The Oily Man

"Oozing charm from every pore,

He oiled his way around the floor.

Every trick that he could play,

He used to strip her mask away."
lyrics from "You Did It" (My Fair Lady)

Those lyrics tell of a slick operator with perhaps too much grease in his hair, applying his smooth moves to charm and disarm the ladies. I have always liked those few lines of prose. I find it amusing. But this "oily man" is quite benign compared to the one that this post is primarily about.

Still in keeping with the Halloween spirit which is sticking around like peanut candy between the teeth, I am going to share with you the story of one of the Malay legends. I refer to the "orang Minyak" or Oily Man.

The Oily Man is basically a man who creeps about at night, completely naked and covered in black oil. The oil covering makes him hard to see in the dark and also makes him very slippery which helps him evade capture and also helps him squeeze pass tight spaces such as between the bars on a window.

There were in fact a rash of burglaries and rapes in Malaysia in the 1960s which were committed by men who had disrobed and covered themselves with oil and grease. Such cases still surface from time to time even till today. The perpetrators in these cases are entirely human.

However, the legendary Oily Man is said to be supernatural in nature. He is said to be able to be virtually invisible in the dark. Some say that he is also able to slip through spaces too small for humans to do so. It is said that the Oily Man had made a pact with the Devil. In return for giving him supernatural powers and wordly desires, the Oily Man must rape 21 virgins in 7 days.

A typical story would occur in a house or a dormitory where there may be more than one woman asleep in the room. The room may be locked and though the windows are open, they are secured with wooden bars or metal grilles. No ordinary intruder can enter but then the Oily Man is far from ordinary. He is able to slip through those bars while the girls sleep.

One of the women who is a virgin may suddenly awake to see a dark form over her with penetrating eyes which are visible even in the dark. She finds she can neither struggle or cry out. She is subsequently raped. Finally, she screams and her room mates rush to her assistance. It may be that they never see the orang minyak because it is said that he is able to make himself invisible to others apart from his victim. Alternatively, the orang minyak may be seen but he eludes capture on account of his slippery oiled skin and is able to escape via squeezing out through the window bars.

Till today, we sometimes hear of cases or incidents in female student or worker dormitories which are classified by authorities as examples of mass hysteria or are they really attacks by Orang Minyak.

Monsters Wanted Bad

Remember when men were real men, women were real damsels in distress and the monsters were real scary evil monsters. Ah, the good old days. As Halloween rolls by this year, it just isn't the same anymore. It makes a decent horror fan want to shout out; "Where have all the Monsters gone?"

Monsters are meant to lurk in the dark corners of our mind or in the dark basements of our homes from where they go on a rampage of mindless maiming and killing of innocents just because that is what they do and they are good at it. However, these days, our beloved monsters have been given a makeover by the spin doctors of Madison Avenue.

Let's start with Vampires. The two top hottest TV/Movie Vampire franchises at the moment are True Blood and Twilight. In True Blood, a synthetic human blood substitute has been created which means that vampires don't have to suck on a living human anymore and so many Vampires try to mainstream and become like any other normal citizen but they face discrimination, social profiling and prejudices. It is the new civil rights movement; "Equal Rights for the Victimised Vampires." If homosexuals fought to come out of the closet, vampires now fight to come out of the coffin, so to speak. Twilight takes the idea of the harmless vampire even further by introducing the concept of "vegetarian" vampires who choose not to harm humans.
Hmmm. So far from being the scary creature of the night penned by Bram Stoker, vampires it seem are socially disadvantaged, misunderstood and deprived of their rights. Heck, they can even be "vegetarian".

Werewolves or shape shifters were always my most favorite of the evil night creatures. But again, the modern werewolf is less primal beast and more sexy man and puppy dog charms. True Blood's Sam Merlotte changes into a cute puppy dog. Twilight's Jacob is a big hit with the ladies but his wolf persona also seems very much domesticated canine rather than vicious beast.

Sam shaved (L) and unshaved (R)

Jacob's Wolf impression isn't so impressive.

And so it goes. One by one all our favorite monsters have been emasculated and given a metrosexual makeover. Below are some of the taglines that are being used to change the way we view monsters.






DRACULA :- Just a tall, very,very dark and handsome romantic stranger in the night.














Werewolves:- In every man, there is a puppy dog trying to come out.
























Frankenstein's monster:- A victim of a bad plastic surgeon. It could happen to any of you and has happened to many in L.A.

























Witches:- Girls just wanna have fun.













