Tag Archives: Malaysia

Orang Minyak

Description: The Orang Minyak, directly translated as the Oily Man, kidnaps young women at night. It is something told to young girls.

Background: The informant lived in Malaysia for much of her life. Orang Minyak, as a result, is a piece of folklore that she has often heard about.

Transcript:

CG: Orang Minyak literally means oily man (so he’s basically dripping in petroleum) and the folklore is he comes out at night to abduct young women.

Me: For Oil?

CG: I think he is just a creep.

Me: So can you elaborate more on the details? Like how much do you know about the Orang Minyak.

CG: It’s just Malaysian folklore, like the Loch Ness monster in the US. They tell that to little girls to warn them to be careful. It’s more prominent on the outskirts and more told in Malay people. I wasn’t told that as a kid because I’m not Malay but I know because I’ve heard about it.

My Thoughts:

Kidnapper creatures are a common staple among many cultures. A semi-modern example being Slender Man. The common motivation behind those tales are obviously to prevent children from exposing themselves to danger. I do remember being moderately scared of those types of tales, especially when they have a supernatural appearance. So there must be some effectiveness in those tales. Overall, I believe this tale to be moderately standard as far as tales go.

Pontianak

Pontianak is a female ghost, or the Southeast Asian equivalent of the vampire. A woman could become a pontianak by committing suicide upon discovering that her husband is cheating on her, or if the woman dies during pregnancy. They live on banana trees, and there are many banana plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia. When I was a kid, my grandmother would warn me not to get too close to banana trees. Or don’t look up when you’re near a banana tree. They like to hang upside down too. I’ve never seen one and I haven’t known anyone who’s seen a pontianak, but they’re usually seen by village folks. Pontianak have long black hair, long fangs, and a white dress, and they usually haunt only men. They don’t suck blood like Western vampires do, but they suck out your organs.

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The informant grew up hearing stories about the pontianak. The legend of this creature could be a reflection of expected gender roles in Malaysian and Indonesian societies, and also fertility and faithfulness.

Toyol

This is a familiar or an imp type creature. The Toyol is a spirit that is invoked by a bomoh (Malayan witch doctor) from a dead foetus. These people who possess a Toyol  usually use them to do mischief, like steal money and sabotaging people. As these are children spirits, they are not very intelligent and are easily distracted by toys and things they can play with. People who have these creatures usually have an urn in their home with the dead foetus with embalming fluid in their homes. However, it is said that you cannot get rid of a Toyol once you have one and it is passed down from generation to generation. To keep these creatures happy, you have to feed it a few drops of your blood once a day and give it offerings of toys and a lot of attention. Supposedly, these are able to be seen without having the evil/magic eye and look similar to House Elves in Harry Potter.

                  My informant was informed of this when she was growing up in Singapore in the 1990s. This was something that she heard while at Primary five camp at her school at Camp Christine, which was rumored to be haunted. So, as kids are wont to do, they shared scary ghost stories in their beds and one of her classmates told her this story.

There are many variations of this particular creature as well. One of which is that the person can buy these spirits from the bomohs, in others people have to create them. A variation says that people can get rid of them by throwing the urn into the sea, or burying them with the proper rites and respect.  Also, feeding a Toyol in one version, has to be fed from blood from the owners big toe, in another it requires fresh rooster blood.

                  As superstitious beliefs run rampant over most of the countries with people that are mostly uneducated and have strong beliefs in Black Magic and the woods. This was also a convenient excuse for things going missing and bad luck. However, while there is no concrete evidence for anything supernatural, according to my friend, there have been reports of sightings of these creatures.