The bright blue water in the Venetian Lagoon turns gray in the night. In the fog you can hardly see anything. But beware, look out for a small child coffin with four little candles lit on it. It is the hauntings of the young girl who drowned and trying to warn people that she is still there.
Fog crept over the lagoon in Venice. Just off St. Michele Island on the 29th of November in 1904, nighttime and the fog made it dark to be on the water.
All of the transportation in Venice happened and still happens to be on the water and a water bus known as a vaporetto and a gondola was passing. Francesco Quintavalle was the captain on the vaporetto, or water bus called ‘Pellestrina’, and knew he couldn’t see much. Still, he had his passengers from the Fondamenta Nove he had to transport to the island of Burano, known for its colorful houses across the lagoon. The colorful houses were all gray tonight.
When passing the cemetery of St. Michele, the captain gave orders to change course. But a gondola was right behind them and had no chance of stopping in time before crashing with the vaporetto. The gondola was wrecked, but some of the passengers managed to cling onto the gondola. However, five passengers ended up in the dark water and never came up alive.
All night they searched for the rest of the passengers that disappeared into the lagoon. They were all women. Thosa Mary Bull was the first to be found, dead of hypothermia and it wasn’t looking good for the rest.. In the morning hours the bodies of Lei, Thoso of Borelli and Amalia Padovan Vistosi were found as well. But two of the girls, Teresa Sandon and Giuseppina Gabriel Carmelo were not found for a while.
It wasn’t until the sister of Teresa Sandon had a dream of her sister in September 1905 another of the bodies were uncovered. The ghost of the drowned woman asked her to pray for her and free her soul. Ten days later two fishermen found the body of Sandon.
But Giuseppina Gabriel Carmelo, just a little girl, wasn’t as lucky, and she was never found.
Now to this day, just off St Michele, which is one of the big cemeteries in Venice, you can sometimes see a small floating coffin with four burning candles lit on the lid on foggy nights. This is the spirit of Giuseppina, signaling that she is there and to stop other ferrymen and people on boats to never collide with her again.
Closer to North Korea than to Seoul, the Yeonpyeong Island has experienced many times the horrors of the war, even in the later years. Legends of the island being hunted are spreading through the locals and visitors alike of the people that have lost their life to it.
Korea has seen warfare throughout its time and the last one, The Korean War is technically not even over yet since it started in 1950 between the two Korean countries that started in a civil war and ended up as two fighting nations.
Near the border of the two Koreas, north and south, on the 38th parallel, there is an island called Yeonpyeong Island that is to this day disputed between the two parties. Although claimed by both, it is considered as part of and inhabited by South Koreans, but the island itself is so close to the North Korean border that you can almost see it. This has made the island exposed for North Korean retaliation and its bombs.
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Only a two hour ferry ride from Incheon, Seoul where the ongoing Korean war can seem like a strange fever dream, you can experience how close some of the residents of the island are to the war and how it still affects the people living there. And also catch a glimpse of the ghosts of those who succumbed to it as well?
The Bombardment of Yeonpyeong Island
This island has also taken its share of bombings, and military attacks since the war started in 1950. The last big attack happened on November 23th in 2010 and led to the islanders having to flee their home island temporarily and got a lot of international attention as the world condemned the action of North Korea.
The North Korean military bombarded the island where the disputed land was guarded by South Korean forces, ending up hitting civilians as well as military people, killing 4 and injuring 19 people. This incident is one of the things that are said to have escalated the tension on the Korean Peninsula in the later years.
After this, many chose to never return and would rather stay on the South Korean mainland after the attacks for a long time, creating a sort of ghost town feeling to the once bustling fishing community. And although by now most have returned, there are still those who never looked back to their original home.
The Hauntings of Yeonpyeong Island
The island is believed to be a place of spirits of both lost and vengeful ones according to the locals that are haunting the island.
The island tops many of the lists of articles like: Most Haunted in Korea and the likes. Although this claim is mostly found on websites in English, not so much on the Korean ones.
The terrible leprosy disease destroyed many lives throughout the ages. And in the city of Loja, The Hangman’s Tunnel in Loja, Ecuador is the place for one of the city’s tragic ghost stories.
The city of Loja in Ecuador was a place that people set out from to look for the mystical town of El Dorado in search of gold. Today it is more known as a place of culture, art and song. But even this bright singing city has its dark stories and legends.
