Haunted by History: True Tales from Indonesia

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[00:00:36] [SPEAKER_00] Like one hand he was carrying his head, and another one he was holding a leash that tied to a black dog. And when he turned around, he saw that ghost.

[00:00:47] [SPEAKER_01] Today we have an account from Indonesia, where ghost tales are steeped in history, tragedy, and the lingering presence of colonial trauma. My name is Edwin, and here is Sarah's true, scary story.

[00:01:11] [SPEAKER_00] In Indonesia, what makes the country unique is the fact that their history also tied in with mysticism. And the way people remember also ties in with anything related to ghost spirits. It's a country that is predominantly Muslims and also believe in superstitions.

[00:01:40] [SPEAKER_00] Although these ghost stories are really sad, they're also giving up a very creepy, non-jump scary scene. And these all happened to my family members. Jakarta is actually a very busy, bustling place.

[00:02:09] [SPEAKER_00] There's a lot of people, it's highly populated, traffic everywhere. But ghosts still exist because when it comes to ghosts, it doesn't matter where you are in Indonesia. If there's a place that is dusty, dark, and moist, they will definitely be there.

[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_00] But also Jakarta has like a rich history of being the capital city where the Dutch government used to reside, and now the Indonesian government resides. It used to be the capital city of Indonesia, but now they moved to Pontianak. Because the Dutch government ruled the place, there will be mentions of executions. There will be mentions of massacre.

[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_00] There will be mention of anything that is a rural part of history that end up becoming ghost stories. This happened in 1980s. This was around the time when my father was in university. This haunted sighting occurred at an office house that one of his brother-in-law's own.

[00:03:27] [SPEAKER_00] His brother-in-law was a wealthy man and the son of a military general who so happened to own a cotton factory in North Sumatra. This office house was around the area of Sisingamangaraja, where Indonesia is one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city of Jakarta. They were old houses, naturally.

[00:03:57] [SPEAKER_00] Essentially, this office house was just a two-floored home that was large enough to fit in office space. In Indonesia, this is very common. They would have office on the first floor, and then the second floor will be a house. All the amenities that you have in the house, it's right there. Some of my dad's friends stayed in there.

[00:04:27] [SPEAKER_00] You know, when you're in university, right? Especially like when you're about to graduate, most of the times you pull an all-nighter. And you essentially do your work at around the devil's hour, as they say, midnight. You know, from midnight to 3am. Like always around that time. And that's exactly what he was doing. He was doing his final paper. He was using the office portion of the house. So it was the first floor. Because there were a bunch of computers in this office.

[00:04:58] [SPEAKER_00] He went to use one of these cubicles where they had the computer to write his assignment. It was very dark. So the only source of light was just coming from the computer screen. He was very focused on his work. He was typing in. He didn't realize that time was going when he turned around.

[00:05:28] [SPEAKER_00] He saw a figure of a man dressed in traditional Middle Eastern outfit. He was just taken aback because why is there an Arabic man standing in the house? The man was just standing not far from him, but it was like in a distance. Like basically the end of the office met the stairways.

[00:05:58] [SPEAKER_00] He saw this individual standing by the stairs and then continued to do his work. He turned around. The man was still there. This individual did not even look at him. He was just staring at the stairs. And for some reason he slowly started making his way up. Except he never seemed to reach the top.

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_00] At some point he would return back to the very start of the stair. My dad's friend was a little bit taken aback. But at the same time he was curious because what is this man trying to do? So he wanted to check on him. He walked up to this person.

[00:06:53] [SPEAKER_00] Because maybe this person was lost or maybe he was one of the residents of the house that he didn't even know about. So he approached this individual. He looked alright. Except when you notice, he didn't try to go upstairs but he had no legs. It was basically faded.

[00:07:22] [SPEAKER_00] So the entire time this figure was just floating. Because he had no legs. It was a ghost. Everything was just blurry. The moment you reached his legs area. This ghost, he continued to float upstairs. Never reached the end. But as soon as his friend saw, like his friends approached the ghost, he went upstairs. And then slowly he faded into the darkness.

[00:07:52] [SPEAKER_00] He almost disappeared into the air. Gone. He was gone. Obviously that freaked the friend out. He ran out of the house and accidentally bumped into a security guard. He said, oh my god, oh my god. I just saw a man floating up the stairs. And then the security guard said, was he Middle Eastern? Or at least dressed like a Middle Eastern man?

[00:08:22] [SPEAKER_00] And then the friend was like, yeah, how do you know that? And so the security guard said, oh yeah, let me explain. So this ghost, he was the patriarch of the family who was the original owner of this house.

