THE MIND IS A POWERFUL PLAYGROUND

well me mum told me to read today's starmag cuz got a lot of ghost related stuff there n all the pantang larangs in d forest ... so came back from a sweaty steamboat n checked the star . related links on today's haunted starmag :

The Healthy Sceptics
The Staunch Disbelievers
Glossary of Malaysian Ghosts
Why Ghosts Are Ghosts

and here's an experience a malaysian claimed to have encountered , true or not i dunno la but its up to u to believe , also taken from the star . hope i dun haf weird nightmares tonite . btw , read at ur own risk ^^

I’VE always considered myself to be a practical and logical person. But Ouija boards, paranormal sightings and the occult have intrigued me enough to make me venture into “dark and stormy nights” in search of restless spirits, armed only with a plastic torchlight, a few Sanskrit religious verses, and a twitchy accomplice.

More often than not my paranormal ventures were in vain and I would return empty-handed but that didn’t dampen my enthusiasm to experience firsthand the stories I’ve heard whispered about the apparitions and ghouls that haunt the imagination of the Malaysian psyche.

But wouldn’t you know it? When I did have my first close encounter with a spirit, it happened purely by chance, when I was completely unprepared – which made the experience all the more horrifying.

It was a dark and stormy night (it was!) and Ravi and I were somewhere in the middle of the Malaysian Peninsula, driving back to campus after a long weekend in Penang. We were taking turns at the wheel to avoid weariness creeping up on us while navigating the slippery and winding highway.

Ravi was at the wheel when we approached the large tunnel near Ipoh that meant we were almost at the end of our long journey. We had heard many stories, told by the campus guards and locals, about a white apparition that stood at the end of the tunnel to beg a lift. Though the stories were told light-heartedly and almost always over a midnight teh tarik, they always ended with a stern warning to never ever offer the apparition a ride, no matter how forlorn it seemed.

Ravi and I were joking about this story as we drove through the tunnel, the radio dead as it usually was when we entered that space.

We were still smiling when we reached the end of the tunnel and spied a young girl in a pale yellow baju kurung. She was cradling something in her arms and was walking away from us.

Ours was the only vehicle in sight; there wasn’t even a broken down car or motorcycle around – which I thought odd. We debated the wisdom of stopping the car in the middle of nowhere and offering her a ride.

I – being the cynic I am having been raised on an overabundance of Greek philosophy – was deeply suspicious of the circumstances. I mean, a lone girl, calmly walking along a deserted road in the middle of a stormy night?. Ravi, being the epitome of saintliness due to his kind heart, won the debate and we slowed our car beside her. She was drenched to the bone and appeared to be shivering from the cold, which would have explained her pale complexion. And in her arms she cradled a child no more than a few months old!

I asked her in my broken Bahasa Malaysia if we could offer a lift to her home. She turned slowly and smiled wanly. She thanked us profusely in Bahasa Malaysia and mentioned something about the baby being unwell and that she wanted to get home as fast as possible. She got in the back seat and we drove off.

When we asked her where her home was, she said we would reach a junction further up the road from which point she would guide us. Ravi and I turned back to light conversation as we squinted through the rain, keeping our eyes peeled for a crossroad.

The baby that had been crying since we had picked up our strange passengers suddenly stopped his bawling. I turned to Ravi to mention that I was glad the mother had managed to soothe the child when I noticed an odd look on his face as he peered into the rear view mirror. It was a look of utter disbelief, the look of a man who had come face to face with his soul, and who didn’t like what he was looking at.

The hair on the back of my neck prickled as an uneasy feeling stole down my spine. A bead of sweat ran down Ravi’s temple and I could see that he was growing restless as his eyes darted from the road to the rear view mirror in quick succession before breaking off abruptly, and he stared hard at the road ahead. The knuckles on his hands had turned pale as he gripped the steering wheel. His anxiety affected me and robbed me of breath.

“What’s wrong? You look terrified,” I whispered.

Without turning his head, he whispered, “Whatever you do, do not look at the back seat. I’m going to stop the car at the next curb and I want you to get out and just run until you can run no more.”

I opened my mouth to protest but he hissed at me urgently.

“Just do as I say and don’t look back!”

Too late, I had craned my neck to look behind, my inquisitive nature getting the better of me. The sight that greeted me was a grisly and ghastly one that would forever haunt my nightmares until the end of my days.

In the dimly lit darkness I could just make out the silhouette of the pale young girl who was sitting calmly in the back seat with the baby cradled close to her chest. She was chewing on something and there was a dark stain on her lips and chin. As the car passed under a light pole, the back seat was illuminated for a brief moment. I recoiled in terror as I saw that the girl was feasting on the baby!

Its rib cage was exposed and there were large chunks of flesh missing where its left lung and its heart should have been. There was a vacant look in the young girl’s eyes as she crunched on bone. Then, in one quick movement, she bent her neck to take another big bite from the baby’s bleeding torso, ripping flesh apart with sharp teeth.

It was that moment that the car swerved sharply over an embankment and skidded to a screeching halt. I instinctively threw my door open, jumped out of my seat and raced down the road with the rain beating heavily down on me. Ravi was sprinting a few yards ahead of me.

It was several minutes before the haze of panic subsided and the pain in my lungs became so unbearable that I had to slow down. We took shelter under a tree, both reluctant to speak; it was as if giving voice to our thoughts would revisit the horror upon us.

We waited for dawn to break before we trekked back to our vehicle. We found it where we had left it, the front doors wide open. But there was no sign of our eerie passengers. We drove the car with trepidation back to campus and swore we would never again try to help seemingly helpless girls walking along lonely roads. Especially those carrying ready-made snacks.