By Meryl Lim (25S05A) and Peh Zhi Ning (25A01B)
It’s spooky season. The skeletons are out, pumpkins are in, and Fairprice is selling weird rubber faces (has anyone ever bought one?) once more. Halloween’s finally here!
Now that our promotional examination results are out, it’s time to move on to brand-new, less realistic horror. Instead of having an existential crisis while staring at your DESU, why not have an existential crisis while pondering the existence of the supernatural? Doesn’t that sound like fun?
Well, we’re here to help! If you’ve ever watched a horror movie and comforted yourself with “It’s not real, it’ll never happen to me, I would never enter a suspicious cottage/forest/cave”, what if I told you that it could be real, it could happen to you, and you’ve already entered a suspicious classroom/lecture theatre/laboratory?
Ghosts aren’t haunting attics and basements of decrepit cottages anymore. No, with urbanisation and Singapore’s lack of land, they’ve reduced their housing requirements.
Clock tower? Easy to keep the time. Laboratories? Plenty of chemicals to play with. Lecture theatres? Lots of…seats to sleep on? Do ghosts even sleep?
Regardless, RI is, according to rumour and hearsay, a hotspot for ghosts and supernatural beings to gather. While you’re mugging for your A-Levels, maybe there’s a pontianak party in the tree right next to you. Who knows?
In this article, we’ll be exploring the stories we’ve heard, and stories you have submitted to us. Should any brave soul with the courage (and the permission to stay late in school) like to test out these stories… Raffles Press is not responsible for any injuries/death/possessions/conduct slips sustained by you during this activity.
Swimming With The Sharks Skeletons
Did you know that our swimming pool falls short of Olympic-size by just 1 metre? Instead of being 50 metres, our pool is only 49 metres long. Shocking. We certainly aren’t reigning supreme in the pool-length sphere. But why is this so?
According to long-time hearsay, RI’s swimming pool is home to a spooky scary skeleton. Legend has it that during the construction of the swimming pool, the workers unearthed a skeleton on the very last metre. Instead of relocating the pool, the workers decided to simply seal up the last metre, and complete the pool at 49 metres long.
Questionable work ethics aside, how plausible is this story?
Well, considering that RI is, in fact, located on top of a cemetery, it’s not entirely impossible. No doubt, many, many, skeletons have been located beneath RI before their exhumation.
Still, this myth has never been confirmed, nor denied. To all our Swimming and Water Polo readers… good luck. The next time you feel something caress your ankle, hope it’s a stray bubble, and not the withered bones of an ancestor, angry at being disturbed.
Foetal Furor
“Everyone had heard of the foetus in the Science block. But we didn’t want to believe it until we saw it with our own two eyes. So one night during boarding, a bunch of us sneaked into the Bio block at 10 p.m. And there we saw the foetus floating in a yellowish jar. It was dead alright, but it didn’t have the serenity of an elderly matriarch at a funeral—it looked strangely reptilian. And we ran immediately. Maybe it was fear, maybe it was the obligation of the curfew. We didn’t want to be in the presence of the foetus any longer. It was too disturbing for our 15 year old minds to comprehend.”
Anonymous
This one goes out to my Science comrades. I, a mere Arts student, have never trespassed into the laboratories; fearing the dead-eyed zombies slinking out from the mysterious labyrinth, smelling of Bunsen burners and the occasional spilt solution. Perhaps that’s for the best.
Upon asking around for horror stories, a common rumour was that of the preserved foetus in the Y1-4 Science labs. According to rumours passed along by generations of RI boys, the preserved foetus originates from a Biology teacher who miscarried in the lab. Unfortunately, both mother and child did not survive, and the foetus was kept preserved in the lab for future education. Morbid.
It is said that late at night, green light can be seen in the corridors, and the screaming of a child can even be heard. An entry from our survey states that “One day, a biology teacher noticed a red glow from outside the science lab / in the corridor. When she went to take a look, she saw a ghost-like foetus, floating in the air, illuminated by a red light!”
As neither of these writers are males hailing from RI Y1-4, we cannot confirm nor deny these claims.
However, there are, in fact, foetuses in the Biology laboratory. Whether or not they glow, float, or howl remain unconfirmed.
Clock Tower
The idea of a haunted school clock tower may be cliched, but its looming presence atop the school is hard to ignore. As you walk from Y14 Chill to the Y14 bus stop, its cold clock face seems to watch your every step.
There seems to be multiple tales surrounding the ghosts of the clock tower, often featuring souls of unfortunate young boys who dared to climb its heights.
One tale involves a boy who sneaked into the clock tower while his friend stayed below, keeping watch for teachers. As the minutes ticked by, the boy below grew anxious—his friend hadn’t returned for far too long. Worried, he crawled into the small hole and was met with a gruesome sight. The boy had fallen down the long flight of stairs, smashing his head against the stone floor, his skull cracked open.
The story takes a darker turn: A week later, during his nightly patrols, a security guard stumbled upon a pool of blood on the ground in the clock tower. He rushed to clean it, yet no matter how hard he scrubbed, the blood wouldn’t disappear. Panicked, the security guard fled, only to be haunted by a piercing shriek of a young boy echoing through the tower.
Another version of the tale tells of a similar tragedy. In this version, this incident happened late at night during a school camp, when 3 boys broke into the school tower on a dare by their friends. What began as a mischievous adventure turned into something more sinister as the 3 boys vanished, never to be seen again. Left behind in the tower was a vacant chair and 3 black boxes.