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_00] So this office house actually used to be a house that belonged to a relatively well-to-do Middle Eastern family who were also Indonesian citizens. This family, they were just like a relatively well-to-do, unassuming family. They're like, they're just minding their own business. Just like a normal family would. And everybody lived pretty normal lives until in the 1940s.

[00:09:18] [SPEAKER_00] So basically in Indonesia, during the period of the Second World War, we were invaded by the Japanese. The Japanese took over because the Dutch was basically attacked by the Germans, as we know. The Dutch power weakened. So the Japanese were basically trying to invade the entire Southeast Asia. They came in to other places.

[00:09:48] [SPEAKER_00] People heard about what they did in the Philippines, but they also did the same thing that they did in the Philippines to Indonesia. It's no exception to what they did to this family. Because when the Japanese arrived in Indonesia and invading the place, they went to this family's home and start massacring the entire family. It was a bloody mess. There were no survivors.

[00:10:16] [SPEAKER_00] Everybody were brutally murdered. Because a lot of the people in this family didn't die peacefully, there were always a few family members who were still around the house haunting the place. But the thing is, they never disturbed anybody. They were just existing. They were just existing. They appeared, but they never ever interacted with anybody.

[00:10:49] [SPEAKER_00] But after hearing that story, as scary as the ghost presence, it was also very horrible to hear what happened to this family, given the circumstances. Because again, they're just a normal well-to-do Arabic family who unfortunately got entirely destroyed by the Japanese during this horrific part in Indonesian history.

[00:11:24] [SPEAKER_00] This was happening around 2010 at my aunt's neighborhood. Now, my neighborhood is a very crowded yet haunted place, especially since it was not far from a railway station and train tracks. There have been instances of people seeing ghosts at the train tracks, people getting killed at the train tracks by accident.

[00:11:54] [SPEAKER_00] There will be people on their motorcycles going back and forth. You can hear a rooster cock-a-doodling from afar. Oh, it was like, it was a cacophony of noises, basically. But I love it! Anyway, as you can tell, very busy, bustling place. This is Jakarta, again.

[00:12:10] [SPEAKER_00] So you would cross the train track and then you would enter a bunch of convenience stores, general stores, and then you see a bunch of houses. In Indonesia, the houses tend to be much smaller but stacked. Some of these houses have two floors.

[00:12:36] [SPEAKER_00] A lot of them, due to high crimes in the country, they had high fences. It just so happened that my aunt, right across her residence was her in-law's house. It had pretty tall fences with jagged ends that sort of looked like the sharp part of a spear.

[00:13:04] [SPEAKER_00] Just to avoid burglars from entering in, in case they were climbing the fence, they could get injured by these things. This house had, in the front yard, there's the driveway with a garage. And next to this driveway, there was the main entrance of the house. And then there's another driveway.

[00:13:31] [SPEAKER_00] But in between these two driveways, there was like a small little garden where they had pebbles, potted plants. In the middle of it, there was a tall weeping fig tree. If you look at it at night, it was actually pretty spooky. Because when you think of like weeping fig, especially in Indonesia, weeping fig was described as very haunted.

[00:14:04] [SPEAKER_00] It looked like a normal tree. It had like the attributes of a typical tree. One of those trees in Indonesia that was described as very business-ism elements to it. Because the only difference is that weeping figs would have vines that were attached to the trees and they would go downwards. So it's almost as if like the trees have like strings.

[00:14:35] [SPEAKER_00] And they would like just like gently sway at night. It's just giving up like very creepy vibes. It was sort of spread out, almost like covering the balcony part of the house. Because this weeping fig tree tend to be associated with anything ghost related.

[00:15:01] [SPEAKER_00] There will be ghosts that is, for example, ghost of Kuntilanak would stay there. Kuntilanak is basically like a very common ghost in Southeast Asia. She would have long, dark hair that pretty much covered her face. She would wear a wide, long-sleeved dress. And there are actually like signs where you know she's near.

[00:15:27] [SPEAKER_00] If you hear weird animal noises, that means she's there. If you hear her laughing, she's there. Now if you hear like a faint laughter from her, like as if like she was like laughing from afar, that means she's very close to you. But if you hear her very clearly as if she was near you, that means she's far away from you. That's kind of like how you know this ghost exists. And usually this ghost is associated with the weeping fig tree.

[00:16:02] [SPEAKER_00] And it just that so happened, there's a particular afternoon where one of the housemates that would belong to the in-laws got possessed by one of the ghosts who reside in that tree. I think she was just doing like her daily chores when she fainted and people found out she got possessed by a ghost of the weeping fig tree. And then they found out it was an old woman.

[00:16:32] [SPEAKER_00] There were a bunch of elderly women spirits residing in that house, but one of them in particular possessed one of my aunt-in-law's housemaids who were working around the house front yard at the time. They ended up calling people from the nearby mosque to exorcise her basically. It went pretty well.

