Its the Hungry Ghost Festival again and today is the 14th day of the 7th lunar month. Yup, today's the day where you will see all the prayers being conducted by the roadside. Usually, its for the entire 7th lunar month in the Chinese calendar but today is the day you will get to see all the prayers done. It actually creeps me out.
Why? 'Cos I am a really superstitious kinda person. And I've had a few encounters before. Let me tell you one of them ..
This happened many many moons ago. My buddies and I cycled to Frasers' Hill and we stayed in a dormitory. Let me try to describe the dormitory ... its built in such a way that there is only 1 entrance which also serves as the exit. Its a very large door. After you walk in, there is an empty space kinda like a small hall and then another door. After the second door, its a large room where you will have beds lined up on the left and right. At the end of that large room is an entrance to the toilet and the showers. There are a few toilets and showers and there is no back exit.
On the second night, we were all seated in a circle in the centre of the large room playing cards and gambling with kacang. It was already past midnight and we were still gambling away when we heard the shower turned on and what sounded like someone showering. We didn't really bother with it and kept on playing cards and telling jokes. Almost half an hour later, the shower was still going on and one of us actually swore and said, who is the dumb fark showering so late at night especially when its so damn cold and spending such a long time too. Must be wanking inside there. We all laughed and suddenly we realised ... wait a minute .. we counted ourselves and realised ALL of us are there in the room playing cards!!!!
All of us kept quiet and just stared at each other, each feeling the hair at the back of their neck standing and feeling chilly all of a sudden. If all of us are here and nobody has walked past us and we have the dormitory all to ourselves ... then who the hell is showering in there!!!???? We started to give shit loads of theory like some huge rat or something managed to learn how to turn the tap on but don't know how to turn it off. We dared each other to go in and take a look. No one dared to even peep. Just kept on theorising all the theories that we could think of including a burst pipe or someone left the tap on just now and we didn't realise it.
Finally, one of us plucked up courage and said, yeah ... the tap must have been loose or something. Even ghosts won't be showering that long. He got up and got a few of us to follow him to the showers. As he got up and has barely taken five steps to the toilet, the shower stopped. That was it. The last thing we want to find out is to see "someone" walk out of the showers into the room. All of us got freaked out and ran out of the dormitory ...
To all the ghosts wandering around aimlessly from the 9/11 and the tsunami ... hope you will find your peace. May your souls rest in peace.
