“This is a true story. It happened to a friend of a cousin of the nasi lemak lady…”
Malaysians are a chatty lot and if there is anything that grips everybody’s imagination, it is ghost stories urban legends.
Urban legends are sensationalised tales that are supposed to be an account of an event that really happened, recently, and to someone the speaker knows.
While most are nonsense, they do make good stories for fright night.
Here are some urban legends from across Asia that have been making the rounds for years:
1. The yellow Volkswagen of the Karak Highway (Malaysia)
Malaysian roads tend to be awash with road demons, and the Karak Highway is one causeway that is said to be the site of many otherworldly goings-on.
It was the scene of a tragic accident in 1990, when 17 people, 11 of them police personnel, were killed in a bloody pile-up.
The highway has a long-standing reputation as a dark and spooky road, where a mysterious yellow Volkswagen Beetle appears after sunset.
The story goes that it will hog the lane one is driving on, cruising at a leisurely speed in front of a car.
Overtake it, and it will bend itself to appear in front again, and again, and again, as long as the driver keeps overtaking it.
People have learnt just to let it continue on its leisurely drive because eventually it will speed up and disappear into the night. And overtaking it will reveal there is no one in the driver’s seat.
2. The sweet maiden of Ancol Bridge (Indonesia)
A well-known urban legend in Indonesia, the story of the phantom woman of Ancol Bridge in Jakarta has been circulating since the Dutch colonial period in the 19th century.
There are many variations on the story, but the best-known version describes a beauty named Maryam, whose good looks drew the unwanted attention of a rich old man.
She turned him down as she knew he wanted her as a concubine and she already had a secret lover who was a Dutchman.
Under great pressure at home, Maryam fled and while crossing the Ancol Bridge, yet another man was captivated by her beauty.
He set his thugs on her but she fought back ferociously and during the struggle, she fell off the bridge and drowned in Lake Sunter below.
It is said that her spirit haunts the bridge to this day, sometimes showing her sweet but sad face to passers-by.
Drivers intending to cross the bridge believe they need to honk the horn three times to ask her for permission to cross the bridge. Failing to do so will result in an engine breakdown and her appearance.
3. The devil of Don Simeon Bernardo (Philippines)
In a case of completely missing the point, a statue atop a tomb in Malabon has long drawn national attention in the Philippines and many stories are told about it.
The statue depicts the devil victorious over the Archangel Michael, and next to the statue is a tablet with Satan claiming dominion over the world and mankind.
In a pious Roman Catholic country, this imagery was controversial and tales immediately sprang up about it.
Locals claim the statue has grown since it was put up and that the devil statue terrorises night-time visitors to the cemetery.
They say an iron cage was placed around it supposedly to stop the fallen angel from continuing his reign of terror.
The stories are an annoyance to the family of the tomb’s occupant, one Simeon Bernardo, who had the statue built as a bitter reminder of his life experiences.
During the 1896 Revolution, he was falsely accused of revolutionary sentiments and was brutally tortured on the orders of pro-colonial priests.
Disgusted by this unchristian behaviour, he had the statue built as a reminder that evil had triumphed over good. The iron cage was placed around it to protect it from vandals.
4. The human chessboard of St John’s Island (Singapore)
Singapore, like the rest of Southeast Asia, suffered terribly at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.
To the south of Sentosa Island is a lesser known getaway called St John’s Island, which was previously used by the British as a quarantine station.
A mysterious life-sized chess board can be found on the island, though it is unclear who built it or why. It is the epicentre of an urban legend.
It is said St John’s Island was used as a prisoner-of-war camp by the Japanese. In a twisted take on the game, the chessboard was used by sadistic guards to play human chess, using prisoners as the chess pieces.
With two guards directing the movement of the prisoners, an actual game of chess was played. When a chess piece was captured and removed from the board, the guards would behead the unfortunate prisoner where they stood.
Since then, there have been reports of mysterious screaming and crying at night, and the sound of boots marching around the chessboard is said to be heard occasionally.
from Free Malaysia Today https://ift.tt/34Ha0ad
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