Deadly Immortality in Telford Gardens

After a mass murder at Telford Gardens, cleaners at the apartment blocks have claimed that something supernatural is going on, and the whole apartment complex has been called cursed because of the tragic incidents that keep piling up.

On July 22nd in Hong Kong in 1998, the police were making their way into an apartment in Telford Gardens (德福花園) in Kowloon Bay. The place is a private housing estate located above the MTR Kowloon Bay Depot and alongside Kowloon Bay station in Kowloon Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong. The place would later be known as a cursed place as bad things like mysterious deaths and murders kept happening there.

undefined — **Telford Gardens in Hong Kong:** Three close friends and the two teenage daughters of one of the women were poisoned by Chinese feng shui practitioner Li Yuhui during a ‘longevity rite’

When the police entered the apartment in the Block C apartment that summer day in 98’ they found five dead women, all in different rooms. They had all died from cyanide poisoning.

Read More: Check out all our collection of ghost stories from China

The estate comprises a total of 41 residential blocks completed between 1980 and 1982, organised by alphabetical order (from A to U), with only Block L not sharing its lobby with a twin block. A round mirror tied to a pair of scissors with a red string is hanging outside the window and was the only sign from the outside that something was apparently amiss.

The murder victims was Becky Lam Chun-lai, the 49-year-old executive director of a publicly traded company, who lived with her husband and three children in Repulse Bay; Choi Sau-chun, 44, a mother of one and resident of Telford Gardens; Tsui Shun-kam, 40, who lived in the fifth-floor flat, also in Telford Gardens, in which the bodies were found; and Tsui’s daughters, Lee Ying-fai, 17, and Lee Ying-hei, 13.

Mass Suicide as a Cult Pact

This was a feng shui ornament and three of the women were believers of Shintoism. This led the initial investigation in the direction that this was a mass suicide in connection to some sort of cult activity.

“A mother, her two teenage daughters, and two women friends were found dead in a suspected suicide pact in a flat in Kowloon Bay last night,” was the story in the South China Morning Post on July 24, 1998.

Then they found out that one of the women was a CEO and had withdrawn 700 000 dollars on the day they died. They had all withdrawn huge sums of money and it turned out the story was far from a mass suicide.

The Feng Shui Murderer

**The Telford Garden Murder:** “The women, who had only known Li a month, were given ‘holy water’ – later confirmed to have been cyanide – to drink and told that every $10,000 could buy another year of life” as part of a longevity rite in the Telford Gardens murders. Tsui was told to give each daughter a cup of “holy water” to drink. Once all five were dead, Li took the HK$1.3 million and returned to the mainland.

The truth was that they were all superstitious and had been scammed by a fake feng shui master from mainland China. Feng Shui master Li Yuhui took an enormous amount of money from them and spent them all on a longevity ritual. At least that is what he said when he was standing trial.

He was executed by a firing squad in 1998 after he was convicted for manslaughter after killing the five women in Telford Gardens.

One of the things he gave was a drinkable talisman, a so-called holy water. that one of the women even shared with her daughter. This was poisonous though and killed them all. Once all five were dead, Li took the HK$1.3 million and returned to the mainland.

Li’s trial began on March 4, 1999, in Shantou, Guangdong province. The accused denied the charges levelled against him, claiming a Zen Buddhist was the mastermind behind the crime. “I’m not the real murderer,” he reportedly told the court.

Although he tried to appeal the case of the Telford Gardens murders, he was sentenced to death and killed by a firing squad executed on April 20, his plea was rejected and he was executed by firing squad.

The Ghost of Telford Gardens

After this, there have been reports of haunting around the block, and especially cleaners in Telford Gardens have gotten the dark end of it. Many have quit their jobs after experiencing paranormal things. For example there was a cleaner that claimed she saw and heard something when she was taking out the trash from the floor the apartment was on.

She heard footsteps coming down the corridor and the sound of a woman calling out for her.

“Wait for me, I haven’t taken out the trash yet!”

But there would be no one there.

After she was done though she turned back to the stairwell and found a trash bag that she had no explanation how it got there.