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When the night falls
We spent a whole sweaty afternoon in setting up all the necessary
equipment. The time was 7pm sharp, the sky was quickly darkening. 'Shall we start?' one of our SPI asked. Not so without
turning on the last but the most important piece of equipment -
the bait. This is an ultimate and innovative way besides using
old-fashion ritual to summon ghosts. SPI is the first group of
investigators in the world using this method to agitate spirits.
What bait is this? Curiously enough you would ask.
The bait we used is a laptop computer slide-showing pictures of
the war, portraits of the Japanese military lieutenants, footages
of surrender negotiation, and most importantly the Japanese folk
music! While the laptop computer was flashing scenes of the WW2,
recalling the memories of those who fought the war, shed the
blood, died in the battle or seppuku, the Japanese folk music
filled the air, echoing from room to room inside the Ford factory.
The music was composed in a very different way - sad, disoriented,
affecting and spine-chilling. You have to listen yourself in order
to understand how eerie it is. The two famous timeless folks,
Samurai
(2.7Mb) and
Sakura
(3.4Mb) were played
continuously one after another throughout the ghost stake-out. You
can download them, and experience them yourself. The best time to
play is after midnight and by earphone - simply because you don't
want your spouse or your mother to complain especially when
Chinese New Year is coming. And you are warned first: SPI is not
responsible for any adverse effect or haunting in your house after
you played those spooky music.
Gingerly, SPI Kenny pressed the button to start the slide-show and
music, that marked the beginning of our ghost stake-out. Our
cameras started rolling and the nightfall turned completely dark.
A video clip (6Mb) can be downloaded
here that showed how the bait with the spooky music echoing in
the Ford Factory was served.
Hours passed by. The eerie folk music was filling up the
atmosphere. The whole SPI team was busy staring at the monitors and
taking down the atmospheric readings, trying not to miss out any
single detail. The night seemed peaceful, nothing sinister
happened yet.
Ghost stake-out, just like other meticulous investigation is
actually a monotonous task. Not otherwise thought to be chilling
and exciting, full of actions. However, things do not appear by their face value.
What seems normal intertwines with the paranormal underneath.
The time was about 9pm. Nothing happened yet, but expect the
unexpected.
Brave volunteer, human bait
A shuttle van with big labels of "MediaCorp" on the sides mounted
its way up the hill to the open ground outside Ford Factory. It
was surprising for us to find out that, TCS has arranged some
celebrities who bravely wanted to volunteer in our ghost hunt. One
of them was called Stephanie, a young and sweet girl currently
studying Law in NUS. Stephanie was all the while curious about SPI
and its operation. Tonight, given this rare opportunity, Stephanie
would go in to the monitoring area and serve as a psychic feeler.
Well, we agree that our human brain is the most sophisticated
creation of God, that beats all electronic gadgets when it comes
to psychic contact with spirits. This was certainly a gut-taking act that even some guys do not
dare to embark. Guided by SPI investigator, after a short briefing of
the do's and don'ts plus some safety measure, Stephanie was taken
to enter the Ford Factory lobby and sat right next to the 'bait'.
The ambiance was however in total darkness with eerie Japanese
folk music playing.. "Dong Don Don Doh Doh.. Haar Hahaaha Ha Ha Ha
HaaHaaa...." (listen to the music clip, and you will know how it
was like!)
When Stephanie was going in, ET and KC murmured a prayer.
SPI was shaking his head and with his eye-brows frown.
Though without saying anything we knew what he was thinking.
"Isn't this a bit too cruel? We are using a young girl as a
laboratory white mouse to study ghosts." He appeared restless as
if he sensed something was not right.
 
1. SPI was briefing Stephanie on
the basic ghost hunting tips, do's and don'ts
2-4. On the other hand, we were preparing the 'place' for Stephanie to
sit near the bait. When it was started, all the lights would be off
 
Ok, Stephanie was ready to go in.
She was armed with only a pen-size torch light and an EMF detector.
SPI was escorting her all the into bait area. He said many
times "Are you sure you want to go in?"
