The Neighbour's Tale Numero Duo BY -D-

same neighbor here, also told during raya that same year.

on one early morning, at around 4 am, our neighbor had just came home after a long, hard night of work. no thanks to his luck, not only did he get the night shift that day, he had to stay at his work place a lot longer than he had to because of a predicament that needs to be fixed (ok, so i wasn't there when he told this story. my sister told me this later on, and she didn't get much of the details. something about him being an engineer). dead tired and just about ready to keel over, anywhere, anytime, he put the effort to head upstairs to his bedroom, after thinking twice whether to hit the couch or not.

he entered his room, left the door open (security is the least of your problem when you're dead (*heehee*) tired), and belly flopped on his bed. he lied there for awhile before he decided to turn around in a more comfortable position. as he turned, he caught a glimpse of the silhouette of a little boy just by the door. alarmed, he stood up, and as soon as he did, the figure made a run for it to the stairs. without even thinking twice, despite the creepy feeling he had in his gut, for no apparent reason, he gave chase. as he made his way down the stairs, he saw the "boy", at the bottom of the stairs, made a right turn behind a wall and into the living room, which also leads to the main entrance. as he entered the living room; silence.

the boy was nowhere to be found in the living room, nor did he hear the main entrance being unlocked and opened when the boy ran for it. considering there was no where else for the boy to run from there, the freakiness of all this finally sunk in o him. no, people, this was no dream sequence. the guy somehow managed to stay up till around 7, when he finally thought it was safe to sleep. later that afternoon, as per the neighbor's suggestion, he went out to buy some frames with verses from the Quran.

The Neighbour's Tale Numero Uno BY -D-

if you've forgotten, my stories now takes place in a small housing community somewhere near Bukit Sebanging (i said at the base, but i may be lying) in Kampung..... well somewhere along Jalan Muara. the vague info is there for privacy reasons.

this one from one of the neighbours. during our first six months here, in our current home, not a lot people lived nearby. excluding us, there were three other houses that were occupied; one of which was owned by a single man, a bachelor, if you may. one other important detail to this tale, is, if you've forgotten, that our house is located at the dead end of the simpang which makes up the housing community. as you reach the end of the road, to your right, is my humble abode, and to your left, a lone lamp post, that never lit up until it got fixed many months later. finally, in front of you is the dead end, which consisted of a "wall" of tall grass reaching up to your knee where the concrete pavement ends. beyond that, the vast, grassy field mentioned in my previous story.

as you'd guess, night time was pretty dark right around that dead end area save for the lights from our gates. it wasn't out of the norm for you to drive up to the dead end, and catch a glimpse of a cat's glowing eyes right outside the area where your car's headlights are shining on, before it runs into the "wall" of grass and into the field. anyway, one night, our neighbour, the bachelor, decided to invite a bunch of friends to his crib to hang out. as usual, when your friend just moved into a new home, you sometimes tend to get a bit lost. such was the case for one of his buddies, who made a wrong turn (or rather none at all). this took place way past 1 am, and as luck would have it, our amah forgot to turn on the gate's lights.

so, our neighbour's friend was heading towards the dead end, which was very dark at this point. now, i mentioned cats in the previous paragraph, but this guy, not so fortunate. as the area where his headlights were shining on were about to move up to the wall of grass, he caught a glimpse of what appeared to be the back of a naked little boy running, away from the car, through the grass and into the field.... at the dead of night. what shook him even more was that he also got a short glimpse of the "boy's" foot which was caught by his headlights; it had a VERY pale complexion. took him a little while to snap out of it, get to his friend's place, tell them what happened, and planned never to hang out there past midnight again. and it took months later for us to hear this story, as we made our neighborhood visits during Raya (see what i did there?)

Selamat Hari Raya, kiddos.

