Travelling Thoughts

When was the last time you woke up in the middle of the night and wondered what on earth woke you up from the blissful slumber. And, what was it that actually woke you up? Was it just the cat having the 2 am. zoomies, or was it the memory of the late cat doing the same?

This time, I want to start with a short recount of an event that happened almost forty years ago, which I still remember as it was something strange. It happened during a stormy evening, when yet another thunderstorm was closing in. At the time, I was around the age of eight or nine, and being young, I was mesmerised by these natural firework displays, and so were my cousins, who were staying at our place for the weekend. So, along with my dad, we all went to stand by the edge of the park area to see the lightning. At the time, my family and I used to live in the red, quaint house, pictured below. The house was part of the grounds of Håkansböle manor in the eastern part of the town of Vantaa, in Finland. The house still stands, but now the whole area is a public park, as the Swedish family who used to own the manor sold the whole estate to the city council of Vantaa. But I digress.

Our yard ended where the manor house park began. The park was lawned and had some old trees standing, and in the middle was a small lane with trees standing next to it, on both sides. The lane ended on one side to steps leading up to the yard before the main doors of the manor building, and on the other end of the lane was a small stream.

Standing at the edge of the park provided quite unobstructed views of the dark evening sky with dark clouds rolling in, paired with lightning flashing every now and again, and with the thunder booming some time later. So, of course, my cousins and I counted the distance of the storm based on the flash and the rumbles that followed.

Even though the Finnish summers are usually quite bright, towards the end of summer, they get darker. And when there is a rainy day, followed by a thunderstorm, it can get almost pitch black, depending on the area where you are. And as we stood by a historic manor park, there were no street lights, and therefore, we could see the flashes very clearly; the closer the storm came, the more the flashes would light up our surroundings. You could clearly see the shapes of the trees and everything during these moments. And then it happened.

During one lightning, I clearly saw an old, horse-drawn carriage on the gravel lane. It was clearly illuminated by a flash of the lightning. Of course, this apparition lasted only for the moment when there was light, so it would be easy to dismiss this as a trick played by your eyes.

And then there was the next lightning, and the carriage was there again. At the same spot? No. This time, it was further towards the manor house, as it had moved, drawn by horses, as it should.

This, of course, spooked me, and I immediately wanted to go back inside our house, but my cousins and father, who did not see anything out of the ordinary, wanted to stay before the rain would start.

For some years after this, I dismissed it as an overactive imagination. One of the reasons was the lane, which, by the way, is pictured above and how it ended in the stream. There was no bridge crossing it, so naturally, I assumed that this was just another small quirky aspect of the park. That was until we studied local history at school when I was eleven. On the old map of the area, I saw the manor house and the vast lands they had owned at the time, and to my surprise, there was a lane going from the manor house through the park area, all the way to a main road. On a drawn image, there was a small bridge over the stream, so, obviously, I asked about this from the teacher. He confirmed that this had been used by the important visitors of the family back in the late 1800s and early 1900s before they had sold most of the lands surrounding the area and the city council had started to plan housing in the area soon to become a neighbourhood called Hakunila.

It took me years after this before I would tell anyone else except my parents about this event. Even they told me that I just had “an overactive imagination.” And if they told me that, it must have been true. It was only towards the late 2010s, when my wifey and I visited the manor house as part of a Halloween ghost tour that I even allowed myself to remember the whole story. At the time, it was because of the stories that the tour guide shared with us. Chillingly enough, some of the allegedly paranormal events that had happened in the manor house were something that I had heard, seen, and experienced there myself when I was young. This was only because of my friend, a boy named Asko, who was the son of the caretaker of the manor, who lived in the caretaker’s apartment with his family, at one end of the manor. His mother was not really allowed to let us in on the main side of the building, but we kind of followed his mother in once or twice because she had to do her chores. During those times, we witnessed small things happening.

Now, as a middle-aged adult, I can finally admit that I have always believed that there must be more than meets the eye in this world. There are some places, like the Holy Wells in Ireland, that just feel different, mystical, and powerful. And then there are those places, usually houses, that make your skin crawl without any apparent reason. Some places and houses, like the Håkansböle Manor pictured above, carry with them lots of history, so is it a surprise that some of the past residents still linger around?