The third photo accidentally shows his face smudged; that gave a
spooky prelude to the forthcoming horror
 
1. Stephanie has gone in; The
investigator
was worried; 2. SPI team was eyeing on the monitors observing what
could have happened
3. ET was shunning his eyes from the cruel scene of getting a young
girl into a haunted spot; Mathwizard was watching in amusement!
4. Finally the voluntary feelers came out, they seemed to have
encountered something sinister
Click
here
to watch a video clip (5.5Mb) showing SPI monitoring the TV sets while
Stephanie was taken inside the factory lobby
One minute, fourteen seconds, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, .. ET
was keeping the time on how long Stephanie has been in. Some smart
readers who have good imagination may think that Stephanie never
came out or disappeared in air. Disappearance may not be possible
because she was under surveillance of two night-vision cameras,
one at the front and the other at the side. We were watching her
every move from our monitoring station outside.
At one minute twenty-nine seconds, a scream pierced the still air.
She ran out like mad hysterically. All of us were shocked and
realized something had happened. The filming crew were trying to
calm her down. We all worried about her well being. Feeling quite
stunned, we didn't carry on so-called interviewing her to let her
testify what she encountered on the spot. But only after some days later,
through a contact person from Mediacorp, we found that Stephanie
did encounter something sinister. Although we all were keen on
doing paranormal investigation, we somehow felt sorry for that
happened.
So what happened? You may ask. Stephanie said in some later days,
that she heard a husky voice of an old man behind her while she
was sitting inside the Ford Factory. The voice started off faint,
then got louder and louder as if the old man was walking towards
her. Once she confirmed the voice was real and felt the presence
of the man was not an imagination, she just ran for life.
Voice of an old man? We were puzzled. Anyway, we only found out
about this some days later. But we knew that something had
happened there that gave me us a clue to solve a mystery, in the
latter moments. Nevertheless, if you think that is the end of the
horror, you are dead wrong. It was only the beginning. In fact by
the time Stephanie heard the husky voice it was only one of the
first encounters of the night. There were several more horrors yet
to come.
Packing up
Time now was about midnight. We have had recorded footage for
almost 5 hours. The batteries and digital video tapes for some
equipment had run out. It may be time for us to pack up. The Mediacorp crew was leaving. It seemed to indicate our ghost
stake-out should end here. Hence, Kenny went to the lobby to
collect back the sensors, the bait and the CCTV. KC and ET were
doing the same, but they went to the secret alley. SPI
investigator and
Mathwizard were doing a final atmospheric check and pack up the TV
monitors at the monitoring station.
By now, we have to admit that, it was a grave mistake that we
made. Never pack up equipment when the night was still young. We
should have left the equipment there intact until the next morning
comes or replaced the batteries so to let the recording continue.
Kenny bent down his body to pick up the sensors from every corner
of the lobby one by one. As exhausted as we were, the alkaline
batteries in his torch Mag-light went flat, the light was going
off gradually.
Although the light condition was insufficient, we knew exactly
where we placed our gadgets, we would be able to collect every
piece back even in a dim ambiance. There were six grenades to
collect in the lobby. They were placed against the wall in almost
every corner of the area. It takes a small technique to handle
this grenade type of infra-red motion sensor. On the front of the
motion sensor
there was a window hosting a sensitive IR emitter. Usually we try
to avoid coming from the front where the sensor is facing. This is
to prevent the sensor to sound off accidentally. We come from
sideway, carefully grab the sensor by the sides. As we grab the
sensor our thumb would usually press off the switch that is
located at the side at the same time simultaneously.
This simple procedure was carried out as usual for this time, even
though in dark. Because we were so familiar with the sensors, that
was where the chill came from; as soon as Kenny touched the
sensor, his thumb would automatically try to turn off the switch
button. But his thumb found nothing! Instead it was his index
finger to have felt the switch button. What does it mean? The
sensor has somehow been turned around, facing the wall instead of
the detected area!! A cold chill sent straight down to his spine.
