My True Ghost Story – Ang Mo Kio Flat

To coincide with this year’s Hungry Ghost Festival starting on 29^th July to 26^th August 2022, I decided to blog about my own true ghost stories. Don’t worry, I have only had about eight stories for now. Not enough to fill all 29 days. I will write more when I feel more comfortable sharing it.

Also, my favourite Singapore radio station Love 97.2FM plays Mr Zhou’s Ghost Stories every Friday at 11pm SGT and have published a few of my voice records on the air. I will attach the podcast links in the post but they are in Mandarin.

Just to recap, this year, the first day of the festival will be between 29th July (1st day of the seventh month) and the last day of the seventh month on 26th August. Earlier this year, I published a list of don’t dos during this festival and a few years back, I wrote an article about the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival. Please check out these interesting Chinese cultural posts.

My first story happened over 40 years ago and was told by my mother and sisters. My parents bought a brand new three bedroom HDB flat (2 bedrooms plus kitchen) at Ang Mo Kio.

My mother is a devoted Buddhist and has statues for praying; Guan Yin 观音, Guan Gong 关公, Tua Pek Kong 大伯公 and Tudigong 土地公. Every morning she will light the joss sticks to pray for blessings. Usually, the joss sticks are placed in an incense pot to hold them. When they moved on their first day, my mum heard a quarrelling sound coming from the incense pot the moment she bought it into the front door. She said it sound like men’s voices and they were fighting inside the pot. The pot was filled with only joss stick residue. Also, in the middle of the living room, there was a dead rat. It was not an auspicious moving day!

During our time living there, my sister and mum would always see dark shadows coming in/out of the storeroom.  I did always feel uncomfortable there, but I never saw any dark shadows. It is a storeroom without any window.

According to Feng Shui, in fact, the toilet is the most ‘yin’ place in the whole house. It is an entrance/exit point and hiding place for spirits. Don’t ask me why. This is what I was brought up to believe.

Many times, my parents wanted to move away but they had a hard time finding a new flat to move to. Luckily, we managed to move out in June 1991 so I didn’t need to sleep in the living room anymore with our small dog Roy.

My parents sold the flat to a young Muslim couple and according to our ex-next-door neighbour they didn’t stay there for long. Luckily for them, during that time, there were no restrictions. Nowadays you have to stay for at least 5 years before you can sell your flat.

If you ever move into your new home, some Chinese believe that you should roll a fresh pineapple (do check out my pineapple craft) into your house before stepping foot in it. This is to bless the new house with a lot of money. If it rolls out, you’d better think about moving out!