[00:17:04] [SPEAKER_00] I think the saddest part sort of come when they told the story about who this ghost was and the history of the area where this situation occurred. I've seen people getting possessed and stuff like it's like, this is another Tuesday.

[00:17:31] [SPEAKER_00] The neighborhood where my aunt and her in-laws live, it used to be an area where during the Dutch colonial times, they used this place to execute people. They did public executions here. This weeping fig tree in particular was used for public hangings.

[00:17:59] [SPEAKER_00] The ghosts who reside in this tree, some of them were victims of this horrible execution method. The people who are hung there, they still reside in that tree. They were not rest easy. They didn't die like the peaceful way. They didn't go into another life gently. So essentially, they stayed in that tree for so long.

[00:18:29] [SPEAKER_00] And who told this story? None of them better than the people who exorcised their housemates. So anything that you hear in Indonesia that is creepy and scary, usually there are horrific historical connotations to them. Our ghosts are tied in with our brutal past. Because one is basically a victim of a massacre and the other one was a victim of a public hanging.

[00:19:02] [SPEAKER_00] Not all these people were executed because of the crimes that they deserved. Some of them were just hung because, again, colonialism was evil. So they basically were unjustly executed, unjustly tried and executed, and that's where it landed.

[00:19:35] [SPEAKER_00] This particular ghost inspired a really not so good horror movie in my country. But when you look at... Again, this ghost also tied in with Indonesian history too. There's a public cemetery in Indonesia called Jiruk Purut. There was a graveskeeper who was overseeing the cemetery when he encountered the ghost of a Catholic priest.

[00:20:05] [SPEAKER_00] But this Catholic priest was headless. Like one hand, he was carrying his head and another one, he was holding a leash that tied to a black dog. And this graveskeeper said that, like the moment I know that this ghost was there, it was basically when I heard the sound of a dog howling or barking like that. And when he turned around, he saw that ghost.

[00:20:34] [SPEAKER_00] And this story ended up spreading throughout the country and it got a hold of a bunch of curious high school kids. And so they're like, hey, hey, you know, let's check this ghost out. Let's do some kind of like a horror truth or dare type of moment where we will find this ghost. And they did end up encountering this ghost. And they also reported that it was there, but it didn't do anything. It didn't possess them. It didn't hurt them.

[00:20:59] [SPEAKER_00] It's just that apparently like people suspect that this ghost was just trying to find his way to his own grave, which is in another cemetery called Tanakosir. Which is like way far away from this Jirukpurut cemetery. He uses dog as a way to guide him there.

[00:21:18] [SPEAKER_00] Not many people knew the history of the man who ended up becoming this particular ghost. But the most common story is that this man was when he was alive, he was a Dutch Catholic priest who ended up becoming an Indonesian citizen after, you know, the country became independent.

[00:21:46] [SPEAKER_00] This was like around the time where Indonesia was in the process of deporting a lot of Dutch people back to the Netherlands. After a century of colonialism, there are a lot of people that every time there are, you know, a lot of people that every time they see Dutch people, they start having this like fight or fight response and they would get really agitated and angry because of those years of oppression. So he was just, you know, minding his own business.

[00:22:16] [SPEAKER_00] He was just walking the street, minding his own business when people attacked them because they thought like he was one of those Dutch people who were like still living in the country and like trying to basically invade Indonesia again. Like they ended up like attacking him using a sight and this sight sort of like chop off his head. They were attacking him so hard. They were like basically just like hacking into him to the point that his head just

[00:22:45] [SPEAKER_00] just detached from his body and he obviously he passed away. And that's why how he became a headless ghost. He was like a like a Dutch Catholic priest who did nothing. That's the thing about Indonesian ghost stories. Some of them are actually related to colonialism and just our brutal past. When I think of these stories like they are scary, but they're also sad.

[00:23:13] [SPEAKER_00] Don't get me wrong. I'm afraid of ghosts. But whenever I heard the origins of these ghosts, that's the part where I'm like stuff was like it was like very, very sad. It was also very brutal. When you think of like these ghost stories, like they like they don't just come out of nowhere. Ghost stories in Indonesia always involve dark magic mysticism and colonialism.

[00:23:53] [SPEAKER_01] Thank you, Sarah, for sharing your experiences with us. I learned a lot about Indonesia and its haunting past. And if you have a true scary story that you want to share, find our form over at TrueScaryStory.com. Scheduling for this episode was owned by Bianca Chavez. Editing and sound design by Sarah Voorhees Wendel of VW Sound. Additional production by me, Edwin Covarrubias and the Scary FM team. If you're following the show, we'll be back next week with another story. Thank you very much for listening.

[00:24:23] [SPEAKER_01] Keep it scary, everyone. See you soon.