The Squirrel wishes they would leave our monsters alone. Let them be the monsters that scared us in our childhood. Let them be all that they can be. Let them be BAD.

(Squirrel wants to know which is your all time favorite monster. Please take the poll on the side)

The Nutter and the Hag

This post is entitled "The Nutter and the Hag" but it could also have been called "the Humor and the Horror". Essentially, it is an up-date of two posts which i did earlier this month.

THE HAG
In the post "Read Before Sunset", I commented on the horror movie genre and the recent ascendancy of Asian horror movies and the relative dearth of really scary movies of late from Hollywood. However, I stand corrected. I just watched Sam Raimi's new movie and return to the horror genre in the form of "Drag Me to Hell". The plot was not the best but shall we say that it was sufficient of a platform to allow Mr. Raimi to showcase his directorial skills at filming an extremely creepy and scary movie.

It contains at least three of the five horror techniques which I described in the last post. It had levitation (which was very well done), it did a variation of the image in the back view mirror of the car and it had the old hag (see below).

Scary? And she's just an old woman......we aren't even talking about the evil spirits yet! I am a horror movie buff so it takes quite a lot to actually make me want to cover my eyes during certain times during the movie. In fact, half way through the movie, I felt I had already received more than my ticket's worth of scares.

I think "The Exorcist" is still safely installed as the top honcho of horror movies but "Drag Me to Hell" is surely to become a horror classic with perhaps a placing in the top 5.

Want to see a horror classic in the making? Then go see this movie but be warned, it is not for the faint of heart nor for those already suffering insomnia. The Squirrel has spoken!


THE NUTTER
In the post "Nuts even Squirrels Can't Love", I posted a picture of a "Swamp-Thing"-type nutter sitting on the subway next to a clearly bemused woman. I then invited blog readers to make fun of the picture by suggesting the possible dialogue between the "Thing" and the woman.

The squirrel has only one thing to say to all of you who participated.........."FLEE!" "RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!"

The Thing has relatives and they were not amused!

Read before Sunset

I love horror stories. For some perverse reason, I like to be so scared that I pee in my pants. Coupled with my preference for spicy, hot, tongue scalding chili encrusted meals, that should be enough to label me as a masochist. Anyway, I started on this post late last night but was scaring myself so much I decided it would be better to stop and only continue during daylight hours if only to evade getting nightmares when I slept.

Anyway as I was saying, I love horror stories. It doesn't even have to be a particularly good story. For example, the campy King of B-Grade Horror movies, "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" is so bad that it is good. You know what I mean?

However, as much as I like monster movies, I really, really like supernatural stories. When I was 12 years old, my 26 year old brother was supposed to take his girlfriend to watch the special midnight movie but for some reason, they had a tiff. I benefited from the rebound when he offered to sneak me in to see the movie which had an 18 only rating. I was thrilled. The movie was "The Exorcist" which in retrospect gives a clue to the subject of their lover's tiff. Not unexpectedly, I was severely traumatised by the movie and could not sleep for weeks as I awaited an arm to come out of the wall to grab me.

Although Hollywood has come out with many outstanding supernatural horror stories, in recent years the far more scary movies have come forth from the imagination of Asian directors such as "The Ring", "The Grudge", and "One Missed Call".

Below are some of the horror concepts that work well at getting my goosebumps up.

1. Shining eyes. Eyes that glow in the dark. Imagine looking around in the dark. Everything looks normal. Suddenly you do a double take and you notice two dots of glowing red in a dark corner or at the window looking in. Scary! This effect was used in "Amityville Horror" when two glowing eyes appear in the window.
2. Mirrors. Often a hint or glimpse of some horror in a mirror or shining surface is far more effective than showing the whole horror. This is probably because when you get to see the whole thing, it looks too much like a guy with makeup on. I used to have to drive along a jungle road at night. All around was dark except for my headlights. Occasionally, out of habit, I would look into the rear-view mirror. Fortunately all I saw was darkness. Can you imagine how I would freak out if something suddenly appeared out of the darkness in my mirror? The urban legend of Bloody Mary uses the concept of the mirror leading into the spirit world.
3. Images on Photos. Sometimes the horror is scene as blurry images on photos or as images on the negatives. This has an interesting horror factor when the story protagonist and the audience are suddenly aware that the entity had been along side them all the while. In one very scary Thai movie, the hero realises that he has been capturing images of a ghost when he takes pictures of his friends. He figures this out when his friends all die ghastly deaths. Now trying to protect himself, he uses a polaroid camera to try to see the ghost approaching him. He takes photo after photo but despite no image of a ghost, he still senses its presence. Finally he realises something and he points the camera on himself and when the photo comes out, he sees the ghost sitting piggy-back on his shoulder and smiling into the camera. Creepy!
4. Evil Clown. Take something that kids trust like a clown or a teddy bear and make it evil. Probably because it affects our childhood security blankets, this can be a very effective vehicle for representing horror. The clown, well, clowns around but when he smiles his broad smile, why are his teeth shaped like needles. This concept was famously done in Stephen King's "It".
   
