That time when I lived in a haunted house

It's Hungry Ghost month so what better time to talk about the haunted house I lived in?

Casually over dinner, like he was talking about an item on a shopping list, my Dad said: “Eh. You know? I think that house we lived in was haunted.”

The family paused just for a few seconds.

And just as casually, we said, “Yeah, we know.”

And one by one, we shared our ghostly encounters in that house numbered 14.

(You’d think us Chinese folks would get a clue not to rent a house with the number 14¹, but I suppose we were daring the Heavens to do something about that move, and it responded.)

After hearing our stories, my Dad chuckled and said, “Heh, interesting.”

And went back to eating dinner.

A friend, after hearing my ghostly tale, looked at me wide-eyed and asked: “Why in the world did you not move out of that house??”

I blinked and realised that the thought had never crossed my mind.

So, I asked my Dad. “Hey, Daddy, why did we not move out of that haunted house?”

Dad looked at me like I was asking him why he didn’t become an astronaut. “What for?”

“Uh, because it was haunted?”

“You got used to it, didn’t you?”

“Well….”

“So, what’s the problem?”

Mum chimed in. “Do you know how inconvenient it is to move houses?”

Welcome to the Asian household, where even ghosts do not evoke the slightest pang of sympathy from parents. It’s just a ghost-lah why so worried? Tiger parenting at its best!

And, I am seriously not kidding when I say this, but my parents only got worried about the ghosts when my sister’s mathematics scores started dipping from her usual As to Cs and their theory was that the ghosts distracted her from her studies.

That’s why I said that this clip below is absolutely 100% what would happen in an Asian haunted household. My household anyway.

To be fair, and even my parents agree with me, the ghosts were not that bad.

For one, they never threw things at us. They just stared at us from different corners of the house.

Tolerable.

Though I have to say my first encounter in House 14 was rather dramatic.

Cursed with the ability of awakening at every noise, one night I was awakened by a low moaning sound coming from the foot of my bed.

Before opening my eyes, I realised that the room had gone incredibly cold, and the woman – if that was its gender – was crying really loudly. I knew immediately that this was not a living thing.

I opened my eyes, and I saw a bluish figure standing at the foot of my bed. I could not see a face, I could not see any limbs. It was just a human-shaped shadow, like someone had cut out a human-shaped cutout from the fabric of reality.

At that point my only thought was: There’s a freaking ghost in my room, and it’s really upset. It better not know that I know it is there OMG I hope it leaves soon!

The rational part of my brain was going: “Oh wow, it’s totally true when they say that the temperature drops when a ghost appears. How interesting!”

So, I closed my eyes and hoped that the ghost didn’t realise I was awake. I don’t know how, but somehow, I dropped off to sleep.

The next day, I didn’t tell any of this to my family, not even my siblings.

It’s true, all of this. It’s not a figment of my imagination, nor was it a dream.

However, I kept it from my family because I didn’t want my father to be upset (or my mother to be majorly freaked out). You see, I was convinced then it was my grandmother – only she passed away a week ago then. I didn’t want my father to think that she was upset in the afterlife.

Strangely enough, we each had our separate encounters, which we didn’t know because we kept it from each other until we shifted out!

And when we spoke about this years later, we realised that all of us shared the same “insights”. We thought that the master bedroom was spooky, and we “felt” that someone was staring at us from the exact same spot!

My sister said that she saw someone with long hair walking into my room, and when she went inside to have a look no one was there.

My brother told us that he saw an apparition in the haunted master bedroom.

One night, my mother was on the bed folding clothes and he was on the floor playing. The door was open. Suddenly, he sensed “someone” at the door. To his shock, he saw a shadow standing there. It had arms, and it was reaching for my mother, but for some reason it couldn’t. The arms keep lengthening, but it couldn’t reach my mother.

It was funny that all of us kept our ghostly encounters a secret from each other until much later. I think we didn’t want to scare each other. That house was pretty normal most of the time, anyway.

