The Pochong

My first ever paranormal encounter was when I was still studying in a local university in Malaysia. It was my final year, and at that point of every student within my course (I studied engineering), were required to complete this one final course which holds a large portion of our credits. The marks in credits is what determines our grades. The higher the credits, the bigger amount of effect it determines on your grades. So if you flunked the course, there's no turning back, either you graduate below a 2.0 CGPA or you hold back another semester to repeat the course.

All the final year students were busy basically busy with the projects and everyone would stay up late together, making the campus grounds alive, though it was way past midnight. Students were scattered everywhere, with laptops, thick reference books, sitting huddling together in deep discussions. We were formed randomly in a group of four to five people per group. I got stuck with a friend of mine, Josh, who was appointed as the leader of the group. The two other members of our group were some random girls whom both Josh and I never met before.

The library was often full, so most of the students, including us, would take late night refuges in a half emptied building located within the campus ground. Half of the building were being renovated, however, the building provided many empty classrooms, equipped with tables and chairs, convenient for us to have our group discussions. Furthermore, the place had a very strong internet connection, which was a blessing for us. Normally, one room would be occupied not more than three groups. More than that, the room would looked too crowded. Stressful students like us, cannot focus within crowded surroundings. Our late night discussions often starts at 8pm and we would stayed up as long as we could managed. Our longest late night projects lasted until 4am.

On a side note, the building that we were using for our late night projects had some vast reputations as well. Students had reported seeing things they shouldn't have. I'm not talking some explicit erotic scenes (well we were all over 18 at that point, it's legal), what I meant was the building were known to be haunted. Such stories about sightings were very typical, the normal 'seeing white things floating around' or 'hearing people calling their names'. My favourite one was, hearing one of the students in my year, told me that he saw his friend walking down the corridor. He tried to call his friend to asked him where he was going as his friend was walking towards the dark constructed area. 'The friend', however just continued on walking slowly disappeared.

As for me, I never experienced any of the paranormal activity. I am aware that half of the building was abandoned due to the construction work, leaving it dark and empty. Of course there would be scary things lurking around. I always remind myself to be aware and vigilant of my surroundings. Because there were lots of students staying up late as well, it doesn't seem that scary to me. More strength in numbers I guess. Although stressful, it was one of my fondest memories during my collage years.

I had been rambling long enough, however, this is where my story should start. It was like any other night of our late night discussions. My group had arranged for a meeting together in one of the empty classrooms. We had divided tasks among ourselves and decided to stay up late and finish each of our parts together. Josh, my friend and also our group leader was a clever student. His physical was tall and built, looked strong on the outside, but spoiled and easily afraid of ghosts on the inside. Whenever we were doing our work together, he would request me to accompany him to the gents toilet because he was too afraid to go alone, and too shy to ask one of the guys in the room (there were two other groups in the room).

It was past midnight and Josh and I thought the group needed a break for a while, since we had worked our brain hard since 8PM. While we were resting, chatting and joking to each other, a good friend of ours, Farrah, who was in another group and had wondered off to find Josh and I, asked us if we want to look for something to eat. After considering for a short while, (without feeling guilty of two of our members) we both agreed, knowing that it would take us hours for the break. We waited for another friend of ours, Kaya, who wanted to come along too. The four of us decided to take my car, a small silver Kancil, since Farrah had rented out her car to some foreign students who wanted to go to the movies. All four of us cramped in my small 500cc car.

We exited the university's compound and headed towards the main road to look for any restaurants that were still opened. One of the best thing about living in the rural areas is that there were a lot of small stall-like restaurants, called 'warong', on the side of the roads. These restaurants often remains open until very late at night. It was dark the street lamps were scarce apart from each other and I needed to depend mostly the light beam from my car. I drove my manual car slowly, one of my friend making a remark that if I was to race a tortoise, the tortoise would win. Rude. Considering they were riding for free.

During my final year, I was renting a house, a few kilometers from the university. The house was cheap, however it was located near an old cemetery. It was quite chilling and I never dared to go home alone past 11pm. Whenever I had to do late night projects, similar to this one, I would rather stay overnight at the university. Along the road towards the clusters of the small restaurants, I knew we will be passing by the said cemetery. I don't know what came over me, but I was feeling a bit jokey that night. When we passes reached the cemetery, I stopped my car (the roads were empty), disregarding any thoughts that my comments might be offensive to the dead, pretending to be a tourist guide, I announced loudly to my puzzled friends.

"So everyone, if you could look to you left, you could see the abandoned cemetery!" I pointed out. "Imagine if there's a Pochong standing there on one of the graves."

I looked at my friends, and their face fell, paled face, they managed to crack a nervous laugh. Josh scowled.

"Oh come on," I rolled my eyes, and scoffed. I was just trying to be ironically funny, just wanted to point out that there's and old cemetery near my house. But my light joke attempt was not well received. That's because, we all believe ghosts are real, and if you don't watch what you're saying, you are going to get what you deserved. However I don't really think my remarks were that offensive. I pressed on the gas paddle and continued driving to our destination.

A brief description of a Pochong, it is one of the ghost I hated. Pochong are ghosts that are known in folklore for haunting graveyards. It is wrapped in a white sheet 9remnants of burial shrouds) tied in a knot at the head and feet. Because its hands and feet were bound, its choice of movements were hopping, wriggling, rolling, or even fliying (though I never could imagine a pochong fly). You might think that ghosts that wrapped in a white sheet were not that scary, well let me tell you this. It is NOT completely wraped, the face is exposed. Can you imagine being chase by a long white larvae shaped thing that hops vertically (or rolls horizontally), so fast that you could not even get rid of it, that the faster you run, it always catches up to you? Or if you wake up one night, a Pochong was lying next to you, with its face inches away from you? Oh yes, I haven't mentioned the face, my bad. Some people who had actually seen a Pochong said that the face was blackened, swollen and rotten, with a strong foul smell of decaying death. It is awful.