5. The Old Hag. One of the scariest effect for me is the Old Hag. This is when someone sleeps and has a nightmare but it doesn't end when he/she awakes. Instead, he wakes, he cannot move, he feels a weight on his chest making it hard to breathe and as the fog of sleep fades, to reveal the old hag's ugly face just inches from his. The Old Hag is an idea that evolved from the idea of witches and/or the incubus/succubus. I think this is scary because we feel vulnerable when we sleep and we are afraid to wake up to such horrors. I know it isn't quite the same but I once went to sleep in a jungle camp and woke up to a dead giant praying mantis right next to my face. I gave a little shreek. If it was an Old Hag, I would have jumped out of my skin. Speaking of skin, Ol' Skinner has an Old Hag experience in the X-Files. In an interesting twist, although the X-Files' Old Hag was darn scary, she turns out to be a benevolent protector.
6. Levitation. Levitation is a very good horror vehicle if used subtly. It's most effective when you do not realise that there is any levitation to start with at the beginning. When you finally realise it, the horror seems to just roll over you. This was in the closing scene of "The Blair Witch Project" when the last survivor thinks she sees a friend and only realises a little late that his feet does not touch the ground.
   

What Horror concepts works for you?

Of Ghosts and Monsters

Here is another "tall tale" or rural folklore which when you think about it was the rural, agricultural community's version of the modern urban legend. Perhaps, it is actually more correct to say that urban legends are the modern equivalent of these rural folklore. This one is said to originate in the rough farm country of Nova Scotia in the nineteenth Century. If it has changed in substance, it is only because I cannot fully remember the original version but in the ways of oral tradition, have embellished the story when needed. There are probably many versions of this core story around today.

A poor widow had to move into an old abandoned farm house which the locals all shy away from because they said it was haunted. Recently widowed and almost penniless, she also had to take care of her mother and her two young children. So, haunted or not, she was just glad to get a roof over her family's heads. The whole family were of frontier stock; tough as nails and strong in spirit. She had two sons. The older lad, James, was a strapping, tall youth of 15 years and her second was but a toddler of five years of age. The toddler's name was Tom, named after his late father and like his father was of stocky build and short temper. Indeed, if all their problems were not enough, many pitied the poor widow because she had to cope with young Tom's wild and loud tantrums.

The family coped the best they could at the old haunted farm house. They did sense an eerie presence in the house but soon learnt that it could be accommodated as long as they did not venture into the basement larder at night. Whatever that presence was, it was strongest there. During the day, they ran down the stairs and as quickly as they could, take whatever food supplies they needed and then ran back upstairs. But they, never ever went down after sundown.

One cold and dark winter night, Tom was throwing a terrible tantrum in the kitchen and wanted applesauce on his boiled oats. He refused to eat and threw cutlery and plates about and yelled as loud as he could,"I want my applesauce!" His poor mother tried everything to placate the child but he was adamant that he wanted his applesauce and carried on and on. Finally, the Grandma said that she could not take the noise anymore and said that she would go down to the basement larder to get the applesauce. The widow reminded Grandma about the spirit down there but Grandma said she would risk it and go down.

At this point, young James, who felt the burden of being the man of the house said that it would only be appropriate that he go down and get his brother the applesauce. And so, with his heart pounding, he took a lighted candle and went down the dark stairs. When he got to the bottom, he opened the larder door and went in. Almost immediately a chill wind blew out his candle. He fumbled with his matches to re-light the candle but when he did, he saw a hideous ghostly face in front of him. The terrifying apparition said, "I am the Ghost with the One Black Eye. I am the Ghost with the One Black Eye. Be afraid, be very afraid."

