TELLING SINGAPORE GHOST STORIES: DELVING IN THE GHOSTS WITHIN NURUL HUDA BINTE ABDUL RASHID B. SOC. SCI (MASTERS), NUS

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1 TELLING SINGAPORE GHOST STORIES: DELVING IN THE GHOSTS WITHIN NURUL HUDA BINTE ABDUL RASHID B. SOC. SCI (MASTERS), NUS A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTERS IN SOCIOLOGY DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2010

2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisors, Dr. Roxana Waterson and Dr. Maribeth Erb, with my deepest gratitude. They have seen me through years of writing and editing and have stood by me even in dark times. Their constant support and understanding have kept me going, even at times when giving up would have been easier. Thank you so much for everything and thank you Dr. Waterson for not letting me become the legless toad. To my parents, thank you for sticking by and not doubting me when I chose to continue studying, even though it is what I have been doing for the past 16 years of my life. I will go get a job now. To my sisters, Raudah and Khairunissa, thank you for the many moments of lame jokes and laughter. They have been perfect de-stressors the duration of this thesis. To my brother, Ammar, thank you for always asking me when I was going to finish. You are the great thesis police. To my twin, stina. Although we are a country apart, you have always been my dearest friend and confidante. You always have my side and never allowed me to give up on anything. I hope I can now lend you the support as you pursuit your Masters. Our shared liberation. And here s to a year filled with photography and non-slouching. To my firefly, seuty. You are my greatest blessing to come from the masters program, without which, we wouldn t have become partners in (dodo) crime. I am always thankful for you in my life, for the people you ve brought into my life, and for the laughter and normal weirdness. Your presence has shaped my being in so many different ways, and I will always remember that. Woosh with your thesis my dear! To my bohemian butterfly, nadia, my longest friend in existence. Thank you for always checking up on me and being there for me. For fueling my creative passion and for the undying support all these years. And especially for listening to me rant about this t-thing for all these years. To zhen, for being my COLD rock. For the mad times and the serious conversations. And for the dancing in windowless rooms. To my darling friends krittika, chand, mamta, melissa, audrey, aarti, drani, becky, robotham, thomas, monique, emily, yati, yvonne, bon, shanthini, aarti, saroja, su yin, rachael thank you for the fun times, hugs, and push. Here s to more of it in the new year! To the grad room folks! Thank you for sharing the cheesy videos, laughter, and support. Love! And to the ghost stories, for letting me discover some of my own ghosts. ii

3 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: Introduction 1 Ghost Stories: an Initiation 2 Embodying the Supernatural: a Methodology 4 The Ghostly Experience and Sentient Self 9 Why Ghosts ah, not Hantu, Gui, or dunno what? 12 The Story behind the Ghosts 15 CHAPTER 2: Medium and Method 17 The Story as Medium 19 i) The Oral Tradition 21 ii) The Written Word 25 iii) Ghost Stories on Screen 28 Of Belief and Craftsmanship 39 Of History and Remembering 48 Of Ghost Stories and History, of Ghost Stories as History 49 The Building of A Communal Memory 51 CHAPTER 3: Visualizing Ghost Stories 52 Politics of the Unseen 54 Recognizing the Unseen: a Foray into Dichotomies 59 Identifying the Form: Human and Ghostly Bodies 61 Ghostly Bodies: The Second Nature 66 i) The Body: The Hypersexual, Desexualized 66 ii) The Body, Starved 74 Places, Spaces, and the Fate of Ghosts 80 Sentimentalizing Spaces: Ghosts in Places 82 iii

4 CHAPTER 4: The Sentient 87 Disenchanting the Visual: The Mind s Eye 88 Intermediaries: Artifacts, Animals, and the Art of Stories 90 To Smell 93 To Hear 94 To Feel 95 Sensing Ghosts: Our Sensory Profile 95 CHAPTER 5: Re-Telling Ghost Stories 98 Pastures of Cement 99 Resolving Ethnicities 100 The Story as Sacred 102 TABLES Table 1: Age Group of Informants 41 Table 2: Ethnic Group Breakdown of Informants 41 BIBLIOGRAPHY 104 iv

5 SUMMARY There are ghost stories everywhere in Singapore. They tell tales of ethnic and ancestral ghosts, localized within cultural communities and experienced through religion and belief. They are also told as part of childhood socialization, used as cautionary tales and reminders of how one should act. And since the popularization of the True Singapore Ghost Stories, these ghost stories have encapsulated stories of social ghosts etched in war history and the everyday shared memories of the Singaporean community. These ghost stories have transcended the cultural boundaries of the ethnic and have since permeated into the shared sites of everyday Singapore, making Singapore ghost stories reflective of the underlying stories that lay embedded within the society. Etched across the different narrative genres of popular culture, old wives tales, and myths, these ghost stories have been told through different media from the old art of storytelling to the modern visuals projected onto the screen and via different storytellers from grandparents to coworkers, and even embodied within different spaces in the Singapore landscape. These different media each evoke a ghostly experience that later shapes the way the audience see and feel these ghosts. Through these sentient method of experiencing ghost stories, the roles of the visual and the other senses of smelling, hearing, and feeling illuminate aspects embodied aspects of these ghost stories, revealing stories about the often forgotten everyday as well as the self. These experiences also reflect the ways through which the people conceptualize ideas about the body, the normal, as well as facets of their everyday. The role of Singapore ghost stories thus exist not just as stories but they begin to take on a more social role in embodying and telling the silent stories that are v

6 often untold. Caught between states of attraction to and repulsion away from facets of its traditional world, Singapore, as a modern city, embodies and often grapples with these aspects of its reality. This tension is subtly exhibited through the management of sites, history, material culture, as well as the ideas and values that linger often as taboo in the realms of its everyday, as conducted and regulated by the State. The existence of these Singapore ghost stories subtly mimic and reflect these prevailing tensions and as a result, can be regarded as reflective of the realities that are lived and experienced by the people. vi