This is the story of my old man's house.
The house is a bungalow in very premium neighbourhood, it was abandoned for 7 years when he bought it. Used to belong to a very prominent Tan Sri of the era.
He drove around that area as he was lost and stumbled upon this agent putting up a banner. He stopped to ask for directions and also asked about the house that was up for sale.
He came home told me to put on some long sleaves, long pants, hiking boots and load our 2 dogs into the car as we were off for some adventure.
He had me drive to the location of the house, I asked him what was going on, he pointed to the house and said we were there to view this place. I was like okay, are you sure? Place looked ugly and crazy huge. He then said to bring the dogs down and walk about a bit till the agent showed up.
Walked around abit and out came this old man from a house opposite. He asked why I was in the area with 2 dogs, I told him just to see a house for sale. I asked if he knew anything about it, he said better go away before it was too late. Claimed it was very haunted as at night there were loads of creepy noises coming from it and the house used to belong to one Tan Sri whose Puan Sri played with a lot of witchcraft. I told him I looked forward to being his neighbour. Walked down the road was at the house beside the lot, a middle aged lady spoke to me. Asked why I was in the area and whether I was here to see the haunted house. She then told me that in the last 30 years that house had 4 owners and 3 of them died of a heart attack while the last one died due to being attacked by witchcraft, she said she had seen many shamans including the then notorious Mona Fandey come and go into that house. I told her no issue we know what to do with such houses. She then said she purposely bricked up 2 of windows as she said whenever there was lightning she could see a man in one of the windows. I told her if I see him I'll invite him out for tea and she'd be welcome to join us but at bare minimum I'd tell him to stop frightening her by appearing at window. She wasn't happy at being told off but said don't say she did not warn me.
Then the agent came. He gave us the key and asked us to look around on our own as he did not feel good. I took the key. My old man asked if I had any reservations on going in. I told him better get on with it. We unlocked the gate and decided to walk in with our 2 dogs.
Place was mostly overgrown and as we approached the house he asked me if I felt anything. I told him yeah a million mosquitoes trying to attack. There was a Mercedes W123 parked in the car porch. Old man said it looked like a govt dept issued car and a check at the front number plate confirmed it. The house was what could only be described as one time pure oppulence, tall and huge roman pillars, all kinds of cornices everywhere and it was pretty obvious someone at one time had loads of cash to blow.
I then walked towards the main front door and waved the key. My old man said maybe it isn't a good idea to go in as it did appear the house was abandoned in a hurry. He suggested we take a walk around the house and stay on the path. You could see at one time the gardens must have been modelled after some garden in Europe. We continued our walk, there were hibiscus plants that were at least 15ft tall, bouganvilla vines that had scaled the roman pillars and reached to the roof. Back of the house was the source of all the mosquitoes in the world, a disused swimming pool with dark green water and several fountains including one that was made from marble.
At the other side of the house there was a car parking area, there were 12 cars just left there, 6 of them were antique and classics even at that time. I told my old man if ever he bought the house that Jaguar E-Type and the BMW 6-series were the cars I wanted. He told me that Bimmer was quite a well known car, used to be seen outside many clubs and hotels.
We then exited and spoke to the agent, he was in a hurry to get the key and drive off. We told him we were interested in buying the place. He started praying. He gave me the card of his boss and said to discuss with him, he said he had to go. We gave him the keys and he sped off.
As we drove off, we noticed the eyes of several neighbours firmly afixxed to us.
We gave a call to that agent's boss, he said if we were interested we had to take a flight to Indonesia to discuss with the owner, purportedly the owner did not want to return.
2 weeks later we were in Bandung with 2 lawyers. In the meeting, there was this boy who was the son of the owner. I asked him why his father looked like a skeleton and the way he was. He was around my age said his stepmother had cast a spell and ever since then one problem after another came upon his father, he then ran to Indonesia where he had recovered but whatever that was cast upon him had eaten him inside out.
Deal was signed, bought the place lock stock and barrel. Price was the equivalent of a 22x75 terrace in Bangsar at that time. Had to be in cash.
2 months later we had the title in hand. We drove to the house. Again the 2 neighbours came to speak to us. The man said ever since we went to the house the noises became louder. I told him the noises were going to get even louder. Just then the machinery we had ordered arrived a backhoe, a crane, a dump truck and an excavator.
We had the place fogged till it looked like Mt Santubong. Then had the backhoe clear all the overgrown weeds and the excavator started removing all the big trees. Then I had the crane hoist me up in a cage to the top of the house, it was the first time I realized it was a courtyard house. I then used a sledgehammer to break some roof tiles, made 12 holes in the roof and at least 1000 bats flew out.
I then broke 4 windows at 4 corners of the house and placed 2 fogging machines in each window, had it fogged at full power till it appeared the house was on fire.
