Strange Case of Rohanah. I see ‘ghost’ knock a glass out of her hand.
By Sit Yin Fong. Pictures by Han Hai Fong.
In broad daylight yesterday a poltergeist played tricks on a terrified 14-year-old Malay girl, Rohanah binte Samat. Among 50 witnesses, who watched the poltergeist in action in Rohanah’s house in Kampong Jalan Eunos, were myself and Sunday Times cameraman Han Hai Fong. Thrice Rohanah, squatting on the floor tried to drink a glass of soft drink. Each time something unseen violently knocked the glass out of her hand. The girl shrieked as the glass crashed to the floor. Her face was pale and taut, her hands and feet were cold. She was trembling.
As long as Rohanah did not move from her place on the floor, nothing happened. But as soon as she got up and walked towards the kitchen things livened up. A betel nut tray at her feet jumped a foot high of its own accord, spilling the betel scrapings. A small kerosene lamp suddenly and unaccountably crashed from the wall. Walking one foot behind her, I can vouch that nobody had touched it. The glass splinters spread across Rohanah’s path, as if to block her way.
And so it has been for the whole week. The poltergeist’s tricks are always played around the person of Rohanah, as if to terrify her alone, although other people may be around.
These are some of the more amazing happenings, which were reported to me by Rohanah’s frightened parents, Inche Samat bin Samadi, 54, a clerk, and his wife, Hafifah, and her grandmother, 78-year-old Kamsiah binte Mohd. Salleh. Last Monday, the whole thing started off with 12 stones, each weighing about a kati, raining down on the house, around the surprised and frightened Rohanah. She was not hurt.
Rohanah laid a cup of coffee, a plate of bread and an egg on the dining table for her father. The next minute, the whole meal had been neatly transferred to the floor.
As soon as Rohanah sat on a chair in the kitchen, another empty chair moved and arranged itself by her.
Chairs in the house were seen dancing madly about by themselves around Rohanah.
Plates and other crockery jumped out of Rohanah’s reach when she went to fetch them.
A flower pot which had been perched on a ledge for the past three years in the sitting room crashed to the floor when Rohanah walked past.
Rohanah’s nervous and worried parents took her to stay in her aunt Aphipha’s house nearby in the same kampong for two days. Then, the girl reported she was left in peace, except for one solitary incident, when “an umbrella opened by itself before my eyes.”
Rohanah, a former student of the Jalan Eunos Malay School, is now a nervous wreck. She cannot eat or sleep. The only person who can feed her is her religious-minded grandmother, Kamsiah. The poltergeist objects to anyone else feeding the girl. Food is knocked by some invisible agency as soon as it approaches her lips. Sleep is also impossible for the terrified girl before midnight. But sharp at the hour of midnight, the poltergeist’s tricks strangely stop.
The kampong people believe that Rohanah is being haunted by an “orang halus” (invisible man), who is known in Malay legends as a “mischievous” ghost. Inche Samat called in a bomoh on Thursday night. But apparently this only caused the ghost to be “more violent.” Now he is thinking of changing over to a “more powerful” pawang to drive away the ghost.
Meanwhile, members of the haunted household have been reciting verses from the Koran for the past two days, and are appealing to the spirit to leave Rohanah alone. Inche Samat said: “I have not slept a wink for the last three nights. I have been up at night to try to find an explanation for this curse.” Meanwhile, Rohanah has puzzled everybody by revealing a strange dream she had on Friday night. She told me: “In the dream, I saw a young man, half of whose face was red. He gave me a ring, and then ran away.”
Last night two young Englishmen, Mr Gary Stewart and Mr Lewis Jones, who are members of the Society for Investigation of Physic Phenomena [sic] were making plans for a scientific investigation of the strange case of Rohanah.
The smashed kerosene lamp.
Note the startled expression on Rohanah’s face (right), as a soft drink is knocked from her hand when she tried to drink it. This dramatic picture was taken by Sunday Times cameraman, Han Hai Fong, who had his camera trained on her. Fifty people were watching for the poltergeist to strike, as the girl was persuaded to drink from the glass.
The Straits Times, 31st August 1958.
‘Ghost’ has followed me, says Rohanah.
She fled from Singapore to Batu Pahat for rest cure.
Although a 14-year-old girl has fled from Singapore to Batu Pahat she has, she says, been followed there by a poltergeist.
The girl, Rohanah binte Samat, says that after having been plagued by the poltergeist in her father’s house at Kampong Jalan Eunos in August and September, she has found that distance is no refuge. Rohanah, however, has written to her mother, Che Hafifah, that the “ghost” has not been “as bad as in Singapore.”
“Now,” she said, “the ghost has been very playful and teases me. Sometimes it pinches me and on occasions makes Mak Ngah’s betel leaf crusher dance in my fingers.” (Mak Ngah is her aunt.) On several other occasions the “ghost” has thrown cloth bags to children in the house, Rohanah said.
Rohanah went to an uncle’s house at Pekan Koris. For three days she was left alone. But when she returned, she said, the poltergeist was at it again. A betel leaf container “flew straight at her.”
But Che Hafifah said that despite the pranks, Rohanah is happier at Batu Pahat. “We sent her to Batu Pahat to have a rest cure but it looks as if she can have no peace,” she said. However, “the visit has done one good thing anyway – Rohanah has become more used to the ghost’s tricks and when I visited her last week she appeared more cheerful.”
Since Rohanah left for Batu Pahat, the “haunted” household at Kampong Jalan Eunos has been peaceful, Che Hafifah added.
The Straits Times, 6th October 1958.