Series of Ghostly Encounters From Tanglin Halt

Confession by Cara Wong
​Cover Photo Credit: Nikko Pascua

"If I had to describe Tanglin Halt or "chup lao" as it was more commonly known, I would say it was basically the cusp of all the paranormal shit that happened to me and I wouldn't move there even if someone paid me a million dollars. Will probably split this story into 2 or 3 parts cause the number of encounters there were ridiculous." - Cara Wong

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.