James ran up the stairs screaming in fear and told his mother and Grandma about the ghost in the larder. Now as I have said, they were of frontier stock and tough people. Grandma knew that it took a lot to scare a brave lad like James but she also figured that she had faced up to many scary things in her long life and that she could stand up to this ghost. So Grandma, grabbed a lantern and went down the stairs. At the bottom, the hideous face appeared and went right up to Grandma's face and bellowed in an angry voice, "I am the Ghost with the One Black Eye. I am the Ghost with the One Black Eye. Be afraid, be very afraid."

Grandma was so scared that she ran up the stairs, jumping two steps at a time despite her arthritis. Little Tom asked for his applesauce and when he saw that Grandma had not got it, he started yelling again.

Now a desperate mother will do amazing things for her children. Despite what James and Grandma saw, she could not stand not doing anything to placate her youngest child. So, girding up all her courage, she told herself to just close her eyes, run down and get the applesauce and run back up. And so, she tried but once in the larder, she had to open her eyes to look for the applesauce and there right in front of her was the hideous face and the ghost boomed out loudly, "I am the Ghost with the One Black Eye. I am the Ghost with the One Black Eye. Be afraid, be very afraid."

Up ran the poor mother without the applesauce and joined James and Grandma cowering at the far end of the kitchen.

When Tom saw that his mother also came back empty handed, he jumped from his chair and before anyone could stop him, he went down the stairs. They were all so afraid for Tom but none dared to go down after him.

After what seemed like an eternity, Tom came back up the stairs holding a bottle of applesauce and licking it from his hands. His mother scooped him up in her arms in relief but asked, "Tom, didn't you see the Ghost with the One Black Eye down there?"

Still enjoying his applesauce, he lifted up his fist and replied, "Sure I did but now he has two black eyes!"


NOW FOR SOMETHING REALLY SCARY!!!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!!

A Halloween Tale

There was a certain small town in Maine which had grown round an old cemetery. As it took a long time to walk round the cemetery if one wanted to go to the opposite side of town, it was not uncommon for late night revelers to take a short cut through the cemetery. Tom worked the late shift at the local coffee shop and normally finished past midnight and would cut across the cemetery to get home.

One autumn night, it was particularly dark and there was some ground fog rolling in from the sea. Tom was making his way across the cemetery but he was finding it difficult to see well in the dark and fog and he kept bumping into gravestones. He was halfway across when he suddenly fell into a deep hole. He was stunned for awhile but as his eyes got accustomed to the dark, he quickly realised he had fallen into a newly dug grave.

He tried jumping and catching the edge of the grave so that he could climb out but the sides of the grave must have been at least eight feet deep and he could not jump that high. He tried doing a running jump but he still could not jump high enough. After trying for about twenty times, he got tired and sat down at the side and prepared to wait till morning when the groundskeeper would most likely find him. Before long, he dozed off.

About an hour later, he was awakened to the sound of drunken singing. It was a late night reveler taking a short cut through the cemetery. However, before Tom could call out, the man fell into the very same hole. From where he sat, he could barely see the man but he could hear the man get up and brush the dirt from his clothes while cursing under his breath. He then heard the man attempt to jump and catch the edge of the grave as he had and he also heard him fall heavily to the ground again.

After hearing the man try a few times and fail, he could tell that the man was beginning to panic. Therefore he reached out and put his hand on the man's shoulder and said " You're not getting out of here tonight."

The next thing Tom knew, the man screamed, jumped straight up in the air and was gone!

Undead Nuts from October 30th 2006

I wish I had time to do a good post for Halloween which is one date that I look out for. Unfortunately, I have not been able to do so. instead, I have used unholy science to resurrect a dead and buried nut from 2006. Beware.......it stinks!

Monday, October 30, 2006

Spirits of the Season: Fright or Hide

(Pennywise the Clown from Steven King's "It".)

What thrills you? Gets your adrenaline up, gives you a buzz that lights up our smile and your sense of general well being. In fact it makes you feel like superman. The scientists call it the “fight or flight” response; our bodies are being prepared to fight or to run for our lives. Either way, the adrenaline tones our muscles in anticipation,
our blood rushes oxygen and we feel powerful. For some, they get this high from riding roller coasters and kamikaze rides. Not for me, I just become catatonic – completely rigid, neither capable of fight or flight, not even sound unless you count moans.