That was technical difficult though may not be impossible to flip
the sensor around when it was in operation. Once
the sensor was set on, anybody who tried to move it would make it
go off. So who did that? As far as we know, nobody had entered the
lobby and messed with the sensors under our eyes and CCTV camera.
His focus was still on the grenade sensor that had been
mysteriously flipped over. Who could have done that? Kenny was
totally confused. At that time, when he was crouching and studying
the sensor, at the corner of his eyes he noticed something.
Something that everybody has and is just too common - his shadow.
We used the term 'noticed' because he was not aware of a shadow of
his own a moment ago. But he was now. Why? The shadow seemed a
little more translucent than usual, in his peripheral vision. It started to move! Inch by
inch, the shadow stretched itself across the floor, then on the
wall growing up! If the CCTV was still on, his face would be seen
in extreme horror. He saw by his own eyes that his shadow grew
longer and longer and crawling up on the wall as though it has
life. Frozen he was crouching still and stiff, too frightened to
do anything, including escape. He watched the shadow stretched all
the way up to the ceiling along the wall, over his head and seemed
as if it had no intention to stop. With the speed of growth, it
could reach the wall where Kenny was leaning against, and
eventually reach him in less than a minute.
He was watching in terror with his eyes wide-opened and his face
90 degrees up. His coolness finally broke down while the shadow
had not stopped swarming towards him. "Wahhh!!!!" he ran and
screamed mad. When he got out of the Factory building he heard
from the hangar area ET was screaming too, almost at the same
time.
ET was running out with sweat splashing off from his face, looking
frightened and shabby. His fearful face slowly turned into pain
with his eye-brows frown tighter. KC was beside supporting him.
"What happened?!" This question was at least repeated 10 times by
SPI investigators and Mathwizard who jaga the monitoring station.
Immediately KC requested "He is injured. Where is our First Aid kit?"
We rolled up his SPI t-shirt that was torn with a hole on the
back. We saw a scratch wound about one inch long on ET's back.
Carefully Mathwizard applied anti-septic cream on the wound. ET
was recalling, then said "something struck me... when I was
picking up the sensor in the alley". We looked at each other,
speechless, but sharing the same puzzle - nobody else was in the
hangar area. Of course KC wouldn't do that to ET. Then who? or
what attacked ET?
 
1. Mathwizard was inspecting ET's
wound; Gee, he was wearing a glove! 3. The wound is a 2 inches
long cut!
3. Even the SPI t-shirt was torn as indicated by arrow
4. We
observed there were strayed cats around. Wouldn't it be the cats
that attacked ET in the dark? Another
view of the cats
Bizarre findings
Our moods were disturbed. It was true that we were not lucky
enough to catch a full ghost such as "here is a spirit, say
hello to him". However,
bizarre incidences did happen one after another in our
investigation night, though in a subtle way. On the following list
we summarized all the weird happenings throughout the night.
Before we classified them as paranormal, we considered too the
rational factors.
- Stephanie heard a husky old
man's voice behind her. (Could that be the security guard who
was hiding in one of the rooms?)
- Kenny found that the sensors
were turned around in the monitoring area (Couldn't it be a human
error? Although the chance is very slim, say 0.1%, there is
still a logical chance instead of paranormal?)
- Kenny saw a horrible moving
shadow (Shadow created by car headlights? But the compound is on
a high ground. Car headlights can hardly reach the lobby room.)
- ET encountered an attack on his
back in the hangar area (Most people will jump into conclusion
that must be the stray cats. But think further. ET is about 6 feet
tall. Cats would seldom jump up so high, and cats rarely attack
human from behind. If a cat were to harm ET, it would have to
jump from height. But in the hangar area, as you can see, there
is quite empty and hardly anything from which a cat can jump. It would be even
more paranormal if a cat jump from the ceiling over 10 meters
high because it wanted to scratch ET!)
- Jade, although she was not
involved in this investigation mission, she was curious and went
into the bait lobby to 'take a look' earlier on. But when she came out, she
appeared as possessed! She just walked straight off and didn't
response to anybody. Later on when we asked her what happened.