A long time ago there was a leprosy colony at the asylum known as San Juan de Dios Hospital in Loja in Ecuador. Back in the day it used to be an incurable disease and the people suffering from it were put away far from other people fearing to catch the disease.
It is a horrible disease that causes severe disfiguring skin sores as well as nerve damage. It had a huge social stigma and those suffering from it were placed in these Leprocomio, or leper colonies across the world.
This was the place where Ana María grew up, as her unwed mother, Luz Marina had to take a job at the colony to support her daughter after she was kicked out of her family. Ana María grew up and received an education as a nurse as well, working closely with those affected by the disease.
She fell in love with a young law student named Luis Felipe. Over two years they met at their regular meeting place on the road leading to the hospital by a huge cliff known then and especially after as The Hangman’s Path.
After her mother died, Ana María hoped to marry, but found that she had been infected by the disease and had to be quarantined with the other infected away from everyone.
Unable to meet her fate, she decided to hang herself in a guabo tree near their regular meeting place. When Luis Felipe saw her hanging from the tree, he too chose to hang himself together with her.
Today, the hospital is known as Hospital Isidro Ayora. In 2007, they built a tunnel at The Hangman’s Path, now known as the Hansman’s Tunnel. It is a popular place for the locals to gather when playing with Ouija boards and claiming that they have seen the ghost of the two lovers, hanging from the tunnel.
The Idanha Hotel has a long story of being haunted. And even after it was renovated to apartment buildings, the stories about the misty apparition, the elevator with a will of its own, and whispering voices in the halls still happens in the building.
The old hotel in downtown Boise, Idaho is a historic hotel that was built in 1901 with a long and supposedly bloody history that is still being told in the corridors and whispered about inside the apartments.
Today the old French-chateau style building has been converted to apartments, but until its renovation it was used as a hotel and restaurant that caters to wealthy people from all over the country as it was considered to be the hotel in Boise as a stop on the Oregon trail or just to have some fun downtown.
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During the renovation to make it from a hotel to an apartment complex, the workers reported on strange things happening around them as they worked. Lights turn on and off without someone there as moaning sounds from certain places in the building can be heard without no one there. There is also a strange gray misty apparition that has been spotted without a good explanation.
There are numerous reported sightings about the building and residents in the apartment building have connected their strange experiences to certain stories, where some of the stories they experienced supposedly made them so scared they moved out.
Haunting on the Upper Levels
Not all hauntings stay as just a misty apparition in the corner of the eye or a sound that you may or may not hear. There have also been reports about something sinister going on in the upper floors. People have said that a certain something pulls them out of their beds. But for whatever reason or what it can be is still to be found out.
One of the ghosts that are supposedly haunting the building is a bellboy that worked there in the 1970s. He was shot dead by a guest at work and has been to blame for the elevator malfunctioning. He is known to move the elevator up and down without any people going, especially to the fourth floor where he was reportedly killed.
Some residents have also claimed to have seen his ghost peeking around the corners of the building. Hard evidence that this ever happened has not surfaced though and the story usually ends in its own rumor.
Hauntings at the Lower Levels
On the second floor there is a story of a woman that was murdered by her husband in the 1920s. She was reportedly murdered with a pair of scissors and now is said to roam the halls. There are many stories of residents hearing, talking and walking outside their doors, but when they open, there is no one there.
In the basement there is also a legend that is told again and again. It is said a woman was killed and buried there. She still lingers there as her body is buried underneath the building as well according to the legend. There have never been found a body under the basement floor however that has been revealed to the public, and the story is just that for the moment – a story.
The Future for the Old Idanha Hotel
The building is considered to be one of the landmarks of downtown Boise and is beloved because of the fine architecture and local stories. The apartments have residents that stay for decades and it is a very difficult place to get into apparently.
But there are also stories that tell something else. Although a much sought after place to stay, some of the strange encounters the residents have experienced have supposedly made them so scared that they decided to move out, unable to stay in the haunted space for long.
Put on the lists of most haunted places of South Korea, the once abandoned building of Neulbom Garden Restaurant, saw its fair share of ghosts according to the legends of this place.
The Neulbom Garden Restaurant (늘봄가든) building is located in Jecheon in North Chungcheong Province in South Korea. The restaurant is one of the most haunted places in South Korea according to most lists, blogs, youtube channels and articles. Often grouped together with the Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital and Yeongdeok Haunted House.
Arguably the most famous haunted place in South Korea is the Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital. When it was still standing it attracted a lot of ghost hunters, curious tourists and urban explorers. What was it behind the place that drew all these people?