After 5 days all the prep work to enter the house was done. When we drove over the lady from next door insisted that there was a man looking at her house from one of the windows. I told her I had not had the chance to speak to him but I'd appreciate it if she could draw how he looked so I could keep a lookout for him. She then offered to have her son sell us some insurance. My old man told her we were not interested.
He then said we should first enter from the back door. I asked him what he thought was the issue with the place that it was abandoned, he simply said greed and dishonesty. I asked him if he knew something. He said he knew about the going ons with that Tan Sri.
We broke down the rear door and explored the house. 7 bedrooms, 3 living rooms, 2 kitchens, 2 storerooms and 1 gigantic office. Place was full of marble, rosewood and teak wood and they were everywhere. There were antiques at every part of the house too and we found 70 pieces of WW2 era Japanese weapons. Kitchen had a 22ft long granite counter top and the other had 2 18ft long marble counters, all made from a single pieces.
The office had 2 safes in it, and the store room had 18 briefcase in it.
We went to the main bedroom, there was a collection of at least 30 different Rolex watches there.
My old man told me to empty out the entire house of anything valuable and store it in his shoplot. He said to not keep anything and after it was moved to the shoplot, to slowly sell it off and donate off everything to the 2 nearby mosques, 2 nearby temples and 3 nearby churches.
He then told me upon buying the place, he had won a bid for a company in receivership based in Australia and that it owned a brick factory in both Australia and England. He said he had to leave me in charge as he needed to deal with the factories, he said by the time he returned he wanted everything gone and just a clean and empty shell he could work on. He sent all the weapons to the museum.
The Mercedes W123, he had it towed to outside the dept that owned it.
We cut open the 2 safes, there some documents, some jewelry and plenty of cash in it. Those briefcases? Each of them contained cash upwards of RM20k in it. My old man said each of those briefcases were given as a "donation" we dumped all the cash we found into the places we had agreed upon where we would discard it at. All the jewelry we sent them to pawnshops and again got rid of the proceeds that way.
Oh and that "man" the lady said she kept seeing? It turned out to be an antique knight suit that stood by the window. I asked the neighbour if that "man" had appeared again? She said she had not been on the lookout.
Then came the real trouble. The Puan Sri and her children found out the house had been sold and they came to the house. My old man called up several of his contacts in the police, military and underworld to deal with them. We did a simple deal, anything that is left in the house they could take anything that had been removed then it was no longer there.
They took carted away all the cars, antiques and crystals and it turned out there was 2 more in floor safes we did not know about. Again it contained cash and jewelry which they fought over like a bunch of ravaged mad dogs. One of the boys told me I should get rid of that knight suit and to do so very carefully. He told me not to ask why but to get some help to get rid of it. I called a scrap metal dealer to cart it away, I told him there may be issues with it. He brought it to his scrap yard and cut it open. He said in it he found several dolls with needles poked into it. He said a Thai shaman had told him what it was and said to not worry about it. However he did advise me that I should excavate out the soil as some may be hidden in the ground too.
We had some Indonesian workers slowly remove all the wood and timber. Sold for good money. The marble and granite they cut and carted it away to be polished and sold on for new.
Everything after it was sold I had it donated.
2 months had gone by all that could be salvaged and sold from the house was gone.
I then started on the excavation work. Got rid of 6ft of the soil and replaced it.
I called up my old man, he said he had been under a lot of stress trying to turn the company around. However he had a few breakthroughs and things were looking better and that he would be returning ahead of schedule.
Well that's where I did something stupid, decided to try my hand at using the excavator and accidentally knocked the footing for one of those roman pillars and the entire porch came crumbling down. The owner of the excavator said we were lucky nothing happened to us and all of a sudden around 1/4 of the house collapsed in front of our eyes.
I told the excavator driver my old man was going to kill us both. I told him faster demolish everything. He said he did not dare do that. I took the controls and knocked 4 of the pillars down, he then took over and said it will take too long. He told me to go call the dump truck and to call a 2nd excavator which I promptly did.
Well 2 weeks later my old man came back and said he wanted to go see the house and the progress I had made.
I brought him. He was quiet. Then he started firing me left right and centre. Said I was supposed to empty out the house not the entire land.
Not 2 minutes passed and the lady next door came by said see I told you don't buy this house now you 2 are fighting. I told her I'd be fighting with her very soon if she did not shut up.
In the end he had the land restored and he built a house on it that was significantly smaller.
Guess who were the real perpetrators of the house being haunted? Yup you got that right, those 2 neighbours who did not want that place to be inhibited so they came up with stories after stories. Guess how the Puan Sri found out the house was sold? Yup you guessed that right, one of the neighbours informed her.
such detailed story..