She said she couldn't recall anything, but like having a dream.
She dreamt of Japanese soldiers marching pass her, and can't
remember anything else... Click
here to see a video clip (368Kb) that shows Jade was walking
out of the factory compound with a peculiar expression.
- Near the toilets in the bait
lobby we captured some strange entities on video camera. But
they are too blur to be confirmed as ghost apparitions.
- In the secret alley, a dancing
orb was captured on night vision camera. The orb seemed to move
along an elliptic path up and down in front of the camera while
crossing the alley. The footage, however, is now with a
television studio doing analysis. But as controversial as orbs
could be, some said it is merely the reflection of a flying dust.
The above list of strange phenomena
do not mean to be exhaustive. It however give us a good indication
that the factory is possibly haunted. It would be too small the
chance that all of the above weird stuff happen by accident coincidentally.
Another strange incidence that worth documenting out but doesn't
fit into the above list of haunted elements. The guard - we have
been suspecting something is strange about him. At the end of our
investigation, when we were packing up, he suddenly approached us
and told us that the Samurai music that we played was not of a
Japanese song. It was an old Korean folk-song. He was with a hot
temper when he told us this. We didn't know what agitated him, may
be our presence till very late at night that disturbed his sleep?
The sinister thing was, after he told us the wrong song that
we played, he uttered to himself in a language that most of us
don't understand, except ET who knows Japanese! He said something
like "Mattaku aho kono yarou, Nande ka? Kierou baka!" It roughly
means "What the hell is that? You guys should get lost!" The
phrase "aho" in Japanese means Baka, a kind of foul
slang used in Osaka, not many people know.
We were shocked. All the while we thought the old uncle jaga was a
Chinese man? Or may be he IS a Chinese man, but inside him... Our
faces turned pale when we looked at each other. The guard slammed
the door loudly and shut himself alone in one of the rooms in Ford
Factory.
 
1. SPI team was 'glued' to the
monitoring station for the whole night even during makan; we don't
want to miss any weird occurrence
2. These are the two sets of TV monitors, one showing the live
video of the boardroom, the other showing the bait lobby
3. Something strange was captured from the bait lobby. Can you
tell what are they?
4. ET, Gate and Mathwizard were discussing on that weird scene -
'looks like some Japanese soldiers apparitions swamping towards
us?'
 
1. The sealed up part of the secret
alley may be the key to all the mysteries. We can't knock down the
wall, but we got a hole on the wall
2. We peeped in the hole to take perhaps the first glance ever
after the alley has been sealed up, and checked what is inside,
using an infra-red camera
3. We noticed that the guard somehow behaved very strangely beyond
words can describe.
He sometimes roamed around the bait area aimlessly, sometimes he
would stood still and stared at the wall for no reason!
The end of our investigation? Or it is only a beginning!
Time finally hit 1am. All our equipment was packed up, Mediacorp team has left
already. Our brave KC had a wild suggestion. From
what we have observed throughout our investigation tonight, this
place is certainly spooky. Weird incidences came piece by piece
and it was frustrating that we didn't capture anything solid yet.
In order words, our mission was only half met. KC suggested to go
in again, all the way to the dark bait lobby, and all the way to
the secret alley, to unearth the truth that is hiding inside
Over this suggestion, we had some debate initially
on whether we should go in because of safety concern. While they
were arguing, Kenny opened up a hand-drawn floor plan, marked down
our ghost stake-up plan like the diagram we showed earlier. He
consolidated the weird encounters from the list above, and marked
the places of encounters on the floor-plan. When the pieces are pieced
together, you get a better picture. Suddenly Kenny and Mathwizard
exclaimed, as though they have just unlocked some enigma in one
click. "Guys come over here. Take a look at these." Pushing the
floor-plan a little bit up so that everybody can see. The floor
plan, with the red dots represent those spots of encounters, was laying
flat on the table. If you observe closer, and think a little
further, on their proximity, you will see!
Look at the floor-plan with the
encounter locations. They share some similarity. They form a
straight line. They are generally away from camera surveillance.
