The Chinese woman in the iconic red qipao waves her fan in a mockingly coquettish manner behind the tombstones — half her face mangled and malignant as she turns to reveal the other side of her pretty cheek. The Japanese soldier’s spirit shambles along, screaming ‘Banzai!’, refusing to believe the war was long over, forever trapped in the past. The pale, long haired Pontianak cradles her baby, weaving wordlessly in the crowd of teenagers and youths as they queue in front of the museum.

Spooktacular at Sentosa comes with a local twist. Exploiting Singapore’s rich menagerie of folk lores, legends and the bloody battles of World War II, the Images of Singapore museum is transformed into a haunted colonial mansion, where vengeful phantoms from our past dare its visitors to explore the macabre side of a bygone oriental era.

My coursemates and I were given the privilege of free tickets to the event because we were covering for our campus newspaper. Me, being a fan of old  Singapore and somewhat of a WWII junkie, was a little more excited than the rest to see the spirits of deceased Japanese soldiers and Chinese brides:

I know, I know, I’m blogging about this event that’s four days ago, and I’m sure that many media platforms have given it coverage, but here’s my perspective of it!

Anyway I was excited but I didn’t say I wasn’t squirmish when I saw the ghost mascots wandering around in the forecourt of the museum, with those perpetual venemous looks on their faces. And when I get scared, I go crazy:

Luckily, there was a guy (he’s happily snapping pictures of our scared faces) in our otherwise all-girl group, and we pushed him to lead all of us in the 20-minute walkthrough in the museum.

In its reconstructed exhibition rooms of Old Singapore, the orang minyak, the ‘Yi Jian Fa Chai’ ghost, and the Pontianak were all re-animated out of old wives’ tales and urban legends, lurking in its dark corners agaionst the eerily lit wax figures, waiting to pounce.

What I think was most terrifying was the little dark garden walkway, with the words ‘Celebration Garden’ glowing bright yellow against the articifical fog and mist. For some reason I just felt that the garden was so dreadfully surreal — having seen better days, abandoned, desolate, bleak and cold — like a massacre had happened decades ago –

Oops, sorry, I think my imagination carried me away! Anyway–

There the dead Nyonya lady’s spirit wandered, and she glowered at us with one eye, as the other hung limply from its bloodied socket. One of my friends wanted to take a picture of her, but she hissed hostilely — alright lady, we get the idea, we’ll leave you alone! — and we scuttled off obediently.

I really had to hand it to Sentosa this time for coming up with such a brilliant Oriental theme for Halloween. Glimpsing (yes, I use the word ‘glimpse’ my eyes were half shut most of the time) at the darkened backdrops of once-upon-a-time Singapore, the mood and ambience conjured was eerie and surreal, this strange little cocktail of postcard nostalgia and horror…

I don’t know about the rest of you who went for this event, but featuring these ghosts from our local history and folklore gives me more goosebumps than the ordinary Western halloween theme of witches, poltergiests and zombies. Because these are characters that we have heard of since young and have been warned of, and we’re familiar with them. And seeing them resurrected in Spooktacular, familiarity takes on a more frightening aspect — for me at least.

Next time if Sentosa decides to hold another Spooktacular I wanna see more dead WWII soldiers and civilians walking! =D

Anyway for those of you who had gone for Spooktacular, I hope you’d enjoyed reading my first blog post on Yesterday.sg!