.....Bukit Sebanging! 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 aformentioned 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 neighbour'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 afterwards. 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 neighbours 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?"