AntuBrunei on Facebook

Out Of Body BY JugHead

I could not sleep that night. Looked at the clock it was almost 3am, feeling jealous that sis beside me was sleeping soundly.
But then out of the blue, my eyes started to feel so heavy. At last I was sleeping. But then my body felt so cold, my hands were clammy....
then blood. I could smell distinctively some fresh blood. So I opened my eyes to check my room out. But there was nothing. It was now 3am.
Somehow I felt so different. My body felt so light. Then I panicked, i realized I was floating. I even felt the slight bobbing. On my right, I saw a dark figure. It seemed to be laughing at me. I was so confused and tried to reach out for the door. Need to get out, need to get ma's help. In my 'floaty self', my hand almost reached the doorknob when whooosh... I got sucked into my body. But as soon as I get into my body, I floated out again. In again, I pulled the bed-sheet desperately. No luck, I went out of my body. In, pulled, out, again and again. Then I looked at my sis, still sleeping. I planned to scream if ever I got sucked into my body again. Luckily I did, however, I only managed to turn my head sideways towards her. I saw her looking at me. She must be awoken from all the trashing I had done while struggling to stay inside my body! By now I was tired and the dark figure had left. I was still floating, this time, though, I stayed that way. I had no energy to get back into my body. Feeling hopeless I cried and prayed. I reasoned that it could not be my time of death. Could not be! I was so sure I would end up in hell and begged Him to let me live longer. Then I got sucked into my body and as soon as I opened my eyes, I just ran out to my ma's room, it was now 7am. My body was aching and I had got a headache. I cried and cried telling my confused mom that I had been given the chance to stay in this world. My parents gave me a glass of water and ushered me back to my room. We all saw my bed-sheet pulled halfway. My roomie sis asked me why was I giving a quick, sharp stare before. She said that she was sure I looked dead but had ignored me.

Boy At Cemetery BY JugHead

That afternoon, my friend was visiting a Chinese cemetery. Passing across the cemetery, he had to walk over some tombstones.
He said 'excuse me' when doing that. But returning home from the cemetery, strange things started to happen.
First, his dog was growling mad at him as if he was some stranger. Then that night, while playing his PlayStation, he heard a faint cry circling around his room. He was feeling uneasy but tried to ignore the cry. That same night, he had a weird dream. A pair of pale legs was shown to him.
But the creepiest bit was when he was driving through a dark highway. Suddenly the lamp posts were lit one by one as his car passed through.
When he glanced at the back, in the mirror, he saw the lamp posts were once again switched off. Then his girlfriend complained about feeling as if a small boy was with him. From then on, every night, he would have a dream. And it was always a dream about a person shown to him, slowly getting more detailed in each dream.Creeping slowly those dreams went from the lower limbs to the mid body and finally, the face. To his horror, it was a small boy who was all bruised up like this kid was in some sort of a freak accident. His lips were sewn up. My friend was in a major freak out of unease. All with the dog kept growling and whimpering, those nightmares and the little boy crying. With these endless horrors, he had to face his exam. He was a bit tensed up and tired. Tried to read but all the facts could not be digested. He closed his eyes to relax him out but all he could see were numbers. He had a feeling those were his book pages so proceeded to read them. And true enough, the exact topics came out in the exam. Despite the spirit being helpful, my friend still found help from a Chinese medium to rid the boy. Only then my friend remembered that he actually stepped onto some soil build up back at the cemetery without excusing himself. He actually almost tripped over it. He had to go back and put offerings to the now apparently, unattended tomb. Finally, my friend and his friendly ghost parted and they lived happily ever after. FIN

.....Bukit Sebanging! Ep 2 BY -D-

Located somewhere along Jln Muara, mention this area to any old timer, and you'll likely to get these 2 replies: "oh, yang tampat bukit lintang pukang selapas *********** atu?" and/or "tampat yang banyak berhantu atu?". (i'm being very vague here for privacy reasons)

our current home is located right at the base of the hill (maaaaayyyyy-be. again, privacy), at the dead end of a simpang. on one side, is the aforementioned hill, glorified with various tall trees and shrubs, on the other another smaller hill. remarkably, the one common thing this home shares with the previous one is that, to your left if your facing the main entrance, beyond the fence, also beyond the dead end i mentioned earlier, is a vast, grassy field (a supposedly haunted one i might add). only difference being that there are more trees here, and beyond the field is a small pond, beyond that, a swamp.

back in 2000, everyday after 5.30, right before Legend of the Condor Heroes aired on TV3 at 6, i tend to jog back and forth from the dead end of the simpang to the entrance as my means of exercise, since being in form 4, there were no longer P.E classes to keep me fit (not that it prevented me from being a fat slob). this resulted in me having thighs of steel in less than six months. now? just some mushy muscles. no, not because i got lazy. so what happened?

