall sleep that night.

I kept having constant chills running down the back of my spine. At that point in time, the thoughts of encountering something supernatural didn’t hit me yet as I tend to rationalise my thoughts a lot before passing it off as anything supernatural. The hotel bed must be really good at absorbing body heat, I thought to myself and I turned to sleep on my side as I snuggled a little further under the sheets to keep myself warm.

​Now, the chills were getting more and more intense as I tossed around to lie back flat onto the bed. Suddenly, my body froze and I couldn’t move! Not only I couldn’t move, I started feeling a grip tightening around my neck and then, I couldn’t breathe!

Everything happened so quickly that this time round, I was fully aware and convinced that other than my hubby and I, there is/ are something supernatural in this room.

This confession took place in 2014 at Sentosa's halloween horror event titled Spooktacular. It was also the last time that they organised this event. Many people are not aware that there are prayers and blessing rituals conducted prior to running such an event, however there are no guarantees that the haunting won't take place.

I was assigned as a scare actor in one of the haunted trails that was situated up a hill. People had to climb up a steep incline to enter the main trail. There were some actors stationed along the way but they weren't as intense as the ones on the main trail. 

I was in an area that wasn't that dark but it was still really spooky in the dim light. There was a door for us to exit to the back if we needed to leave the trail. This is the kind of door that can only be opened from the inside. From where I was standing, waiting for the guests to come, I saw the door opening and closing by itself. I thought to myself: Our area is enclosed and there was only a ventilation fan which is far from the door. It won't be possible that a draft of air caused the heavy door to open and shut by itself. This definitely looks like someone is actually pushing against it.

In my heart, I knew this must be something supernatural at work. I said out loud, "I'm here to work, please don't disturb me, can?" The door closed and did not open again.

In another incident, I overheard a guest talking about how the three scare actors really spooked her out but the thing was that in my station, there were only two scare actors. Where did the third one come from?! ​​I decided to keep this from my partner as I'm not sure she would be strong enough to handle this news.

If you had attended Spooktacular, you might recall that for one of the horror trail attraction, there's a lift at the main entrance where its filled with fake cockroaches and a scare actor, but instead of a lift door they used a curtain to cover the entrance. If you had wondered why they did that, here's the story: The door would keep breaking down only at night for no reason. The maintenance crew would come in to check but cannot find anything wrong. In the day, the door would be working fine. In the end, they just decided to go with curtains instead.
 
There's also another incident where I saw an "actor" walked past me and heading in the wrong direction. So I called out to her and asked if she was going to the rest area for a break but the person just kept knocking her head and walking. I turned to my partner to check with her but she said she didn't see anyone. When I turned back, the "actor" was gone. What was weird was that we were not supposed to go by main entrance as the break room is actually at the back. So who was that person I saw?

Then one night the whole area blacked out and we were told to use torches to continue the scare while they fixed the circuits. When I did a headcount for our station, I counted four people when it was supposed to be only three - two actors and one guide crew. 

​Few weeks passed and I was with my grandma and her side of family who are Peranakan. I told them my encounter and they said it could be a witch as I was a virgin boy. In malay, nenek kebayan.

There was also another incident in that house that took place between my mom and grandmother.

Grandmother walked out of her room and saw my mom combing her hair in front of a vintage mirror that my dad had brought home. My grandmother called out to my mom but she didn't reply. Grandmother walked towards the kitchen to get some water and found my mom by the stove cooking. 

"Eh, how come you are here?" Grandmother asked, sensing something was amiss.

"I've been here all along, cooking. Why?" My mother asked. 

"I thought I just saw you outside combing your hair," grandmother replied. 

They both ran out of the kitchen to check the mirror but found no one there. After that incident both grandmother and my mother begged my father to discard the mirror but he would hear none of it. He was drawn and attracted the mirror and insisted on keeping it at home. 

It was back in the late 90s when I was working at one the shopping malls in Orchard Road during school holidays. To be specific, I worked as a waitress at Delifrance and it was rather a nice experience working there with nice and friendly people. The shop is located in the basement level and easily accessible via the Orchard MRT linkway  but the restaurant is no longer there after the mall underwent a renovation.

One day, I did the evening shift and as usual, after store closing, we had to clean up the counter, tables and also to sweep and mop the floor. If I'm not mistaken, it's after 10:30pm or nearing 11pm. I needed to change out of my uniform and back to my home clothes, so I asked my manager if I could change inside the kitchen or office area as it was rather spooky to walk alone to the toilet. He disapproved of my request so being left with no choice, I walked alone to the dark, spooky toilet.

Upon entering, it was very quiet and I would say gloomy. After passing by the row of mirrors and washing baisns, I had to make a left turn and decided to enter the first cubicle on my right. Before that, I noticed that both rows (left and right) of toilets were unoccupied as in the doors are all open. So into the cubicle I went.

