A stone-throwing ‘ghost’ injures 20 people.
Showers of ‘pebbles from heaven’ fall on workers.
Priest called in to get rid of intruding spirit.
Kuching, Thursday. A shower of stones believed to have been thrown by a ghost injured about 20 workers in a pepper garden in Miri. Large pepper-gathering baskets were lifted from the ground and sent spinning into ditches. One basket was tossed into the air and came to rest on a pepper bush. Policemen called in to investigate were also injured.
Terrified children told their elders that they saw the ghost clearly – “an elderly man with long hair and very white teeth who laughed wildly as he called down showers of pebbles from heaven.” None of the older people saw the ghost but they said they saw the stones coming from “the sky”.
The next day a Chinese priest was brought to perform a ceremony to exorcise the ghost. The ceremony centred around a basket perched on the pepper bush. Witnesses said that the basket “trembled violently” while prayers were being chanted. A few minutes later the basket fell from off the bush to the ground, and the spirit departed. Has the ghost gone for good? The pepper gardeners are wondering!
The Straits Times, 18th April, 1958.