Ultimate Strangeness
Recently, my mum bought several DVDs of a Hong Kong paranormal TV show known as ‘Gwai Tan’ (translated literally as ‘Strange Conversation’). I can tell you, this show is fun to watch.
In the first part of every episode, they will show the documentary of their journey around Asian countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan to explore and discover the art of local black magic and also visiting very spooky places. In the second part of the show, the hosts will have conversation with a ‘sifu’ (master) to talk about various paranormal events.
I have already spent some 20 hours watching this show and some of my favourite highlights are:
- The host of the show shared his story of how he dreamt that he walked around his neighbourhood and then he saw a big fire at an apartment nearby. Initially after he woke up, he brushed it off as ‘just-another-dream’ but soon realized, there was indeed a fire taking place nearby his house.
- Many GRO and prostitutes in Thailand use ‘magic water’ which is made of the girl’s menstrual blood mixed with frog’s juice (the frog is smashed alive and then extracted the liquid) to charm their customers. Apparently, these GRO and prostitute said it worked well. In Malaysia, they use ‘Chin Oil’ instead where a corpse is burned and oil extracted from the corpse’s chin is stored in a small bottle.
- A story of a Hong Kong citizen of how she was possessed when she was holidaying at Macau. There was an inner voice in her head which kept urging her to jump off the hotel room. And when she wanted to leave the room, there was a ‘force’ which kept pulling her back.
- A HongKong celebrity (not revealed) shared her experience after having a concert in Genting Highlands in Malaysia. She was forewarned by the authorities in Genting not to visit the 7th floor in certain hotel, but out of curiosity she still pressed 7th on the lift to see what the floor is all about. However, the whole floor was sealed with bricks. The very same night after her concert performance, she took the same lift back to her room at 16th floor, then when she steps out of the lift, it is as thought she was trapped in another dimension. She kept moving around the floor to find the exit but no matter where she went, she will end up in the same place all over again. Until when suddenly the lift opened up and some tourist came out of the lift only then the hallucination spell is broken.
- In the scenario above, the ‘Sifu’ said that when such thing happens, from a 3rd person point of view, this person will just keep walking in a circle around a spot but in the victim’s head, he/she will struggle to find the exit by exploring the forest (but always ending up at the same spot). It’s like a dream. It happens frequently in the hill and forest at night.
- During an exploration of an abandoned hospital in Thailand, one of the crew members lightly kicked away a wheel chair as it was blocking his path while he was investigating a room. After that, strange things start taking place. Bottles on the shelf start dropping on the floor, windows start to break, door open and closed itself and the environment became ‘noisy’ with unknown voices. When things looked to be serious, the ‘sifu’ urged everyone to move out of the building and then while they are leaving via staircase (from the 2nd floor to ground floor), they saw the wheelchair was right infront of the staircase, blocking them from leaving. After doing a little ceremony to appease the spirit and pushed back the wheel chair to the room, they proceeded to leave. But the moment they stepped out of the room, the cameraman caught the wheelchair of moving by itself, and the ‘Sifu’ urged everyone to pretend not to see a thing and quickly exit the building.
- In cemetery, it is said that you can often see ‘glowing orbs’ floating around at night. Looking from scientific point of view, those are a kind of energy which will be released by corpse, not only by dead human, but also by animals. So, if you ever mysteriously see a floating orb around, it indicates there’s a dead body around.
- In a forest, 3 crew members saw several pair of bright red eyes (pure red as they didn’t use any flashes or lightings) staring at them from the top of tree. Curiously they went and check out the tree. The ‘sifu’ shouted very loudly to them not to go near the tree as it’s very haunted over there but these 3 people actually couldn’t hear him. It’s only when the sifu dragged them out of the area with his hand then they knew what was going on. They said they couldn’t hear any voices or shouting of the ‘sifu’. It was as though they were sealed away from the reality.
- The documentary of brutal murder of 3 year old girl, Oii Ying Ying in Penang, Malaysia. The spirit of Oii Ying Ying possessed one of the crew member when the ‘sifu’ was holding a ceremony to invite her spirit back to home.
And many more very interesting stuffs. 
So interesting that I’ve started to create theories of how ghost and spirits affect human being, scientifically.
It’s hard for me to be superstitious after watching a Japanese TV series called as TRICK one or two years ago, as I’ve learned not to take seemingly paranormal or spooky stuffs easily. (TRICK is about a journey of a magician and a physicist who visited various village to investigate paranormal stuffs such as spirits and some individual who claimed that they are divine beings with divine power.)
I remember one of the stories in TRICK of how the magician came across a room which gave a clear warning sign : DO NOT ENTER. OR ELSE YOU WILL BE STRANGLED TO DEATH BY A GHOST CHILD. Refuse to believe the existence of spirits, she went inside the room. Suddenly, the door was automatically shut and she was trapped inside. Then she began to feel hard to breathe as if someone was choking her and almost fainted. Not long after that, the physicist rescued her from the room and she claimed emphatically there’s a small kid in the room strangling her. After a round of investigation, the physicist claimed that the reason why it was hard for her to breathe was because there’s a hot spring under the room which will emit certain vapor through the floor. Hence, when she was trapped in the room, the density of the vapor is stronger than oxygen, therefore oxygen couldn’t get inside the room. Coupled with the psychological effect that there’s a small kid spirit around, that’s the reason why it is hard for her to breathe and thinking there was someone choking her.
So, I often carry “It’s-Strange. I-Do-Not-Know” mindset when watching Gwai Tan discussing or discovering the unknowns, rather than jumping to conclusions. But at the same time, it’s difficult to refute all these seemingly paranormal stuffs.
But finally, there was one topic they discussed which I could very well refute. The discussion started of how some people who practiced meditation, after able to achieve the state of emptiness, begun to feel that as if a devil has overtaken their body. It is as though they become another person and he/she will start to unleash bad things from their personality and their behaviour change drastically. Then the ‘sifu’ promptly explained that meditation should be done alongside experts because when a person goes very deep in meditation, spirits and devils could start to overtake the body and the mind.
After many hours of watching the show, for the first time, I could point my finger to the TV and utter the word – “nonsense!”
I will tell you how the mind works and why there’s no devil in meditation in the next post.
