Just Hanging Around in Old Tekong Camp

Confession by Simon

I remember the day I enlisted to Pulau Tekong for Basic Military Training or BMT as we call it. I was deployed to Bravo company, bed twenty four, upper deck. My paranormal encounters started right after my first book in.
 
Lights off was at 10.00pm. Even though the day’s training had been tough, it was still difficult for me to fall asleep in a new environment. I kept tossing and turning, and adjusting the mosquito net. When I was finally on the verge of dozing off, I heard footsteps and the sounds of chains being dragged.
 
My initial thoughts were that it must be the platoon sergeant playing a prank on us - some form of hazing ritual for the new recruits - so I lay on my side, kept very still and pretended to be asleep.
 
Then I felt someone climb into my bed and tried to shove me off. The string holding up the mosquito net snapped and fell away. It got terribly cold. The noises from the crickets and other insects amplified.
Something started pulling at my hair.
 
I kept my eyes closed and braced myself against falling off the bed by stiffening my body. By now I knew it couldn’t have been my sergeant. After what felt like a few minutes of resisting, I fell, but instead of falling off the bed I fell from a height onto my bed. It was as if I had been levitating or was teleported.
 
Now lying on my back, I could hear and feel someone or something breathing heavily right beside my face. I couldn’t move at all.
 
My mother had given me a rosary to keep with me at all times for protection, and I remembered I had it in my shorts pocket. Though my body was paralyzed I still willed my fingers to reach for my pocket. I recited my prayers in my heart.
 
I heard a snap and felt that thing jumped away from my bed. I stayed motionless for a few minutes. Those few minutes must have turned to hours because the next sound I heard was my platoon mates getting up to prepare for the first parade.
 
When I finally plucked up the courage to open my eyes, the first thing I did was reach for the rosary in my pocket. It had broken into tiny bits as if it had been rolled over by a truck. When I eventually looked at myself in the mirror later, I noticed that the part of my head that I felt my hair being pulled was now a bald patch. I carried on with training but couldn’t shake off the feeling that what I had experienced was not just a dream, though I don’t really have any other explanation for it. I kept this experience to myself thinking that it was probably just a one off incident.
 
Even though there had been no further incident since, I felt safer having the rosary on me. After booking out that weekend, I went to church to get another rosary and have it blessed by the priest.
 
When I got back to camp, I placed the rosary at the foot of the bed. In case any entities approach my bed, it would be repelled before even getting the chance to get in bed with me.
 
That night, the encounter was even more ferocious than the first. My whole bunk bed and locker was shaking violently. I kept my eyes shut and prayed, but I could sense that something was hovering right above me. I heard a loud cracking sound, and then all of a sudden the entire commotion stopped. I got up to reach for my rosary but it was no longer there. I looked around and found it on the floor, broken into pieces, again.
 
Everyone else was asleep or in bed pretending to be asleep. It was as if I was the only one who heard the locker banging sounds.
 
The next morning I told my platoon sergeant about the incident and he told me, “don’t think so much, and don’t go around telling people or I make you sign seven extras.”
 
Signing extras mean staying back in camp alone or with other offenders while the bulk of the platoon book out for the weekend. I wasn’t going to stay here alone with whatever that was in the bunk, so I kept my mouth shut.
 
In my third book-in, I was armed with another rosary. This time, I had it around my neck. There was violent shaking of the bed or the locker this time, but instead I felt someone shaking me as if it wanted me to wake up and look at it. I kept my eyes closed and pretended to sleep.
 
I could feel my blanket slid off me and an invisible force tightened its grip around my neck. It was trying to say something to me, but I couldn’t make out the words. That thing was very, very close. Right beside my ear. As it spoke, it could feel the breath against my face. I was paralyzed throughout the ordeal. I tried to scream but no sound came out; I couldn’t even breathe.
 
All I could do was pray. I kept praying and praying until there was the sound of a loud crack, and everything was quiet again. This third, and more direct assault, rattled me to my core and I didn’t dare open my eyes. I stayed in bed until I heard the sound of the other platoon mates starting the day. The rosary had shattered around my neck, just like the previous two.
 
This time, I wasn’t about to keep the experiences to myself. When I spoke to my buddy, I found out that he and others in my platoon had experienced some “disturbances'' but were reluctant to get into details. One of the platoon mates had brought talismans and he shared it around with us. We pasted it on both entrances to the bunk. Another sprinkled holy water around the place. We basically combined our religious forces. The following week when we came to be booked-in, the intensity of the haunting had de-escalated.
 
There were the noises and the occasional shaking, I still could feel someone hovering above me and talking to me, but I was not so afraid anymore. Maybe I was getting used to it, or I was getting braver knowing that I wasn’t the only one experiencing this. Power in numbers!
 
When we were nearing the end of our BMT, the platoon sergeant told us that he knew about the haunting. There was a recruit who was so afraid of National Service, he couldn’t handle the stress and hung himself from the ceiling fan that was above my bed. Then he added, “Don’t tell anyone, or I'll make you sign fourteen extras!”