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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penang_Bridge

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THE HUMOROUS, HEADLESS GHOST OF PENANG BRIDGE!

This was in 1984 or 1985, I can’t be certain. The details are still clear, though.

Let us call the man to whom the incident happened, Tan.

1 Tan told this story to his family.

He was riding his motorbike home to Penang Island.

It was just around 6.10 am, with barely enough light to see with.  At that time, hardly anyone used the Bridge, so he was all alone. As Tan rode onto the Bridge from the Seberang Perai end, he noticed someone fishing. That was strange, a man fishing so early in the morning!

Nothing prepared him for the shock as he rode past the man for that man had NO HEAD!!! YES, HE HAD NO HEAD!!!

(At this point, if you think about it, don’t you agree that the ghost had a great sense of humour? To fly all the way across to the Penang side of the Bridge and wait for Tan to arrive, and then give him a real scare by removing his head!)

Tan almost fell off in his terror!  He rode as fast as his motorbike would go, and that would be 130km/h or so.

Do you know how long it takes to cross the whole Bridge at 130km/h?

FOREVER when you know that there is a headless ghost back there! He kept looking back, hoping that it would not be coming after him.

At last, after what seemed an eternity, he got to the other end. The sky was brighter with the false dawn, and his heart felt better with each kilometer…

Suddenly, he saw another man fishing!

Phew, this man HAD A HEAD!

“I must warn him,” he thought, so he stopped beside the man and said, “Friend, there’s a ghost at the other end, fishing!”

“Huh? Are you sure?” replied this man with a head.

“Yes, he had no head!”

“You mean, he looked like this?” and this man TOOK OFF HIS HEAD!!!

NOW, IT IS UNCLEAR WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THAT BECAUSE TAN COULD NOT REMEMBER MUCH OF THAT TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE.

2 Tan had a younger sister, and this was what she told reporters.

She was upstairs in their shophouse when she heard Tan screaming and shouting hysterically. “Open the door, open the door! Got ghost, got ghost!”

She went downstairs and opened the door. As soon as he got inside, Tan collapsed onto the floor in a faint.

She looked at him and immediately called the hospital for an ambulance.

This was why:

(a) Tan had no slippers on. His feet were all cut up from running. Somewhere along the way, he had lost his slippers but had kept on running till he got home.

(b) Tan had his helmet on his head! He had run all the way with it on.

(c) Tan was exhausted. The hospital had to put him on a drip as he was dehydrated.

3 Just what on earth had happened?

Awake later, on his hospital bed, Tan was still in terror. He explained that he had seen the same headless ghost on BOTH SIDES of the Bridge, and had run home to escape.

What? Wasn’t he riding his motorbike? Where did he leave the motorbike? He didn’t know where it was though he remembered riding it all the way from the Seberang Perai end to the Penang end. Anything from the moment the ghost removed its head…NO RECOLLECTION!

4 The Police and some newspaper reporters had this to say.

(a) Tan’s motorbike was found lying by the side of the road at the Penang end of the bridge! His slippers were found some distance away. It seemed that, in his terror, Tan had fallen off his motorbike and started running home.

(b) Home was a long, long way from the Bridge. Home was in Jalan Air Hitam! That was a great distance to run without slippers, with a crash helmet on, and that was why his feet were cut and bleeding and he was exhausted.

At the hospital as Tan remained terrified and kept mumbling and screaming about a headless ghost, he was taken by ambulance down to the Central Mental Hospital in Tanjong Rambutan.

Yes, he was taken to Hospital Sakit Otak at T.R. They HAD decided that he was crazy.

Days later, he was discharged. The Director of the T.R. Mental Hospital reportedly said, “He is not crazy! He’s normal, just terrified by the ghost he saw.”

And that was that.

As far as I know, Tan was never heard of again. Not in ANY NEWS REPORT, anyway.

5 The newspapers HAD reported this incident and because they were Chinese newspapers, everything was printed in the greatest detail. The English papers had enough details to interest me, especially as I drove across the Bridge so often.

Not long after it had happened, a student of the theological seminary where I was a lecturer had an interesting comment to add. He had been on a bus, and overheard Tan’s sister telling the strange story of the Headless Penang Bridge Ghost to a friend.

Her friend said, “Do you expect me to believe that your brother saw a ghost?”

Tan’s sister replied, “I don’t know what to believe but I know that he believed that he saw that ghost and ran for his life. I know that he isn’t crazy because the T.R. people said that he is normal.

What do I think?

“When people define a situation as real, it is real in its consequences.” (W I Thomas, Polish sociologist)

Tan believed that he saw a headless ghost on both sides of the Bridge and acted accordingly. Smart man!

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