Named one of the most haunted houses in South Korea, this house has attracted its fair share of ghost tourists. But is the Yeongdeok Haunted House really haunted by the death of Korean soldiers during the war, or is it simply the decaying look of the house that made the legend?
The story behind the haunted place of Neulbom Garden goes that the restaurant was once a very successful one that was run by a married couple. They had a young daughter with a physical disability in most versions of the legend. In some versions however, she was fine until the accident happened and turned their restaurant into Korea’s most haunted.
The Legend of the Haunted Restaurant
One day, the daughter of the restaurant owners was by the road right in front of the restaurant when she was run over by a car and she died. In some versions she survived the accident, but this is when her physical disability happened as her neck was snapped and left her brain dead.
Her father never recovered from this and ended up committed suicide by hanging himself in his grief. Her mother was also sick with grief and died not long after and the Neulbom Garden Restaurant was sold off.
After this tragedy, there were several attempts at running Neulbom Garden restaurant by other people, but strange things started happening all the time and the people working there started blaming it on some paranormal reasons.
The staff would take orders they forgot about, and when they realized it, they hurried over to the table with the forgotten orders. But when they came to the table, they found that someone had already served their guests.
They would also sometimes go home without cleaning the tables, but when they came back, the next morning, they found the whole restaurant tidied and clean.
The Abandoned Restaurant: Put on the lists of most haunted places of South Korea, the once abandoned building of Neulbom Garden Restaurant got a reputation of being haunted. //photo:
Not only the staff noticed strange things happening in the restaurants. Although perhaps a helpful ghost for the staff, the neighbors were less than pleased and constantly complained of loud noises from the haunted restaurant.
But although the ghosts seemed to have been eager to help with the restaurant, sometimes it would create chaos as well. Guests would sometimes order food by a female staff member, but the food would never arrive at their table. When the guests asked the male staff what happened to their order taken by the female staff, they could only answer: “We don’t have any females working here.”
The next owners that took over the restaurant finally gave up on running the restaurant one by one and left the building to decay, further fuelling the rumors of it being haunted. Rumors about the place is that a priest bought Neulbom Garden to let it rest in peace.
Although renewed as an art district in downtown Memphis, the buildings on South Main like Earnestine & Hazel’s Bar hold old history within its walls as well as hauntings of their ghosts.
There are so many conflicted theories about the restaurant and if we look at the earlier korean sources according to namu.wiki it was in 2009 an article of the hauntings of the Neulbom Garden Restaurant was written online. Here in this article it was the parents who died in both a car accident and by suicide by turning the gas stove on in the kitchen.
So what version could be the truth behind the many legends? More likely is that they closed down the Neulbom Garden Restaurant because the Jungang Expressway opened in 2001 and sales plummeted. It looks like it was purchased in 2012 by Buddhists that used it as a temple and cafe, but the business failed as well and it was closed again in 2015.
It was later run as a cafe by a group of christians it seems, and as far as research goes it looks like the building is still being used as a restaurant or cafe under a different name than Neulbom Garden Restaurant under the expressway. If the guests are still being served by ghosts is undisclosed.
On the cliff overlooking the blinking blue ocean of Portugal, a young blind girl fell to her death while playing by the Castelinho de São João do Estoril. She is now forever haunting the place.
A well tended garden by the bright blue seaside in Portugal looks more like an interior design story than a ghost story. There are the goth-like towers in the new-medieval style of the grand house that can allude to something more than a sunshine story.
The Castelinho de São João do Estoril, in Estoril, is said to be haunted by the ghost of a little blind girl who accidentally fell to her death in a nearby cliff.
The Dancing Girl
The house is called Castelinho Nossa Senhora de Fátima and sits at the edge of the cliffs, overlooking the beautiful Cascais bay and the Atlantic Ocean. This house has gone for as much as 3 million euros. But there are also legends about potential buyers that have turned the house down based on some ghost stories surrounding the place.
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Locals tell a story about a girl that was dancing at the edge of the cliff and fell to her death in the sea by the Castelinho de São João do Estoril. They say that ever since, you can sometimes spot a dancing girl at the very edge, always dancing.
But who was this girl? Some say that she was the daughter of the owners of the house. But one story that is told the most, is that she was a blind girl from one of the neighboring houses, and that the parents of the house gave their house as a support center for the blind.
The Truth Behind the Legend
It is true that there was a support center for the blind, however, it wasn’t a house gifted from the parents of a blind girl that fell to her death.