Once inside, I quickly started changing and that's when I heard it....slow knockings on the wall partition inside one of the toilet cubicles. I tried to calm myself by saying, 'Ahhh maybe it's late night reno works'.

I wasted no time to change and eventually the slow knockings turned to loud banging. The doors of the other cubicles started slamming one by one. After I finished changing, I quickly unlocked my cubicle door to get out but guess what?! I was locked in!!!!

I tried pulling and pushing the door but it just wouldn't open and the banging just got louder and faster. I started sobbing and squatted down to recite some prayers. Then I heard a click sound and the door unlocked and swung open on its own. I stood up and ran the hell out of there. All the while, the slamming of the cubicle doors kept going on and on.  

I immediately gathered my stuff from the pantry and left. I'm not sure if any of my colleagues saw me but I tendered my resignation soon after this incident. Until now, more than 20 years later, I'm still afraid of going into the toilet alone especially those in gardens and parks.

Sheryl had earlier placed her protective Buddhist pendant on the side table beside her as she had always done when she goes to bed but when she tried to reach for it she realised that it was no longer there. She quickly woke her husband up, and asked for his protective pendant, and he told her that he had placed it on his side of table just as she did, but when Sheryl searched for it, it too wasn't there. Her husband mumbled that maybe it might be in their luggage and turned back to sleep.

Sheryl foraged through their luggage for her husband's pendant and found it, she wore it around her neck and clutched it to sleep.

Confession by J
Written by Eugene Tay

Confessor was first introduced to me in Oct 2020 when I was researching on supernatural encounters in Punggol for a Halloween feature special. J is a Punggol resident and had a harrowing encounter at Punggol Point but was too embarrassed to talk about it on record. This is my attempt are retelling the story she shared with me. - Eugene Tay

This incident took place around the beginning of the lunar seventh month as I was coming home from a birthday gathering at Punggol Point. I live relatively close by, and by close by I mean that it would take me about twenty minutes walk to get back. The alternative would be to take a Grab back but at that time of the night, ten-ish almost eleven, it's not easy to get one. I reckoned that by the time I waited to get a cab, I would have already arrived home by foot.

I took the only road leading out of Punggol Point and then made a right turn to an adjoining lane. I am aware that most people who are not Punggol residents would equate this place with the supernatural because of its sordid history and colourful urban legends but if you have lived here long enough, quite frankly, the place isn't as scary as how people made it out to be.

Also, I'm one of those who never read ghost stories or watch horror movies. I don't fancy the idea of paying money to scare myself silly. So for me, my first thought, even though it was the hungry ghost month, was not one of the supernatural. When Christina [a common friend] asked me to watch your YouTube channel, I politely declined. Which was why when this.. this.. whatever you call it, this haunting happened to me, it took me about a week before I realised something was very, very wrong.

On my walk back home that night, I heard the cries of what sounded like it came from a young girl. The sound seemed to be coming directly on my right, It was as if the person was standing right next to me. Initially, I brushed it off as an insect but the sound persisted and continued following me.

The next part is interesting. Telling you this story is already making my hair stand. I begin to hear voices - lots of voices talking at the same time - coming from my left. The crying got even louder. I was having stereo quality haunting. There were houses around me but not a living soul in sight that could have made those noises - and mind you - they were not sounds that came from the surrounding, they were right beside me.

That's when - call it natural defence mechanism kicking in - I started to panic, and for no reason, I went from curious to frightened. Not just the normal fear of the unknown; what I felt was a full blown anxiety attack. A sense of desperate urgency to run away. After that I didn't know what happened to me. When I opened my eyes next, I was lying by the side of the road looking up at faces I've never met before. 

Apparently I had been screaming and acting erratic before falling unconscious. A young couple living nearby came out to make sure I was looked after. I was out for less than ten minutes but I felt utterly exhausted and my body felt numb. My mind however was on high alert. It was a strange sensation though, like what my brain thought and how my body felt seemed misaligned.

I went home showered and crashed. That night I encountered sleep paralysis for the first time.

I saw shadow people standing in my room, around my bed. They were talking at the same time; I couldn't make out what they were saying but their chatter got increasingly louder in my head until I almost blacked out from a severe migraine.

I know that if I tell people what happened to me they will think I'm just having a nightmare and they will tell me it's not real. On a logical level, I know it's not possible for it to be real, but the emotions I felt and the memories that appeared in my head were so real, so painful, that I spiralled into depression as if those thoughts were event that actually happened to me. 

That night and every night after for almost two weeks, I was raped in my sleep. At around 4 a.m. each night, I would wake up in fear, paralysed in bed with a blinding migraine, and then I would feel like the spirit of the crying girl was inside me struggling and screaming for help as I watch the shadow people took their turns with her, using my body. I could feel everything but I couldn't do anything. I just shut my eyes and prayed, and when it was over and when I could move again, I would wake up crying hysterically.