Anyway, back to the story, after a few minutes of driving in silence, as my friends seems to be upset of the Pochong remark I made. Clearly the ghost was not at all favoured. We found a restaurant that was still buzzing with life. We sat at a small round table with a nice candle in the middle, and ordered our food. The brightness of the restaurant drove all the upsets my friends were having and they suddenly in the mood for ghost's stories. Each of us had a story to tell, either the one we ourselves had experienced or we heard about.

The conversation was getting more and more intense and we kept sharing and piling up ghost stories, even after all our food had finished. We finally decided to leave when the owner of the restaurant asked us to leave as they were starting to close. I looked at the watch and to my surprised, it was already 3 am. Damn how the time flies. Josh paid for our meals (he's rich) and all of us went back to my small Kancil car. We drove silently, feeling full and refreshed. As we passed down the Cemetery on our way towards the University, we suddenly cracked out laughing, because we realized how stupid it was to be so afraid of ghosts.

We reached the parking area of the building we were nesting in for our projects, and reverse parked my car expertly, getting an amused reaction from Kaya. We exited the car, I observe cringely the way my friends slammed the doors louder than expected. I locked the door using the locked button, like I always do, and all of us started walking towards the building. Out of a sudden, my car alarm rang, blaring through the quite compound building. All of us jumped. I scowled and hurriedly went back to the car. I flashed my friends an annoying face as I knew one of the idiots did not shut the door properly, despite the loud slamming.

I turned off the alarm, opening and closing all four doors to make sure it was shut properly. I pressed the lock button again and started to walk towards my waiting friends. I only walked a few steps away from the car, when the alarm went off again. As I was close to the car, it sounded shrill and deafening. Weird, I thought. I looked at my friends and they started to become frantic. I walked towards the car and turned off the alarm again. I came closer to see inside if the doors were properly locked. It was locked and nothing was seen amiss. Then, again, the alarm went off. At that point I felt completely annoyed. I turned off the alarm again and peered inside the car. Then I heard a clicking sound. Surprised, I backed up to see the full view of my car, and to my horror, I witnessed the headlights of my car blinked on and off, on and off, on and off.

I freaking now how my car works. Its an old car. To turn on the headlights, the lights controllers needed to be twisted. It cannot automatically turn on and off like what happened at that moment. The clicking sound was the sound of the controller being twisted at the driving seat. On. Off. On. Off.

In fear and confusion, I froze when my eyes caught something white sitting on the backseat (I was standing in front of my car at the moment). Against the flashing headlights I could make out an outline of something being wrapped in white dirty cloth and had a knot on its head. In the middle of its head was a black dented hole, where its face should be. At that moment, suddenly the alarm blared again, which send me into a flight mode. I never ran as fast as I had ran in my life, towards the building. My loyal friends who was still waiting for me, ran too when they saw me. They don't need any warnings as they had felt something was off when my alarm kept blaring.

We did not really know where we were heading, as we were running blindly. Besides I couldn't just leave my car howling in the middle of the night like that. So we entered the ladies toilet that were just near the entrance. The toilet was spacious and could definitely fit us all in. To our surprised, Josh too was among us, looking pale, like the rest of us. "I don't care, I'm staying with all of you," he said, panting and shaking from both the run and the spookiness of the situation. I was quite the whole time. I never told my friend what I saw.

Some moments passed by, and my car alarm seems to have stopped. All of us exited the ladies' toilet and peered outside. None of us dared to go near the car, not after what I had saw. Although the alarm were off, the lights were still blinking. The Pochong was gone too. Coincidentally, my boyfriend, Davis, (ex-boyfriend now), was taking a stroll together with Farrah's boyfriend (husband now) heading towards the vending machine. Both were taking a break from their projects. They looked at us quizzically when they spotted us peering out of the entrance and asked us what was wrong.

Passing my keys to him, I sweetly asked Davis to go and have a look at my car. Both of the boys, knowing nothing, obliged and felt it was the manly thing to do. As Davis walked towards my car, he wondered aloud why was my headlights kept blinking. All of us laughed nervously, saying we have absolutely no idea.

My boyfriend turned the engine on, before twisting the lights off, he waited a moment and turned off the engine again when he observed nothing was happening. He returned my keys, assuring me there's nothing wrong with my car, and the boys proceeded back into the building. Farrah and Tasya excused themselves, leaving Josh and I walking silently back to our group members. The two members seems to notice something had gone wrong and made a mistake of asking.

Josh blurted out everything, leaving nothing unturned, even making a point that I didn't watch what I was saying about the jokes on the old cemetery. Luckily I never told him it was an actual Pochong I saw, sitting at the backseat. The next day, the story of how my car seems to be possessed to spread everywhere and people were thirst for the actual story coming out from my mouth, because it was my car. But nobody knew of the Pochong because I was saving it for this story. One of my friend, Kelvin, whom in my memory, was known to be a superstitious guy, believed that we we had accidently opened a portal, like a pathway between the two realms. Because we were sitting in a circle with candles on the table during our late night dinner that night, talking about ghosts.

I think it was bullshit. I think the Pochong was a little sensitive and felt offended by the remark I made.

-The End-