In fact, there was no house there, until 1913 when Instituto de Cegos Branco Rodrigues was built and used until the 70s. First 14 years later, the Castelinho Nossa Senhora de Fátima was built. And a story about a blind ghost, must have been a student at the school for instance if we are to give credit to the paranormal sightings.
By the Sea: The house of Castelinho de São João do Estorilwere the supposed haunting is right by the bright blue sea //Photo: Observador
One of the potential buyers in 1983 was José Castelo Branco, a Portuguese reality star, but when he got to the place, he gave up any plans of buying the place. At arrival he saw a girl playing with other children by the cliff and suddenly felt the urge to throw himself into the sea. Not buying a bad omen, he left without buying.
And although today, the story of the little girl on the cliff is mostly brought up when the house is put up for sale, it still persists to be told, again and again. And reports of a ghost of a little girl with a doll in her hand comes in as she dances on the cliff or goes through the walls of the house.
Rowing in the lifeboats of the wrecked ship SS Valencia, the skeleton remains of the passengers that died are doomed to row the sea for eternity.
The Valencia was headed out from San Francisco towards Seattle with clear weather with both seasoned crewmembers as well as passengers not necessarily used to the sea. The iron hulled passenger steamer was not a well liked ship to sail with along the Pacific Coast as it was too small and also, too open to the elements that made her difficult to handle in the winter.
This was in January and the weather was cold. And soon it was going to become another tragedy in the area that is known as ‘The Graveyard of the Pacific’ where almost 70 ships have wrecked in these parts.
The Wreckage of SS Valencia
When they reached Cape Mendocino outside of San Francisco on the 22. January in 1906, they encountered dense fog and had to slow the speed and sound the whistle as they battled against the fog with the danger of a wind that had turned on them. The ship got off course because of the wind, the current and the fog. Then they ran into rocks right before midnight on the 22 January and the disaster unfolded.
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The passengers of the ship panicked and rushed to the lifeboats that were so ill handled in all the chaos that few made it to the water and even fewer made it safely. Some of the lifeboats were smashed to the side of the ship, some were lowered too soon, or too late. Several of the lifeboats were never seen again.
They were so close to land, only around 50 meters from the shore, but they couldn’t reach it at all. Stranded at the railing on deck were hundred people with the captain and the remaining crew.
“Screams of women and children mingled in an awful chorus with the shrieking of the wind, the dash of rain, and the roar of the breakers. As the passengers rushed on deck they were carried away in bunches by the huge waves that seemed as high as the ship’s mastheads. The ship began to break up almost at once and the women and children were lashed to the rigging above the reach of the sea. It was a pitiful sight to see frail women, wearing only night dresses, with bare feet on the freezing ratlines, trying to shield children in their arms from the icy wind and rain.”
– Survivor Chief Freight Clerk Frank Lehn
The Tragedy: Wreck of the en:SS Valencia, seen from one of the rescuing ships on January 23, 1906. So close were they to salvation, both to shore and to the rescue ships, but they never made it home again. // Source: BC Archives
No Hope for Rescue
The remaining people hoped to get rescued, but when the rescue fleet finally arrived, they realized that it was too dangerous to get close to the impaled ship on the rocks with water flooding in the strong current and wind.
The rest of the night, the ships Salvador, Queen and Topeka could only watch as the ship went down together with the rest of the people onboard. They all either drowned, were killed by getting hit by something on the ship or dying of hypothermia when they landed in the water.
The Lifeboats: Not many were picked up from the waters that day. Since then, lifeboat manned by skeletons have been reported on from this area. Here are a pictures of the survivors from the SS Valencia being picked up by the SS City of Topeka on January 24, 1906.//Source: University of Washington Digital Collections
Of all the passengers and crew on board, only 37 men survived this tragedy with every woman and child onboard dying. The complete death toll varies, but at least 117 up to 181 people died and it is known to be one of the more tragic wreckage in maritim history.
The Rowing Skeletons
The remains of the ship was never recovered, but left to its own devices. Some of the remains drifted to shore, finally, and the remains have been left mostly untouched. Outside of the Pachena Beach you can still see it, clinging to the coastline. Not long after the tragedy of the ship, the rumors, the tales and stories started to come from the wreckage.
