Spooked on Pulau Ubin

Joel Cooper Straits Times 6 Feb 11;

I have always prided myself on my refusal to believe in ghosts. Spine-chilling tales of spectres, spirits and bogeymen leave me totally unmoved.

My wife, however, is a different story. She won't watch spooky movies and sometimes even leaves the bedside lamp on to ward off things that go bump in the night.

This has caused some tension - especially as I'm a fan of films like The Exorcist and can't get to sleep unless it is completely dark.

But when we took a three-night break to Pulau Ubin, we found ourselves, for once, on exactly the same page.

It was already quite late when we arrived on the island and its ubiquitous bicycle hire shops were closing. We wanted to explore anyway, so we set off on foot along one of the many deserted roads through the forest.

As the shadows lengthened, the jungle seemed to come alive with unfamiliar and threatening noises. There is something about the twilight hour that can bring out a primal fear in even the hardiest of sceptics. In my native Britain, it is traditionally considered the time when vampires and werewolves emerge from their lairs to stalk the earth.

What we hadn't realised is that in equatorial Singapore, the sun sets far quicker than in our northern homeland, which we left four months ago to work at The Straits Times.

Before we knew it, it was nearly dark and we found ourselves still a long way from the resort where we were staying. Despite my determination to remain sceptical about the supernatural, I was starting to feel more than a little creeped out. Behind every twisted trunk I imagined some malign presence lurking, ready to pounce and devour us.

Without uttering a word, my wife and I began walking quicker and quicker until we were practically running through the forest in the direction of home, our nerves jangling at every little movement in the trees.

Without warning, a shadowy creature burst from the bushes. I let out an effeminate shriek and grabbed hold of my wife's arm for dear life.

The creature turned menacingly to face us. It had sharp-looking teeth and a bristling tail. It was about the size of a dog.

Hang on! It was a dog.

I carried on walking with my tail between my legs, feeling more than a little silly.

After that, I endured non-stop ribbing from my wife. 'Who's the coward now?' she teased.

Thankfully, my colleagues on The Straits Times news desk reassured me that I was far from the first person to get spooked on Pulau Ubin. They regaled me with hair-raising tales, including one about the Hantu Tetek, a voluptuous female ghost who sneaks into men's bedrooms at night and smothers them with her ample charms. To be honest, my wife was a bit more concerned about this one than I was.

Fleeing Ubin by boat won't keep you safe either, I was told. Apparently the ghosts are into island hopping.

Even gaudy Sentosa - where the only place you would expect to feel scared is on a roller coaster - has more than its fair share of spooky stories.

When night falls and the noise and bustle of the amusement parks fade to just a memory, holidaymakers staying in chalets have reported hearing fingernails scratching at the windowpane as if someone, or something, wants to get in.

Nobody can deny that the urban jungle makes a great setting for blood-curdling tales of the supernatural. During my four years working for The Sun based in East London, I would sometimes trudge home in the small hours through a grimy street said to be visited by the gory spectre of one of Jack the Ripper's butchered victims.

Yet it is brooding, untamed forests like Pulau Ubin's that truly allow our imaginations to run riot.

Cycling along the island's twisting tree-lined trails brought childhood memories flooding back of exhilarating afternoons spent mountain-biking with my friends near the village where I grew up in Surrey, south-east England. They say that area is stalked by the headless ghost of Sir Thomas More, who was decapitated by King Henry VIII.

Sometimes my friends and I would camp out in a back garden in tents or bivouac shelters built from branches.

Huddled inside our flimsy sleeping bags, we did our best to chill one another to the core with tales of murders, of unexplained accidents and of the restless souls they left behind.

Despite our boyish bravado, as the eerie glow of torchlight transformed our faces into hideous gargoyles these stories seemed to take on a terrifying plausibility.

I never really believed a word of them, of course. Still, I always steered clear of the woods at night. Well you can never be too careful, can you?

The writer, from England, is a Straits Times copy editor. He has lived in Singapore for four months.