Phantom of the Opera Field
You may ask: how could anyone be scared of a school field? After all, it’s an open space, and it’s not exactly a good hiding spot for spirits. Well, this old tale proves otherwise.
During a school camp, a student decided to take a walk around the school field in the middle of the night. As he strolled through the field, he was approached by an old woman with long hair.
“What time is it?” she rasped, to which the boy replied, “3am”.
(Clearly this boy has no survival instincts, because who in their right mind would answer a mysterious old lady in the middle of a school field at 3am.)
Satisfied with his answer, the lady smiled and glided away.
Sensing something was amiss, the boy decided to head back to the campus, yet no matter how hard he tried to leave the field, he could not leave. Desperation set in as he realised he was stuck in a loop, never reaching the exit no matter how hard he sprinted.
Just then, he spotted the lady once more, her skin now decaying and her eyes glowing. With a shrill shriek, the lady started screaming “What time is it?”, chasing him around the field.
It isn’t clear how this story really ended, with some versions detailing how the boy woke up after. That ‘it-was-all-just-a-dream’ cliche is a nightmare itself to primary school English teachers, so we’ll just leave the story there.
Even the gate looks straight out of a horror movie
The Spirit(s) Next Door
(and Down Under)
Not only does the Kwong Wai Siew Peck San Theng Temple stand in between the Y1-4 and Y56 Campus, it also stands between the realms of the living and the dead!
As a student, its presence often goes unnoticed—except for the occasional waft of incense that drifts into your nostrils. But it is very much there and even houses an iconic 36-year-old columbarium designed by a renowned architect.
As this writer aptly describes it, “While the worlds of the sons of Singapore and the souls of Singapore remain firmly separated by a perimeter fence, it is inevitable that they will overlap from time to time. Even thinkers, leaders and pioneers will end up on the other side one day.”
But that’s not all! When you wave back to your ancestors waving next door as you grind Vectors, don’t forget to wave to the many more laying 6 feet under our very own campus grounds!
This is because RI stands on what was once one of Singapore’s largest cemeteries and a battlefield in the Japanese Occupation.
A surprise attack by the Japanese was launched on “Hill 90”, where RI currently stands, resulting in great casualties on both the British Regiments and Japanese Imperial Guards. Even before the Japanese Occupation, the area was heavily bombed due to its strategic importance to the Japanese, killing many villagers.
More interestingly, after the surrender of the British, the land was allegedly so haunted that even the Japanese steered clear of it during the Japanese Occupation.
Though it remained largely peaceful, another fierce battle happened on the land during the Occupation, when Japanese aircrafts dropped bombs on the cemetery and Kampung, taking many lives. A villager recounted: “There were a few limbs hanging on trees and all the trees had no more leaves.”
With unfortunate souls of students and spiteful spirits of the past lingering around, it is no wonder RI possesses an unshakeable haunting quality to its halls.
Now that we’ve explored all the stories passed down from generations of RI students, it’s time for our article to draw to a close. Or not. Haunting experiences still occur in the modern day, and you might just find yourself entwined in the next RI horror story.
Souls of Singapore / Spirits of a Better Age
The following stories have all been submitted by readers of Raffles Press. The responses have been edited for brevity and clarity.
“In the old campus, there was a classroom where a girl hung herself. Apparently you could hear crying.”
“The CCA storeroom door opens and closes by itself at times.” (The storage room door of the Y14 Hullett Memorial Library toilet does too…)
“After CCA my mates and I went to chill as usual to get some ice cream. After that, at about 7.45-8pm, we were walking past the Boarding gates to leave the school when we heard a voice from the staircase. No one could be down there as there was a gate in front of the stairwell which was locked. There was very clearly a voice that we ALL heard. Months after that incident, when I was casually walking back to class from Chill, I had my earpieces in listening to music. COINCIDENTALLY, just as i made my way past the staircase, my left earpiece (same side as the stairs) fell out of my ears (I was walking pretty briskly to be fair). I didn’t think much of it, but as I was reaching for it to plug it back in, the rubber ear tip fell out THROUGH the gate into the staircase area which wasn’t accessible, almost like something was luring me to it. While it is not the craziest tale compared to the countless others that our school boasts, (and probably just a coincidence) it feels super real and creepy to me because it happened to me first hand and I will never forget it.”
“Unfortunately I tried to find that proverbial lingering spirit when I came back to mark my papers on a Sunday evening from 7.30 to 11 pm. What I wished would have been a Penanggal turned out to be a bat(?)/bird(?) that flew into the staffroom through an open window. I’m not pregnant so Penanggal doesn’t scare me. The dangling entrails attached to the head would have made a wonderful specimen without requiring dissection.”
*Penanggal – According to an old Malay myth, the Penanggal is a “nocturnal vampiric entity” that preys exclusively on newborns and pregnant women. It also often “takes the form of a floating disembodied woman’s head, with its organs and entrails trailing from its neck.”
“I went to the toilet and into the cubicle. When I came out of the cubicle, there was suddenly a stool (metal, not the outer kind, ahem) standing in the centre of the main toilet area. It wasn’t there before! I would’ve seen it (or bumped into it – it’s a very small space!) when I made my way to the cubicle, but it wasn’t there when I entered the toilet! Cheeky poltergeist?”
Finally, “The entire campus is a former burial site. Spirits need their space too. Let them roam freely when school grounds to a still after working hours.”
In response to “How/where did you hear this story from?”, this anonymous respondent stated “Personal sensing. Together with a bunch of others. We can sense ‘things’. We do not exaggerate.”