Spit by the Earth

Confession by Sol

In Malay Folklore, we believe that when you do a lot of evil in your life, your body will not be buried in peace and that’s when you come back as a pocong. 

I was a young boy then, living in the Siglap area. There’s this one incident that became the talk of the town for years. A Malay man had passed away and by tradition they were supposed to wash his body, wrap him up in a burial shroud and bury him within the same day. But for some reason, they encountered one problem after another. At first the shroud tore, and they had to conduct the prayers and the wrapping all over again. Then as the adults were carrying the body to the graveyard, it slid off the carrying board and fell to the ground. To make matters worse, when they got to the cemetery, it  started to rain heavily. The cemetery was flooded, which meant the grave was flooded, and it made shoveling soil into the grave that much harder. They did the best they could and left.

Next morning when they came to check the grave, the soil had been washed away and the body was exposed. What was strange was that the body, which was positioned on its right to face Mecca, now appears to have been moved to face left and away. Since that incident people would claim to have seen a pocong. In fact, as kids, we were all made to come home before dusk. Night games and meetups were on hold indefinitely.

Rumour has it that this man got a girl from another kampong impregnated and refused to marry her.  When forced into a marriage, he went to seek help from a bomoh to cast a spell on her to get her to have a miscarriage. Without the baby, there was no impetus to marry her. He thought his troubles were over. But the next day, the girl hung herself.

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