Nelson Rd. Ghost Scares 8 Families.
Ghost No. 2 takes over from Ghost No. 1.
‘Flying knives, jumping jars.’
Eight families, numbering about 50 people, have been so scared by Singapore’s newest ghost, that some of them have left their rooms to live with their neighbours. Ghost No. 2 – No. 1 was, until two days ago, operating five miles away – has been haunting the cubicles of Block H of the Harbour Board labourers’ lines in Nelson Road since Tuesday night, the Straits Times was told. And, like Ghost No. 1, the Nelson Road ghost has singled out a woman for its special pranks. These were some of the things which the woman, 28-year-old Isa binti Gani, said happened to her on Tuesday night:
At about 7 p.m., while she was alone with her baby in her room, fist-sized stones began to rain down from the ceiling. At about 8 p.m., she put down a pair of scissors by her side. It suddenly disappeared. At 9 p.m., a kettle of water boiling outside her room “suddenly flew off its stand” and fell by her side. About 11 p.m. “an evil object, something like a cat’s eye, glided on the ceiling staring at me.” It disappeared when she poked at it with a long bamboo pole.
Yesterday afternoon almost a nervous wreck, Isa sat in her room discussing the night’s happenings with her husband, Suleiman bin Kupera, and two labourers Latiff bin Mohamed and Letchuman. Suddenly, in the presence of all four, a four-inch vegetable knife “rose from a basket near the wall and flew at a terrific speed” across the room. Then, at about 7 p.m. yesterday, a Straits Times reporter and a cameraman had walked only a few feet away from Isa, when an empty aerated water bottle crashed from nowhere and lay smashed to pieces on the floor. No one actually saw from which direction the bottle had come, but it appeared to have been one of a row of bottles standing on a ledge, at least 20 feet away. Isa, terrified by now, tried to rush out of her room, but was calmed by her friends.
Members of the other seven families said that they had also experienced similar happenings. One of them, Suppamah, a 26-year-old Hindu woman, said that when she tried to get some chillies yesterday from a ledge, a small jar of salt “jumped up” from a low table and struck her on the chest. All the occupants reported that “stones of various sizes, including a big brick” fell at various times yesterday.
Most of the womenfolk and children have now left their rooms for accommodation in neighbour’s quarters. The men are staying behind.
Left: a section of the crowd outside the Nelson Road labourers’ lines yesterday waiting to see the ghost in action.
Right: Isa, the ghost’s chief victim, looks at smashed pieces of a bottle, which fell behind her yesterday “from nowhere.” – Straits Times pictures.
Isa shows some of the objects which she said were “mysteriously moved about” by the ghost. Straits Times picture.
The Straits Times, 26th January 1950.