However, since it is Halloween, let us consider my other favourite way of getting thrills which is to watch horror movies or read a scary book or listen to a campfire ghost story. I call this the “fright and hide” response. This is where once again the adrenaline courses through the
body, getting the heart beat up and blood rushing but the muscles are not primed to run but to crawl under the blankets and hide. A really powerful invocation of the response is manifested by other symptoms like “tingling in the spine”, “goosebumps” and “chattering teeth”. I love it. I much prefer this than actually risking my life on a roller coaster. Horror stories is just safe entertainment with no real risk of being flung to your deaths from a roller coaster ride. After all, there are no such things as ghosts and monsters………… right? Er, right?

What makes a good horror story? I much prefer good story telling than an over reliance on mutilated bodies. Hence, I discount movies like Halloween and Scream and such slasher movies as body count movies. Most times, a couple of dead bodies can be scarier than a bus load.

Camp fire ghost stories are just great because it makes use of our imaginations which is usually far scarier that special effects. Although, I did not think that the Blair Witch Project was exceptional, it made use of simple things to great effect. Think of the sounds outside the tent, the strange arrangement of twigs, the disappearance of friends. You never see the horror but you get hints of it. Right at the end when you see the man at the corner with his feet not touching the ground; well, you knewthen you had it even though you still did not
see the horror. But you could almost touch it. Or worse, it could touch you. Brrrrr.

Perversion of innocence is another scary tool. This is where you take something sweet and innocent and turn it into evil personified. This worked well in “It.” A clown is turned into a monster with pointed teeth but he still looks like a clown all the way down to his red nose and balloon animals. If you can’t trust a clown,……. Just imagine cuddlying up to Barney and then seeing him transformed into a velociraptor. Now that’s scary. It did not work with “Chucky” because that doll looked like bad news even before he showed his demonic side. Children are also meant to be innocent and that’s why they can be very scary. In “The Ring”, we are actually led to sympathize with the girl, Samara. Oh poor little girl, how she was mistreated by her parents. Later, when we realize that the parents were actually scared of her that we feel the full impact of her evilness. Yikes.

Removing our comfort zones. Some of us have no problems watching movies about
old haunted mansions or about werewolves lose in the Everglades. Why? Because we know that nothing will ever drag us to go to a haunted mansion or camp in the Everglades. It is far away from our comfort zone. Movies on Vampires in Transylvania? No problem since the last I checked, there were no direct flights from the Kingdom of Darkness to our international airport. However, what if the horror came into our house? What if it visits in our dreams even though we are tucked in our own beds? That is the premise that made Nightmare on Elm Street so horrifying (the sequels degenerated to a body count movie). What if hell itself wanted to draw you in through the static of the TV screen as it did in Poltergeist? Yaaaaah!

I think Hollywood horror movies have lost their way of late and have acknowledged that by
copying or reproducing some of the scarier movies from Asia. The Ring, Dark Water and The Grudge are some examples. Even in the case of The Grudge, I would still recommend the Japanese version despite the fact that I am a Sarah Michelle Geller fan.

A few more that I would recommend from Asia include;
a) Shutter (2004; Thailand; The moment the hero finally understands what was happening was truly chilling.)
b) A Tale of Two Sisters (2003, Korean; Is it real or is it imagined the evil that seems to appear?)
c) One Missed Call
(2003, Japanese; Okay, not one of the top ones but I like how they use an everyday item like the handphone to rock us out of our comfort zone).

Happy halloween. Sleep well. Have pleasant dreams and watch out for your teddy bear.

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Two Terrible Tales

I have tried to share about the beauty of Malaysia and the wonderful diversity of its people and I am grateful that many of you have said that you have enjoyed learning more about this part of the world. I am proud of Malaysia but I am also worried for it. With progress and development, we seem to have also lost many good core Asian values like good neighborliness, the extended family, the racial tolerance etc.

This last week has been a particularly shameful week for the country. Local news have featured two tragic tales which have left many of us shaking our heads. I must warn readers that the second story and picture is particularly graphic and unpleasant. If you feel you would rather not read about it or view the photo then please stop reading now and proceed no further. I feel compelled to share these terrible and shameful tales because this is the reality of Malaysia. The story of the country is incomplete without a glimpse of both the good and the bad.


Story One: Interference

Re-union of Marimuthu and his 6 children (original article NST)

Marimuthu is a rubber tapper. It is a tough job and his income barely provides for his family's needs. He is a Hindu and has 7 children (from 4 to 14 years old) with his wife of 21 years, Raimah. His ordeal began about 35 days ago when the officers of the Selangor Islamic Religious Department (JAIS) cme to his home and took away his wife and 6 of his children. His eldest son escaped the fate because he was not at home at that time.

