My very own encounter

After all the stories which came from my friends, I guess the time is right for me to share one of my own. It was not my original intention to share this as the experience has got no morale behind it but I guess we are all in for the thrill isn’t it?

It was the year 1993; the actual date could be around 6 November. I can pin-point the date to this level of accuracy as I am now staring at the photo. I see a lot of faces. It is the group photo for the course I attended in Outward Bound School (“OBS”) in 1993 and it has the date printed in the photo.

OBS is an international non-profit educational organisation which trains participants about social survival in a series of outdoor activities. The OBS in Malaysia is located in Lumut, Perak. All participants are to go through medical check and be certified as fit before they are admitted. Further, participants are to sign on a declaration which says that any unfortunate event is not the responsible of OBS. Basically, if you die, it’s your problem.

And indeed, plenty has died in OBS due to its tough activities. With the OBS in Lumut being a very old institution, it was believed that the place is very haunted. I remember the dormitory that I stayed in; there was no partition between the beds and the bathroom. If you are lying on the bed and you turn to side facing the bathrooms, you can see dark cubicles next to each other. When it’s dark and you are in the dormitory up the hill… trust me… it is quite a horrifying sight.

Anyway, one of the activities we had to do was to canoe from Lumut across to Pangkor. If I remember correctly, we started our journey at 8.30am, we reached Pangkor past 12pm. That is 3.5 hours of non-stop canoeing. It was fun in the first few minutes. But by the time you are in the middle of Lumut and Pangkor, you just feel as though you can die. I remember I got out from my canoe and fell flat on the beach as soon as I reached Pangkor beach, no longer able to feel my arms. Oh yeah… we had to canoe to other side of Pangkor, the side facing the Straits of Mallaca.

Oh, one of the activities I have to complete was this thing called ‘solo camp’ which means you go to the jungle alone and camp there… alone… overnight. It was one of the bravest things I have ever done in my life.

I have digressed… time to go to the juicy stuff…

It was a very long beach and we parked our canoes on one side and strange enough, we were asked to pit our tents about 200m away from the canoe parking area. After a series of activities, night time came and guys are to do night watch. Girls just sleep. Oh yeah, there are girls and there are some really funny stories, perhaps another time.

Me and my friend were in charged of the watch some time past midnight. We were both very tired and 2 guys sitting under the star was certainly not the most romantic thing to do. And so, we decided to take a walk.

We decided to head to the kitchen area which was quite deep into the campsite. Reason? We heard some guys saying that they “saw something” in there and we tried to be adventurous. We saw nothing, only pots and pails of water and tent with can food. Though we saw nothing, the sight of everything in stillness in the middle of the night inside the jungle can be quite… eerie…

Feeling disappointed, we decided to look for ‘more fun’. I suggested that we check out the canoe parking area which was 200m away. My friend agreed. After all, we had nothing to do. And off we went…with out torch-lights in our hands…

It seemed like we reached the area in no time. With our lights shinning all over the place, we could only see canoes stacked on top of each other. There was nothing. And so, we decided to walk back. As soon as we turned to head back, I heard a sound, a very strange one. It’s like someone is scratching something.

“lei thang do mo?” (did you hear that?) I asked.

My friend didn’t reply me and turned around to face the source of the sound, so did I. The sound came again… syiak… at that time; our lights were pointing the group. Our natural instinct led us to shine our torch-lights at the source of the sound.

What we saw was a figure, in white… with it’s back facing us… with long hair. It was scratching one of the canoe but when we pointed our lights to it, the thing stopped and began to turn… slowly. Why I refer the thing as ‘it’? It’s because the thing was not of this world… the way it turned showed that it was not of this world.

Me and my friend did not wait for the thing to turn and face us. I still remember our reaction. We turned and looked at each other at the exact same time… and at the exact same time, we sprinted back to our campsite as fast as we could. We never talked nor told anyone until the next day.