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MY PULAU UBIN EXPERIENCE AT OUTWARD BOUND SCHOOL, SINGAPORE, 1973.

My watch was on a 2-day, 1-night kayak trip. For the night, we were camping just inside a rubber estate. The instructor, after warning us not to wander around, and in particular, not to go down the little track leading deeper in the estate, left us to return to Outward Bound School HQ.

A watch member explained that the track led to a Muslim burial ground. That was what our instructor had said.

After dinner and cleaning up, we sat around a campfire, exchanging stories and telling jokes. Bed time came quickly for we were all tired out from paddling kayaks all day.

I slept in a 3-man tent. I was 23, and the other two were young boys, 17, so I got the place beside the tent flap that kept out mosquitoes. It was my duty to keep the mosquito coil burning.

At about 6am, or maybe just before, I was woken up by the buzzing of mosquitoes on the outside of the tent flap. That meant that our coil was finished. I lit another, and was about to go back to sleep when I noticed someone standing on the other side of the clearing, maybe 15 feet away.

I put on my glasses, looked, and wondered what he was doing there so early in the morning.

“Encik!” I said, “Cari siapa? Mahu apa?”

No reply. Just a slight stirring of his long, white gown in the gentle breeze. No word.

Ever so slightly, he turned away, moving, moving, floating…..and he floated away down the path that led deeper into the estate.

Okay, he’s gone, so it’s time to sleep.

Suddenly, several things occurred to me.

He did not walk but floated. Huh? All the stories I had heard before about ghosts floating, feet not touching the ground, shot through my mind. Veins turned cold with ice!

He had a LONG, WHITE SHEET, the kind Muslim men were buried in! And he floated off deeper down the track to where there was a burial ground for Muslims. Sheesh!

He had no face! HE HAD NO NO NO NO NO FACE!!!!!!!

IT’S TRUE, ghosts float, their feet not on the ground. AT LEAST IT’S TRUE OF THAT ONE I SAW.

WAS HE UGLY? HOW WOULD I KNOW? HE HAD NO FACE.

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