They are close to the back of the factory, or may be the secret
alley. Perhaps the straight line can be explained by a portal? or
a ley line of energy that brought the souls back and responsible
for the weird occurrences? The hidden corner behind the end of
secret alley was really intriguing. Would it be related to all
these hauntings? It may even be the source! God knows what is
hiding inside!
Though a little far stretched, we came to another speculation. The
"beings" seem to have some intelligence. We speculated that they
knew we were here, they knew what we wanted, and they knew how to
get around with the night-vision cameras and sensors. If you go
hunting for an animal, and you know that you are smarter than the
prey, you will always win by setting trap and bait that you are
confident the animal will buy your trick. But what if the prey you
are hunting are smarter than you or equally smart as you? You will
get nothing.
That may explain why not we could get an apparent apparition on
camera! But instead we got smaller encounters here and there. All
the encounters were hostile. They showed no welcome to us.
Pertaining to the Japanese words that the jaga mumbled, "What the
hell are you doing? Get lost!". Isn't this a clear message that
they wanted to convey to us? We better leave them alone.
Is this the end of our investigation? Not quite. Our initial plan
was mis-calculated. Most of our gadgets and measuring devices were
deployed at the boardroom that we thought it should be of some
significance. We spent a great deal of effort in doing an ambush
in the boardroom. We spent hours in recording in the ambush. But
it turned out to have absolutely no result. Why?
ET tried to explain, think about it in this way: "You were once a
brave solider, you died may be in Ford Factory for more than 50
years, may be of a violent death and extreme pain in cutting open
your belly. Does the boardroom matter to you anymore? We don't
know how it was like after death. But being earth-bounded for 50
years in an enclosed compound, surely it wouldn't be a nice
experience. What matter most to the ghosts probably is either, to
be released to heaven, to the other realm, or to rest in peace, be
left alone. They are angry souls. Very vengeful souls. And we
tried to fool around with them with the boardroom and the music."
One paranoid investigator was jumping mad and shouted "You still want to go
in...?". Kenny replied, "We empathize the ghosts' sentiments. We
know they are vengeful and dangerous. But we are investigators,
whose job is to find out the truth till the bottom. This is SPI
spirit. The truth is out there." Mathwizard butted in and corrected "the truth
is in there", pointing his thumb to the factory lobby. KC looked
determined and said "Cut all the craps. You guys go on
arguing here if you wish. Just put on my night-vision helmet. I AM
GOING IN." At
that moment, everybody was speechless. We had a mixed feeling of
respect, solemn and worry. None of us can deny our curiosity. Who
doesn't want to go in to find out the truth? In a few minutes
time, KC was armed with a night-vision helmet, a Geiger meter on
one side and two EMF meters on the other. We have done the best
that we can to transform him into a walking ghost detector. The
vision that captured by the camera on his head will send to our
mobile TV monitor. This time, KC would probably go and check
through thoroughly every haunted or suspect haunted locations in
the Ford Factory at all costs.
Time was about 2am. The moon was dim. The neighbours were quiet. The streets nearby
were dead silent. The Ford Factory certainly looked like a ghost
lair. Into the darkness, KC bravely walked in....
 
1. We
helped KC put on the night-vision helmet. You see the red
infra-red LEDs glowing in operation?
2 & 3. The night-vision camera, under the view of an infra-red
camera, looks like a bright lamp. See another
picture for
beautiful IR glare
The light is emitting in infra-red region of light frequency
spectrum, that is not visible to our human eyes
4. Brave KC, we all salute to you...
¡@
The full story will be
continued...
This investigation will be broadcasted on TV soon, as an
episode of a TV program called Incredible Tales by TCS5.
SPI takes this opportunity to thank the support given generously
by Mediacorp for this investigation.
Finale:
The boardroom seems to be okay - why? Ghosts no longer
interested in the boardroom? Or they lost their memories of their last moment of pride?
Or is
it true that when a person died he only remember the last instance
of happening at his last breath, the emotion, the feeling and the
grudge?
¡@
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Answering
Mysteries
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