JAIS officers contend that Raimah was actually born a Muslim and therefore they acted to prevent the 7 children from being brought up as Hindus. The 6 children were placed with Muslim foster families and their whereabouts were not revealed to Marimuthu. Raimah was sentenced to be detained for 100 days fro religious re-indoctrination.

The family maintain that although Raimah's parents may have been Muslim, she was raised as a Hindu and had married her husband legally but at a Hindu service and had raised her children as Hindu.

It has taken 35 days for Marimuthu to have his day in court but even then the result is not satisfactory and in my opinion reeks of coercion. The court was told that a settlement had been reached in which Marimuthu had agreed to drop all charges of wrongful detention against JAIS officers. The settlement allowed for the immediate return of the 6 children to their father. The father is free to raise them as Hindu but this was made possible only by his wife Raimah making a statement that she was born a Muslim and will always now remain a Muslim but that she releases her right to the children to her husband.

Furthermore, even though the law of the land recognizes their marraige as legal, the Islamic authorities have declared the marraige void. As such, Raimah can no longer stay with her husband but she is allowed to visit her children.

It is so sad. This is a couple who did not have much in this world. Yet they have worked together and lovingly raised a closely knit family. Now the parents are separated in fact even if they are still legally married (where is the logic there). The father will now have to try to cope with 7 children on his own. I have to ask what was the point of all this interference in to this family's life. Who has benefitted? What justice has been served? Indeed, the whole family has suffered and will continue to suffer because of this. I hope that lawyers and politicians of integrity and reason will not allow this story to end here on such a note of injustice.

Story Two: Inhumanity

The Suffering of Ganesh Kumar (org.article NST)

Ganesh Kumar came to Malaysia in search of a job that could give him an income that he could save towards making his dreams come true when he returned to India. He expected that the work would be hard and the hours long but what waited for him in Malaysia was sadly beyond anything he might have feared.

Ganesh worked for a family (parents and son) who ran a sauce making factory out of their house. However, more or less from his first day there he was abused by them. Stories are emerging that he was chained, beaten, denied food and even had scalding water poured on him.

He endured this treatment for almost 9 months. Then last week, his employer took him by car to a remote area and abandoned him in the forest. Local villagers found Ganesh wandering in the forest and he was brought to hospital. He was lucid enough to tell medical authorities what had happened but despite receiving treatment, Ganesh passed away after a few days. The cause of death was starvation. The doctors estimate that he had been on starvation rations for at least a month.

His "employers" have now been charged with murder. As the story unfolds, other unsettling details emerged. One of them was that two previous foreign workers have escaped from this same family and have accused them of abuse. Although those cases are still pending, the family somehow was allowed to take on new foreign workers. Secondly, this occured in a populated area and I have to wonder if some neighbors could have intervened earlier.

I cannot fathom how anyone could still treat another human life with so little regard today. I am moved to tears for Ganesh and his greiving family back in India. I feel as a country and a people, we let Ganesh down and I wish we could at least apologise. More practically, Malaysians individually and as a society must do some soul-searching and I hope act to prevent more abuse of defenceless foreign workers in our midst.

If this blog had a flag, it would be at half-mast this week in recognition of the two tragic and shameful tales above and what they say about what is wrong in Malaysian society.

Unnatural Sounds

PhotoCredit: LGS "Sarawak Peat Swamp"

My work often takes me into the equatorial rainforest. Although I have spent quite a bit of time in the jungle, each time I do so, I am acutely aware that I am just a visitor and there is so much that I do not know about it. I do know that you must always respect it and the animals. Not to do so is to quickly invite disaster. Tragedy befalls those who underestimate the strength of river currents or who ignore the dangers of wild animals. Many, even seasoned trekkers, can be overconfident but end up getting lost in even a small area of jungle. In many parts, the jungle can be so dense that during the day you cannot see more than a few feet into the underbrush and at night the darkness is complete. It becomes so easy to get lost, disorientated or to become panicked and afraid.

The native forest people, the Orang Asli, share tales of spirits of the forest and give advice on how to appease or avoid them. Pure superstition? When you are in the deep jungle, it is hard not to give weight to their tales which are told soberly and with gravity. Many outsiders who work in the jungle listen to their advice and follow their instructions dutifully.