Us Hokkiens call a haunted place lah-sam (Hokkien for ‘dirty’, a word to describe haunted), and House 14 was definitely lah-sam, but a mild kinda “dirty”, if you know what I mean. A tolerable haunting, even if some of its denizens followed us to the new house.

I read that in the West, there’s a divide between the spiritual and the intellect, that the two cannot meet. I’m not sure if that’s correct – so correct me if I’m wrong.

In the East, many of us believe in the existence of the supernatural, or have no trouble at all with the idea that they exist.

Perhaps my family is unusual, but the ruthlessly pragmatic way my parents dealt with living in a haunted house has made me, I don’t know, more accepting of supernatural phenomenon? Not too freaked out by it? I treat ghosts like a natural phenomenon that mankind would one day be able to explain. It’s there, you just have to live in a way that doesn’t piss that side of the universe off.

Like I mentioned earlier, some of the ghosts did follow us to the new home. One of them (or a few, anyway), liked to steal and hide things.

One time, I remember getting ready to get out of the house. I had a coat in my arm and wanted to wear it, so I decided to put down the car keys.

However, as I did so, I heard a voice saying, “Don’t do it! It will go missing!”

It’s not an audible voice per se, more like a thought that suddenly burst into my head.

I thought it was a weird thought to have, and since there’s no logical basis for it, ignored it. I placed the car keys on the cupboard next to me.

I wore the coat, and turned around to retrieve the keys.

It was gone.

I turned the place upside down to find it, but couldn’t find it.

After a while, exasperated, I yelled, “Damn it, I don’t have time for this! I have an assignment to go to! Give me back the keys!”

Not sure why, but I felt a prompting to go to the kitchen, so I walked into the kitchen … and looked under the fridge. The keys were there.

How did the keys get there? Who knows. I certainly didn’t put it there.

I grumbled at said ghost, saying that he has made me late for work and left without a thought.

I did worry for a second that maybe I had a dissociative moment and tossed the keys there, but that thought was even scarier than the idea of a ghost hiding things. And since things didn’t go missing in front of me again, I think it’s just a plain ol’ ghost.

The ghosts even made my poor dog act funny. He would refuse to walk through the hall. He would use elaborate routes to go to the kitchen, often, climbing and ducking under a series of furniture against the wall to get there.

So, one day, after years of watching the dog do this (and tripping over him by accident a few times), dad finally called a few monks to bless the house.

Only because the dog’s weird behaviour annoyed him.

Asian pragmatism at its best.

Cultural bits

Footnote 1: The No.10 and 4 is considered bad luck in Chinese because both numbers sound like the “death”. So, 14 is doubly bad.

The Hungry Ghost Month or Ghost Month falls during the seventh month of the lunar calendar, which is around August. According to Google, in 2024 it runs from August 4 to September 2.

During the Hungry Ghost month, the Chinese believe that the gates of the underworld have been thrown open, and spirits and ghosts are allowed to roam the living world.

Kinda like a vacation I suppose? Nice of Yama to do this.

Apparently the most active day for these spirits is on the 15th day of the month, known as the Hungry Ghost Festival, which will be on August 18, 2024.

Around this time, in Malaysia anyway, it is unsurprising to encounter food and joss sticks being laid out in front of homes or at street corners. (Like this photo I snapped just a few days ago in front of a shop lot.)

Offerings of food and incense laid out in front of a shop. Nearby, there’s some ash left from the burning of paper money.

They do this to appease wandering spirits, who is understandably in a bad mood after spending time in the Underworld. Sort of a “Here’s some food, please leave us alone and don’t hurt us” kind of gesture.

That’s why my Mum would often caution me about going out late at night around Hungry Ghost month. You, er, don’t want to invite a visitor home by accident or encounter some ghostly mishap outside.

Did I believe in all this?

Well, having lived in a haunted house, I never take traditions for granted. I think my ancestors were on to something…

PS: The featured image is a promotional illustration for the Chinese drama the Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty 2, which is an absolutely fabulous show by the way.

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