An Encounter with a Toyol BY Inara

I'm sure you've got moments when you thought you saw someone passing you by from the corner of your eye. I've had many of those experience when I was younger. If it's once or twice maybe you could reason that it's just your imagination but when it happened multiple times...and it's accompanied by goosebumps, it does make you wonder whether something is really there.

I get easily spooked when I was little. I guess that's why I was able to see all those things. Like this one instance, I can't remember how old I was but I was still in primary school. It was early evening, around 5 45 or so and it happened to be 'hari kuning'. I was alone upstairs doing my homework and it was quite dark. While I was doing my homework, I kept seeing someone from the corner of my eye, peeking over my shoulders as if trying to see what I was doing. It happened probably about 5 times before I got spooked enough and ran downstairs to my maid.

This next story I wanna share is also one of those moments when you see "something" from the corner of your eyes. What was different this time is I did not turn towards that "thing" immediately but rather stay and observed for a few more seconds. I believed it was my first encounter with a TOYOL.

I was young, probably around 8 or 9. It was a very quiet friday morning around 10-11 am. I was alone in the tv room upstairs reaching out to a local malay newspaper. There's usually a weekly ghost story published in the paper and that week happened to be about toyol. If I'm not mistaken, a week or two before that my parents have suspected presence of toyol around our area because my parents keep on losing money. For e.g. my dad pun five $10 notes on the bed, when out to get something for a short while and came back to find only three $10 notes on the bed. Nobody entered the room during that period of time. So, back to my story, I brought the paper to the sofa, kneeled down on the floor and used the sofa as my table. I used my left hand to hold the left edge of the paper down as the fan kept on lifting the page up. As I was reading, I was something from the corner of my eye. I froze up and just observed that thing. It was like a small kid but grotesque looking. It was darkish, with evil but also mischievous grin which showed its small, sharp, pointed teeth. And I also has a bald head. Still grinning, it suddenly extended its dark hand towards my hand and as it get closer, I panicked and turned. It was gone! I got up and ran down immediately. Nothing happened after that. That was the last time I saw it. My dad complained to my late great grandfather about always losing money and my great grandfather gave my dad something to put in his wallet (didn't thought of asking what that was). My dad no longer lose money unexpectedly after that.