Since visibility in the jungle is so poor, many of the tales allude to the sounds that one hears in the jungle. One simple rule that is almost universally followed in the deep jungle is never to call a companion by name. The Orang Asli believe in evil spirits that lure men into the jungle by calling their names. These men are never seen again. They believe that you remain safe if the spirit does not learn your name. Call an Orang Asli by his name in the jungle and he will turn white with fear and you have made a mortal enemy. When travelling in the jungle and if the party gets separated, they will call to each other by whistling but never by calling their names.

Others tell of hearing babies crying. Some have even claimed seeing a small woman clad in white in the middle of the jungle just off the trail and when they leave the trail to investigate, they are unable to find the trail again.

Hard to believe? There was a celebrated case of a University researcher walking along a long-distance trail in the National Park. She was somewhere in the middle of her party but it was so strung out along the trail, that she was out of sight of the front and the back parties. She disappeared and search parties failed to find her. She reappeared some 10 days later, back along the same stretch of trail where she disappeared. It is said that she thought she heard a voice call her name.

Logging often occurs in the deep jungle and the logs transported out by lorry on rough logging roads that run for many kilometers through the jungle. In some parts, lorry drivers advise each other not to be stuck out on the road at night. Occasionally, some lorries may breakdown. When that happens, the drivers try to lock themselves in the cab of the lorry with all the windows closed. Seasoned drivers will have curtains and cloths to cover all the windows. They say when the darkness comes, there will be a time when they hear a cacophony of strange shrieking voices outside their cab. They advise one another not to look out or they will encounter eyes floating in the darkness that will compel them to walk into the jungle.

I have never experienced any of this myself but I stick to the rule of not calling out some one's name. Once I slept in an open tent and could hear twigs snapping all around in the darkness (very similar to Blair Witch Project). However, that might quite likely have been just a wild animal moving about.

On the contrary, for me the eeriest experience I had in the jungle was silence. It was during the day and I was climbing up a hill. All through that trip, the jungle was full of sounds from birds chirping, leaves rustling and the ever present hum of the cicadas. I remember reaching a small plateau just short of the ridge top when I was stunned by the silence. The sun was bright and the light filtered down through the tree canopy. There was a light breeze and the leaves were rustling. But that was all. The cicadas and the birds had fallen silent. I felt the hairs at the back of my neck rise. I walked as fast as I could, feeling a chill that did not go away until I reached the top and there the birds and the cicadas were heard again.

Pure superstition? In the deep jungle, it seems easier to believe.

Malaysia's Lady in White

On All Hallow’s Eve, I thought I would regale you with a tale of the supernatural from the dark forests of Malaysia. Fear and superstition still reigns in many parts of the world even today but what I find interesting is that some beliefs have a similar theme. Are they the product of converging imaginations or perhaps based on a common truth?

One of the most common and oldest of these un-natural monsters are the vampires – the blood suckers. The Malaysian jungle is full of these blood sucking fiends. This is true. I have seen them and been bitten myself. Over here we call them mosquitoes and leeches. Ha! Ha! Just a bit of nervous humour before we get down and really describe the creature of the night that I have in mind.

Malaysia’s blood sucking fiend is the Langsuir. It is a female creature that may appear in two forms. Firstly, the Langsuir may be in the form of an owl and may often be seen perched at night on certain trees in the forests. Banyan trees are believed to be a favourite roost or perhaps a strangling fig. Do not go near if you value your life. The Langsuir is also believe to be able to appear as a woman. She is alternatively described by those lucky to escape as a hideous creature with long claws and fangs or as a beautiful woman. Some say that she takes on the latter to seduce male victims. In either form, she has long jet black hair reaching to the ankles and she is always wearing a white robe. Her hair hides a hole in the back of her neck which is the means by which she sucks the blood of her victim. In one version of the tale, the Langsuir actually possesses the victim and feeds from the inside.

The Langsuir is believed to form from women who had died within 40 days of childbirth after also losing their child. Elaborate rituals must be made on the body such as placing glass in the mouth, eggs under the armpits and needles in the hand to prevent the transformation. Otherwise the creature will transform and with a shriek, fly into the dark forests.

Garlic has no effect on this creature but if you somehow managed to do it, you can tame a Langsuir if you succeed in cutting its nails and stuffing her hair into the hole in the neck. At which point, she becomes a normal and very beautiful woman. Folk stories even suggested that men have married tamed Langsuirs; suffice to say not all those stories end happily.

The shriek of the Langsuir is also said to be so eerie that once heard, it is never forgotten. Interestingly, there a number of places in Malaysia which are named after the Langsuir including Gua Langsuir in Langkawi Island which is called the Cave of the Banshee in English. It is said, you can hear them there.