The Ghost Ship: Not only the lifeboats, but also the entire ship has been reported on being spotted, years after it sunk to the bottom of the sea. Here are SS Valencia, circa 1905. // Source: BC Archives
When they were transporting the few survivors they found from the wreckage to Seattle, the crew of the ship City of Topeka spotted something unexplained. They stopped to pass the news of Valencia to a passing vessel that came towards them. When it passed them by, they saw that it was in fact the Valencia, the ship that had just sunk to the bottom of the sea.
The people that observed this, told that the crew were all skeletons and were heading towards the rocks as the Valencia had already hit and sunk on. When passing the City of Topeka, the Valencia signaled to it like it would have if they really met. After this, the Topeka continued back to Seattle without further incidents, but it was not the last one that were reported on.
Six months after the sinking of the ship, a local Nuu-chah-nulth fisherman named Clanewah Tom spotted a lifeboat together with his wife in a nearby sea cane in Pachena Bay at the southern end of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. But there was something deeply wrong with the lifeboat. In it sat not eight people, but eight skeletons. Although having survived the initial wreckage, it looked like they had starved to death. There was no way of recovering the lifeboat however and it was a mystery of even how it got into the cave.
Since then local fishermen reported of lifeboats with skeletons rowing in the area. In 1910, the Seattle Times reported that sailors claimed to have seen the ship that looked eerily like the Valencia, near Pachena Point. What looked like human figures held onto the ship like it was about life or death as the waves washed over the ship.
In 1933 they found one of the lifeboats drifting in Barkley Sound. The boat was in excellent condition and the paint looked almost fresh. No skeletons onboard this time, and perhaps never again?
What would you have wanted as an offering after your death? According to this Singaporean legend, this young girl wanted a Barbie doll to appease her spirit in her afterlife. This is the story of the haunted Barbie doll in the shrine on Pulau ubin island.
On Pulau Ubin, a boomerang shaped island in northwest Singapore, a peculiar yellow shrine still stands. Hidden away in the forest as one of the last remaining places in Singapore free from urban development, concrete buildings and paved roads, people come to give offerings and pray for their good luck in gambling to the deity of a young German girl that died and remained on the island with only a haunted Barbie doll as comfort.
Read about: More Haunted Ghost Stories from Singapore
Pulau Ubin used to be a bigger population here, bustling with different businesses like plantations and granite mining. The very word Pulau Ubin means ‘Granite Island’ in Malay. Today, the granite quarries are empty or at least, abandoned. Reclaimed by vegetation or filled up with water.
Pulau Ubin: The idyllic island is now a well known place to hike the trails and enjoy the nature in Singapore. Photo: Zairon
The island used to have a few thousand settlers, but today, there are not even forty people left after the work in the quarries dried up. However, the one that still remains, is the spirit of the German girl that to this day, name is unknown. Several attempts have been made to trace the family of the girl back to Germany, but lack of public records of the family has still not been found.
Now considered a taoist deity, the temple on Pulau Ubin is full of taoist offerings as well as more unique offerings. Most notably a haunted Barbie doll sits between the incense and the food offerings. People still pay tribute to the shrine and the haunted Barbie doll, in the form of make-up, nail polish, mirrors and small feminine things. This to appease the girl who asked for the doll beyond the veil.
Background For The Haunted Barbie Doll
At the start of the 1900s, uneasiness spread throughout Europe and a full fledged war rippled through the rest of the world as well. Although WWI didn’t quite reach south east Asia in full force as other places, the effects were still real for many of the European settlers in the colonies.
Singapore, being a part of the British Crown, was not very German friendly. During the 1910s, the island was home to two German families, the Brandts and the Muhlingans that ran coffee plantations according to the legend, although the proper sources for this are missing.
In July 1914, the British started detaining Germans for security reasons as they were considered enemies to the crown. A military force was sent to Pulau Ubin to detain the two German families residing there. The Germans were, according to the story, sent to a detention barracks on mainland Singapore, mainly in the Tanglin Barracks.
But the detaining would not go without a dramatic turn. A young daughter of one of the families became frightened and fled from the British forces into the wooded area and disappeared into the dark, never to be seen again.
The Deity of the German Girl
Days went by without finding her body. And when she finally was discovered by Boyanese plantation workers, she was covered in ants. They concluded that she had died by falling down a cliff near one of the quarries that sustained the community on the island. The workers covered her body with sand and laid flowers on it. When they walked by the place, they said a prayer and lit incense for the girl.
This was her resting place at Pulau Ubin until Chinese workers recovered the remains of the body and buried the girl on a hill above the quarry. Being a roman catholic, they placed her Jiangsu urn with a crucifix and a number of coins as well as a few strands of her hair.
