Ghost Story – Singapore

Nationality: Sindhi
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: April 27, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi, German

Ghost Story – Singapore

“Basically Pulau Tekong is a training island used by the Singapore military, most people who are enlisted for national service complete their three months of basic training there. The camps there are really old, been there since WWII and have been rebuilt recently, but over the old places and the old places used to be POW torture camps during the Japanese occupation. So there’s a lot of ghost stories but the most famous one, is from many years ago. During a route march which went through the night, one guy lagged behind, he told his friends to go ahead and let him catch up later. Later, they found the guy dead with his internal organs laid out neatly next to him in the manner that you lay out the parts of your rifle when you disassemble it.”

Manoj first heard this ghost story in its entirety from a fellow recruit when he started basic training in the Singaporean Army last year, although he had read about it briefly online previously. He says that “it’s a very famous case; almost every recruit has heard the story.”

When questioned about any of his personal experiences during training Manoj was very forthcoming. “Ive been on that route march before but didn’t experience anything weird, and I’m still alive so obviously I wasn’t gutted, however once during field camp when we go outfield for jungle training I was woken up in the middle of the night by flash bang sounds, gunshots, artillery and then I started doing the drills we were though for that, it was 3 am, but none of it really happened, creepy…”

Upon further analysis, I observed that many military camps in different countries have their own stories, most include supernatural deaths or sightings but none have been substantially been proven. While a dead body with its internal organs can’t be refuted, sightings of ghosts and hearing noises could be attributed to the stress recruits go through during training, which is draining both mentally and physically.

I am personally skeptical about ghost stories, every ‘supernatural’ event I have experienced have had perfectly good explanations. However, I do appreciate their entertainment value and love to listen to them.

Annotation: There is a website that has various paranormal accounts posted by individuals that have served there. If the website is still online at the time, I’d definitely recommend it for some firsthand accounts. It can be found at (http://www.spi.com.sg/information/007/main.htm)