Tag Archives: ghost story

The Haunted Art House in Woodneuk

Nationality: Singaporean
Age: 84
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: 04/12/2021
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: Malay, Hokkein

Context

My grandmother enjoys telling us stories of Singapore when she was younger, one of the stories she most enjoys telling is that of the haunted art deco house at Woodneuk. This story came about during one of our conversations.

———————————————————————————————

Performance

The following is translated and transcribed from a story told by the interviewee.

“When you go behind Holland Road there’s the old mansion. Now everyone goes there and takes photos but last time no one went there because it was haunted. It’s still haunted, but nowadays no one cares, no one respects the place. It’s an old house build for the Sultan a hundred years ago. The house was very big for time, and it meant to be a beautiful place. The Sultan had a Scottish wife, but when she died, he left the place, and he never bothered to go back. So it just sat there. And the place is haunted, the wife never left the house because she loved it so much and never wanted to leave it. But now kids go there and take photos and they are disturbing the wife.”

———————————————————————————————

Analysis

This is a fairly common ghost story told in Singapore about the abandoned mansion. There aren’t many abandoned buildings in Singapore as it is a small city with limited space and the government is proactive in ensuring that all the space available is used. Thus, the very abandoned places like the mansion in Woodneuk have many myths and tales surrounding it. Historically, the story is accurate. There was a Sultan with a Scottish wife that build the mansion, though the story gets a little blurry with whether the wife died and why the Sultan left the house. I think in the case of the Woodneuk mansion, the ghost story was put in place to scare people away from visiting it. My grandmother was frustrated with children going there to take photos and felt that they should’ve just left the house alone. The architecture in the house is traditional and unique and it would stand that there are those that would hope to protect it. However, because the government does not protect the house and make it a cultural landmark, people have spread ghost stories in an attempt to keep people away. In the age of social media and with the new generations believing less and less in superstition, this no longer works effectively. And instead, the idea that the place is haunted actually drives people to go visit it.

Tekong Stories

Nationality: Singaporean
Age: 65
Occupation: Property Manager
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: 04/12/2021
Primary Language: English

Context

Ghost stories or Tekong Stories as they are commonly known in Singapore are very often passed down in families or during military service. In Singapore, where there is mandatory national military service for every eligible male individual aged 18, ghost stories in the army camps are thus incredibly common and circulate widely around the community in Singapore. The following ghost story comes from my father recounting a ghost story he was told when he was serving the military in Singapore.

————————————————————————————————————

Performance

The following is a story told to me by the interviewee.

“One of the Tekong stories is about a young girl and her grandmother that walk around the bunks and count the number of sleeping recruits. The grandmother is teaching the girl how to count. And they will count one… two… three… four… And as they come closer and closer to your bunk you’ll hear the number louder and louder five… six… seven… eight… And you cannot open your eyes because if you do they will take you away with them.”

————————————————————————————————————

Analysis

Ghost stories are very common, but what specifically is unique about this one is that it is a military ghost story. Singapore practices mandatory military service for every eligible man, and thus military stories are much more widespread in the everyday community than it might be in other countries. Almost everyone knows of some kind of army camp ghost story, male or female. This ghost story in particular is given to new recruits. I belive it is meant to instil fear and make sure that the new recruits go to sleep instead of waking up in the middle of the night and trying to talk to each other.

The Baby that lives in the Operating Room

Nationality: Iranian-American
Age: 62
Occupation: Pediatric Anesthesiologist
Residence: Palo Alto, CA
Performance Date: April 21st, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Farsi

RA: “Lots of hospitals have ghost stories about the people who have passed away in the operating rooms. When I worked at Ben Taub hospital in Houston, there were so many because it was such a big trauma hospital. I can’t remember them now, partially because there were so many, but there were lots of stories of dead patients lingering in the rooms where they died, especially if it was an especially difficult case. One that I remember from my time at Children’s… well, it’s a little creepy. I don’t know if you want to hear it.”

AB: “Creepy is good!”

RA: “Well, there was a baby that passed away in one the cardiac operating rooms, which is rare because we usually don’t have babies in there. One of my colleagues was in charge of that case and was really broken up about it. Ever since then you could hear a faint baby’s crying or laughter in that operating room. We knew it was the baby, and that she had stayed in the operating rooms as her final resting place. We could hear her from some of the nearby rooms, and the crying usually seemed to come from within the walls. Me and my friends, especially Erika, and some of the nurses would sometimes go to the room just to talk to the baby. We would usually just read stories, sing lullabies, and talk about our cases with it. She seemed to listen, and the crying always seemed to disappear after we talked to her. Sometimes, when I had little kids as my patients, I would take them to that room if it wasn’t being used so they could talk to the baby. They all got a kick out of it, and the kids that knew about the baby would even ask if they could play with her. Looking back, I’m sure it was something weird happening with the vents. There were lots of weird noises all over that hospital, and it usually had to do with fans and vents and wind blowing around in an old building, but everyone could tell that it was a baby laughing in that room.”

Informant’s interpretation:

AB: “Do you think the ghost of the baby really lived in that room?”