But when it comes to ghosts and apparitions, we Europeans do get it easy. Depending on the county, we have the Grey and Green Ladies, some knights with horses, and sounds of children running around grand, old buildings. In some parts of the continent, you can see a group of old Roman soldiers marching on an old Roman road, still defending their empire. But when you step outside of Europe, especially to South East Asia, these apparitions make way for darker and scarier entities that can chill your bones.

If you ask my wifey, who is a Malaysian, she will immediately say that things like Pontianak, Pochong or Hantu Bungkus, Hantu Raya, Polong, Langsuwir and Toyol will immediately send a shiver down her spine. I have noticed this first hand as when there is a video on YouTube about encounters with these ghosts, she will quickly scroll onward. This is partially because these creatures of the night are directly linked to the Malay culture and folklore.

In the above picture on the forefront is Pontianak. Like her Indonesian counterpart, Kuntilanak, and the Irish Banshee, it is believed that Pontianak comes into existence when a woman dies traumatically during childbirth. But, unlike in the case of Banshees, there is usually some dark arts involved. This ghost is vengeful and described as vampiric in nature. So when travelling to Malaysia or Indonesia, if you hear a child crying and smell the decaying stench of the plumeria flower, be afraid, be very afraid..

One of the main reasons why these ghosts are scarier is that they are hardly in humanoid forms. Most appear to be ghastly-looking that does not resemble the normal human being. The Hantu Bungkus or Pochong, for instance, wears their burial shrouds. It is not just about seeing them, but because these apparitions come directly towards humans, wanting to cause distress and mayhem. Instead of passively haunting, they seem to want to haunt. In the above picture, the Pochong is in the background, but the screen capture below is actually from a news coverage in Indonesia, showing the shrouded ghost on a road. So, can we dispute these ghosts as hoax or fragments of our imagination as easily as those that we see when a sudden lightning lights the scene, or are we facing something more tangible, something more sinister in these lands?

However, is the only difference between European and Southeast Asian ghosts and apparitions in their form and appearances? Are the European ghosts more ethereal while their Asian counterparts are more substantial?

Some believe that these Malay archipelago ghosts are more of a result of black magic practices in the islands of the archipelago. These practices have gone on for centuries, and as there are modern day, camera captured sightings of these ghosts, the practices still go on as we speak. These practices make some of these beings more physical and so much more fearsome.

There is also a difference in the traditional practices between our bicultural family when it comes to the supernatural aspect; and it is the “be silent” command. Usually, if there is something strange, I would be the one to point it out and go, “Oh! Did you see that?” And then my wifey would just glare at me and say nothing until we have been gone from the area for five to ten minutes. After that, I get told off by her because I had drawn attention to something that wants to get our attention. And to give attention to these beings or apparitions is something you don’t want to do because they can, apparently, latch onto you and follow you home.

And if they follow you home, you are bound to invite unnecessary and unwanted entities into your home. Then, you might get to live in a haunted house, and I don’t think that it is as much fun as it might seem at first. I will leave it at that, but if you want to find out more, check out some of the videos on YouTube for more general knowledge and information.

But what I will say is that when you are home alone and you hear a shampoo bottle fall down from a secure shelf in the bathroom, it is enough to raise some hairs on the back of your neck. There are a thousand to one explanations that are more real than to jump into conclusions of the possibility of a poltergeist, and that makes the whole subject of the paranormal just a debatable one.

I started this blog with my own experience from the time when I was a young boy and would like to conclude it with one from 2018 during the time when we were living in Ireland. I had just finished my work shift, and we had gone home to have a short rest before starting our drive from the west coast to the east to catch an early morning flight. This meant driving across the country during the night.

We started our drive close to midnight, and as we were happily driving on the dark roads, we saw a fiery glow in the sky in the distance. As we drove on, it came closer, and after a bend, near the Kerry Bog Museum, we saw a huge fire in the fields. As we were on a tight schedule, we didn’t stop, but instead, I grabbed my phone and called the emergency services, informing them about the situation.

From the rear view mirror, we watched the glow as long as we could and wondered about the whole thing, hoping there were no casualties in the nearby farmhouse. For the next few days, I kept on following the local news, but there was not a single mention of the event, and then, when we arrived back and drove past the area… there were no signs of any fire breakout whatsoever. So I have no idea what we both saw. For me, this just goes to prove that Ireland is a very mystical land.

Do you believe in the paranormal?