some time around June/July of that year, on a Sunday evening, i decided to take a day off from jogging. it was way past 6.30 when my niece, chauffeured by her aunt, came back from a trip. the aunt, the older sis to my sister in law and looking awfully pale at the time, asked if she could stay for awhile. with my sister in law keeping her company, and me, at the dining room, eating and eavesdropping, she asked the question that would ultimately stopped me from ever jogging again.... till March of '08 ; "Knapa ni eh? pucat jua mua mu atu". as it turns out, awhile back, just as she entered our simpang, she saw a figure cloaked in white, and a face obscured with long hair, fly out of the sliding door off the balcony of one of the neighbor's house, and into the thick forest on top of the hill. my niece, being less than 3 years old and knowing nothing, found this amusing. her aunt, on the other hand, experienced 5 seconds worth of pure fright, and panic afterward. the very next day, words through the grapevine has it that when the incident happened, the owner of the house was out. once he came back, he noticed the balcony's slide door was wide open. fearing he just got robbed, he rushed upstairs to his room. as he climbs the stairs, he could sense a faint pungent smell coming from his room. as he opened the door, the smell of rotten corpse was greatly overpowering, and his room in a big mess. hence, he slept over at another neighbors home for 4 days till he got the place "cleaned" up.

as for me, aside from never jogging again for a long time, that day when i heard this, i asked my dad in the rarest of cases, very rudely: "What kind of crazy-a*s luck do you have when choosing a home? or are you doing this all on purpose?"

Cry me a river~... of BLOOD! Ep 1 BY -D-

and now, the final story on our Sg. Akar home, and it's magnum opus. over at our place, when a dog howls at the dead of night, it's never a good sign for us. nowadays at our current place, this seldom happens, and when it does, the whole house basically just freezes in silent (made apparent one night when my sisters, old and young, made a ruckus late at night, and suddenly shut up when a howl came).

mid 98', 3.00 AM. at the exact time, my mother was awaken by the neighbour's dog sudden howling. for the five years we had stayed there, it was pretty normal for them to roam around and bark to the point of annoyyance. but never had they howled as loud and as long as they did that night and the nights to come. mom simply just ignored all this, and went back to sleep.

3.15 AM, she was still awaked, no thanks to the non-stop howling, until at that exact time, it just stopped. and just as soon as it stopped, she heard the faint sound of crying, one that seemed to had came from a girl. at the time, my brother and the missus had just popped one out of the oven months earlier, so the first thing that came to my mother's mind was that her grand-daughter crying. didn't take her long enough to realise, after bearing eight children, that not only was it not the cry a baby would make , it came from the opposite direction of my brother's room. it was the cry, as my mom described, "a 7+ year old girl would make, kinda like how your (little) sisters would cry everytime you do something to them". as for my sisters, they were sound asleep right next to my mother.

the crying continued as she headed downstairs, and my brother, coming out of his room, flash light ready. the source of the sound came from the direction of the back door, towards the large field next to our house. y'know, the one i keep mentioning in my stories lately? an open field consisting of medium length grass, and trees sporadically spread out (at the time)? anyways, the two went out of the back door, and from there, the crying was a lot more clearer. my brother flashed the light down towards the field (just beyond the fence is a steep downward slope to the field), hoping maybe it was one of the neighbour's daughters stranded outside, but the rows of trees in front of him blocked his view. he tried calling out to "her", to my mother's dismay. no replies, except the continued crying. he tried a couple more times; still nothing but the crying. he attempted to go out the back gate, down the slope, and into the field, but my mother stopped him, upon her better judgement. then, an eerie, shaky voice startled them from behind....

"Iiiiibuuu...uu...."

it was the maids, who were awaken by the crying, pale and terrified. their room was nearby, an extension to the house made accessible only by going outside of the main house first. my mom then told everyone to ignore the cries and to just go back to sleep (the maids, of course, asked if they could sleep in the living room). if anyone was out there,it would be best to ask the neighbours the following day.

the following day: after inquiring about the incident with the neighbours, they found no one could have been there at the time. from that day onwards, for the next year or so, the incident repeated itself, at the same time, at the same place, 2-3 times a week. at 3 AM, the dogs would howl non-stop for 15 minutes, and as soon as they did, at 3.15AM, the cries of a little girl coming from an empty field could be heard. this occurred mostly on a Wednesday morning. over the year, many others would hear the crying girl: my father, my other sisters, my grandma, a cousin and an uncle, the new maid, and family friends who slept over. of those in the house, only me and my 1st and 2nd eldest sister were left out (my sisters' room being far from the source, and me sleeping early and like a log, avoiding ever getting to hear it).

as the whole year went on, it became less frequent. from 2-3 times a week, it became once every 1.5 weeks or so. then, it stopped. 6 months later, on January 2000, a week before Kristal-Astro premiered, we moved out of the house to ......... (wait for it)