Gunung Stong's Residents

Back in 2002, I joined a mountain climbing expedition up Gunung Stong, Kelantan with 2 others friends (Zack & Lee) together with an experience local guide. Gunung Stong, for those who love mountain trekking and with the ‘third’ eye ability, will know that this particular mountain is infamously known as an asylum for ghosts and spirits, with regular sightings reported by many hikers. Prior to my virgin climb up Stong, I had not heard of any stories about the ghost or spirits that exists there.

After our continuous and energy-sapping hike up, we arrived at Baha camp site near the Stong Waterfalls to put up for a night before continuing up Gunung Stong the following day. Nearby the camp was a pool called Kolam Tuan Puteri (Princess Pool). Instinctively I got down to my shorts and jumped in to enjoy a refreshing dip. Zack & Lee joined me shortly afterwards.

We were having an enjoyable time splashing each other and fooling around until suddenly, that is when I saw it.

It was white apparition standing near the edge of the pool. I seems like it was observing and staring at us. I called out to Zack & Lee and pointed at it. Instantly, Zack hit my hand and scolded ‘Don’t point!’ At that instant, I felt a bit feverish and the apparition seemed to have disappeared. Zack & Lee feared that we might offend it as we were making a lot of noises and invading its territory.

Not feeling very comfortable, we decided to make my way back to camp, it was then I could see more and more of them all over the place!... They were ghostly apparitions, around 5-6 of them… They do not have a scary monstrous faces, but they merely appeared in a hollow, murky image. Some stood behind trees and some on the branches. There were green & white apparitions, the green ones looked more frightening than the white ones. A flowery jasmine-like scent floated in the air all of a sudden.

Even when I returned with Zack, Lee and, our guide back to our camp, the yun hei (people’s energy) was not enough; ‘they’ were still lurking around. I quickly went into the tent, dried myself up, got into my sleeping bag and zip up and hide. Even when I heard someone outside asking me whether I was OK, I kept quiet as I fear that it may not have been my friend.

The next morning I felt better, but I did not talked too much about the apparitions until we had completed our climb and returned back to base. It was then I told our guide what I saw and smelled, our guide, who turns out to be a part-time medium explained that the Stong area had many spooky sightings because businessmen use bomohs to rear spirits and the area was a kind of “storehouse” for those spirits. He personally had seen several of them almost every time he went up the mountain and had gotten used to it. This explains why he only switched on his torch occasionally during the previous day's night fall as he said “If somebody comes to your house, would you be happy if he constantly shone a light everywhere?”

So be more respectful when you do trek in jungles or go hiking up mountains. However, if you believe in spirits, they can probably get to you anywhere, anytime, not just only in the jungles.