RA: “Well, in this case, that baby was just born. The only rooms it ever knew were in that hospital, and it probably spent most of its life in the operating room. She passed away peacefully, so I think she stayed in that room because it felt like her home. There was no sense that the ghost was evil or scary or anything, so I really think, the baby just chose to stay in space where it felt comfortable.”

Personal interpretation:

Ghosts often inhabit liminal spaces, and indeed, the operating room is a quintessential liminal space. Patients only enter this room during an operation, thus this room stands between sickness, pre-operation, and recovery, post-operation. When a newborn that has spent no time outside of a hospital dies in this space, doctors may perpetuate the life of the baby as a ghost that watches over a space that stands between life and death. The informant emphasized that the spirit was not malicious, and that she and her colleagues would often discuss difficult cases with the baby, so the ghost may even act as a kind of guardian of the operating room, protecting future patients and doctors.

Main Piece: Mad Bess

Nationality: American
Age: 11
Occupation: Student
Residence: CO
Performance Date: 04/12/2021
Primary Language: English

Background: The informant’s elementary school is said to be haunted by the ghost of a former tenant of land, Mas Bess. The school’s campus is very old and used to house many of the town’s silver mines in the late 19th century. The buildings have been remodeled, but never torn down. The school’s headmaster tells the students that if they are destructive towards the land or the buildings, Mad Bess will not be happy and will curse us all. 

Context: I asked the informant if she had ever seen a ghost before and she told me that she has yet to see her with her own eyes, but knows that Mad Bess is always looming around school. She promised me she was not afraid of Mad Bess, but some of her classmates are. She told me that she would never litter on the campus or disrespect the playground or the classrooms because she is certain Mad Bess would cause a miniature earthquake at her school. 

I also asked the informant if the teachers speak about Mad Bess frequently and she responded very matter-of-factly “Of course they do. Mad Bess is part of our community. The school would be incomplete without her. She has been on campus longer than any of the rest of us and deserved to have her home taken care of.” 

Thoughts: I attended the same school as the informant about a decade ago. While I was at the school, we had a different headmaster, but the legend of Mad Bess was the same. She was spoken about in two contexts. One, she was a legend of entertainment that served as a community point of connection. Two, she gave the teachers a threatening ghost story that they could strategically use to make the children behave. They could scare us into being respectful because the consequences of not doing so were grave. This is a folk legend that has been circulating and bringing together people on the campus since its founding. Ghost stories have so many purposes!    

“Bloody Mary” Test of Courage

Nationality: Vietnamese-American
Age: 10
Occupation: Elementary School Student
Residence: Iowa
Performance Date: 5/1/2021
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

B: So when I was in kindergarten or first grade, during recess my friends and I would play four-square. So, I was- there’s a line and I was waiting in the line to play. And I heard two boys talking about Bloody Mary. They said you have to say “bloody mary” three times into a mirror, and then she comes out or something.

Me: Could you do this in any mirror or did you have to go in a specific room?

B: You had to do it in the bathroom. But I tried it and nothing happened (laughs the kind of laugh you do when you try something silly).

Me: Why do you think kids tell each other this story?

B: I think part of the reason is because they want to scare each other. And I feel like part of it is also that, they got told it and they got scared, and they want other people to know because they want them to be aware or something.

Me: What thoughts did you have when you tried this?

B: I didn’t have any thoughts, I was like, I’m gonna do this, and I went in the bathroom and turned off the lights and shut the door, and then I started saying it? And then I was like, “this is fake,” and went back out.

Background: 

My informant is my cousin’s 10-year-old son, who is in the fourth grade. He lives in a suburban neighborhood near Des Moines, which is the capital of Iowa. He goes to a public elementary school in his district, where he heard this story. He then tested the theory in the bathroom at his own house. He insinuates that he was never fearful of this story nor did he believe it, and carries this tone throughout his telling of it. 

Context:

This is a transcript of our conversation over the phone. Lately, he has been telling me stories about what goes on during school, though this conversation was prompted specifically for this collection project. I was curious about whether his generation still knew about bloody mary.

Thoughts: 

I was pretty surprised that “Bloody Mary” is still an ongoing tradition/ritual for kids in my informant’s generation. In class, we learned about Dundes’ theory on Bloody Mary’s connection to fears about menstruation in young girls, which explained why so many of my female classmates also knew about this ritual, and how they learned of it when they were in elementary or middle school. Thus, I was slightly surprised that my cousin’s son also knew about Bloody Mary, and that he learned about it from other boys. In this instance, the story of Bloody Mary doesn’t seem to attest to girls’ fears about menstruation, which is a potentially scary and traumatic first experience if not well-prepared for it, but rather, a sort of test of courage for boys. My informant’s commentary on the reason the story is told, which is that the relayer was scared themselves, suggests that some fear may be alleviated when the story is passed onto another person. The act of trying it, then, tests your courage to face this alleged horrifying sight of a bloody woman, which fully alleviates your fear when nothing happens.

For Dundes’ work on Bloody Mary, see:

Dundes, Alan. Bloody Mary in the Mirror: Essays in Psychoanalytic Folkloristics. University Press of Mississippi, 2002. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2tvfn2. Accessed 1 May 2021.