I hope this little Malay folklore has been interesting to you. Of course, it’s just a story but still if you have ever seen a banyan tree or a strangling fig at night in the middle of the jungle, you might understand why even seasoned forest travelers might give a cough, start to whistle and generally give these places a wide berth.

Believe it or not. Lone Grey Squirrel reporting from the Malaysian Rainforest.

Spirits of the Season: Fright or Hide

What thrills you? Gets your adrenaline up, gives you a buzz that lights up your smile and your sense of general well being. In fact it makes you feel like superman. The scientists call it the “fight or flight” response; our bodies are being prepared to fight or to run for our lives. Either way, the adrenaline tones our muscles in anticipation, our blood rushes oxygen and we feel powerful. For some, they get this high from riding roller coasters and kamikaze rides. Not for me, I just become catatonic – completely rigid, neither capable of fight or flight, not even sound unless you count moans.

(Pennywise the Clown from Steven King's "It".)

However, since it is Halloween, let us consider my other favourite way of getting thrills which is to watch horror movies or read a scary book or listen to a campfire ghost story. I call this the “fright and hide” response. This is where once again the adrenaline courses through the body, getting the heart beat up and blood rushing but the muscles are not primed to run but to crawl under the blankets and hide. A really powerful invocation of the response is manifested by other symptoms like “tingling in the spine”, “goosebumps” and “chattering teeth”. I love it. I much prefer this than actually risking my life on a roller coaster. Horror stories is just safe entertainment with no real risk of being flung to your deaths from a roller coaster ride. After all, there are no such things as ghosts and monsters………… right? Er, right?

What makes a good horror story? I much prefer good story telling than an over reliance on mutilated bodies. Hence, I discount movies like Halloween and Scream and such slasher movies as body count movies. Most times, a couple of dead bodies can be scarier than a bus load.

Camp fire ghost stories are just great because it makes use of our imaginations which is usually far scarier that special effects. Although, I did not think that the Blair Witch Project was exceptional, it made use of simple things to great effect. Think of the sounds outside the tent, the strange arrangement of twigs, the disappearance of friends. You never see the horror but you get hints of it. Right at the end when you see the man at the corner with his feet not touching the ground; well, you knewthen you had it even though you still did not see the horror. But you could almost touch it. Or worse, it could touch you. Brrrrr.

Perversion of innocence is another scary tool. This is where you take something sweet and innocent and turn it into evil personified. This worked well in “It.” A clown is turned into a monster with pointed teeth but he still looks like a clown all the way down to his red nose and balloon animals. If you can’t trust a clown,……. Just imagine cuddlying up to Barney and then seeing him transformed into a velociraptor. Now that’s scary. It did not work with “Chucky” because that doll looked like bad news even before he showed his demonic side. Children are also meant to be innocent and that’s why they can be very scary. In “The Ring”, we are actually led to sympathize with the girl, Samara. Oh poor little girl, how she was mistreated by her parents. Later, when we realize that the parents were actually scared of her that we feel the full impact of her evilness. Yikes.

Removing our comfort zones. Some of us have no problems watching movies about old haunted mansions or about werewolves lose in the Everglades. Why? Because we know that nothing will ever drag us to go to a haunted mansion or camp in the Everglades. It is far away from our comfort zone. Movies on Vampires in Transylvania? No problem since the last I checked, there were no direct flights from the Kingdom of Darkness to our international airport. However, what if the horror came into our house? What if it visits in our dreams even though we are tucked in our own beds? That is the premise that made Nightmare on Elm Street so horrifying (the sequels degenerated to a body count movie). What if hell itself wanted to draw you in through the static of the TV screen as it did in Poltergeist? Yaaaaah!

I think Hollywood horror movies have lost their way of late and have acknowledged that by copying or reproducing some of the scarier movies from Asia. The Ring, Dark Water and The Grudge are some examples. Even in the case of The Grudge, I would still recommend the Japanese version despite the fact that I am a Sarah Michelle Geller fan.

A few more that I would recommend from Asia include;
a) Shutter (2004; Thailand; The moment the hero finally understands what was happening was truly chilling.)
b) A Tale of Two Sisters (2003, Korean; Is it real or is it imagined the evil that seems to appear?)
c) One Missed Call (2003, Japanese; Okay, not one of the top ones but I like how they use an everyday item like the handphone to rock us out of our comfort zone).

Happy halloween. Sleep well. Have pleasant dreams and watch out for your teddy bear.