What happened to the family is still a mystery, but during the war, all German property was confiscated and their business halted. Today only the ruins and foundation of the plantation can be seen. In some versions of the legend, it tells that the family returned to Pulau Ubin after the war, searching for the remains of her daughter, but could’t find her tombstone due to language barriers. Little did they know her remains were kept in the Chinese Taoist temple in an urn on the hill.
Bitter and sad about it, they left Pulau Ubin and Singapore, never to return. Which is an odd addition to the legend as the family supposedly managed a business on the island before the war, and it’s weird that there suddenly were a language problem when they returned, supposedly to the same people that lived there before they were detained.
She has since been addressed as Na Du Gu Niang, meaning Datuk Maiden. Sightings of her ghost by the local villagers at Pulau Ubin have kept the legend of the nameless girl alive as well as the peculiar offerings to the shrine that eventually were erected in her honour.
The Yellow Shrine on Pulau Ubin Island
The Shrine: The home of the deity and the haunted Barbie doll has gone through many changes. Here as it was in 2015. Photo: Pascal Vuylsteker
While the granite business was still alive on Pulau Ubin, a quarry company built a more permanent shrine in 1974, which is the small yellow chinese temple that still stands today. It is named Berlin Heiligtum, meaning Berlin Sanctuary.
They transferred the lock of hair and iron cross to the new temple. But when the man who helped to place the remains in the new vase in 1974 checked in 1990, it was already gone, at least that is one of the tales this particular man told over the many years.
When the shrine was constructed over the grave, it became associated with good luck, especially for gambling as rumours told about people winning the lottery after praying to the shrine. Therefore gamblers from Singapore as well as Malaysia came to the shrine to make offerings, in hope that the German girl would bless them with good luck.
And today the offerings are perhaps more to a young girl’s taste with nail polish, makeup, perfume and the now famous haunted Barbie doll.
The Haunted Barbie Doll in the Shrine
Today a haunted Barbie doll is placed as an important object in the shrine to the German girl in an enclosed box. Although not haunted as many other objects are rumoured to be, as in being possessed by the soul or a ghost, the origin of the doll is quite haunting. According to legend, and this is a more recent one, the legend will have it that the haunted Barbie doll was requested by the girl herself beyond the grave.
Pink offerings at the altar: The German girl still gets many presents, many things are of what people think would suit a young girl. Like the now very well known haunted Barbie doll//Photo: Source unknown/via Tineye
An unnamed islander from Pulau Ubin who had moved to Australia kept having these strange dreams back in 2007. He dreamt of a European looking girl for three nights in a row that led him to a specific store with a specific Barbie doll. She asked for it to be placed at her altar back in Singapore. So when he found the same store and doll as he had dreamt of for so many nights, he bought the now haunted Barbie doll and brought it to the shrine.
And over the years, the haunted Barbie doll itself has gained its own mysteries and haunted stories, giving new life to the story about the girl still not having crossed over from the mortal world entirely.
For more stories about haunted dolls lole Okiku, Ruby or Letta:
This porcelain doll named Ruby will give the people playing with her an instant sorrow and sense of sickness, just by holding her. Family legend has it that the doll is haunted by a little girl that died with Ruby in her arms.
So who was the girl? Was there ever a girl? There is today no human remains in the grave as a definitive proof of the legend. Still, many people take the legend at face value today. But that is overlooking all the different tales that have been told throughout the years. Dr William L. Gibson, is one of the people that really took a deep dive into the legend and by just comparing the sources, found many discrepancies to the story told today in his excellent and detailed research you can read here.
Many sources point to one man, named Chia Yeng Keng, a local on Pulau Ubin. The same man that claimed to be there when they transferred the lock of hair and the cross to the new temple. He has changed his testimony about the girl several times over the years. From claiming that the girls parents were Dutch for example. But seeing that Dutch citizens were not interned as Netherland was neutral during WWI, the story changed to German instead. Could it have just been a glip of details? Or a more elaborate story? As late as 2004, he claimed to not know anything about her at all.
Although proof that a German family ran a coffee plantation on Pulau Ubin once, it is not proven that they ran it until being detained because of the war. According to The Singapore and Straits Directory, the only plantation on the island in 1914, was run by an Anglo-Irish, with no women recorded as living there.
The first mention of the grave on Pulau Ubin was actually in 1985, in a Malayan newspaper that told the story of a princess from Java that fled to the island and died there. She was said to haunt the hill as a hantu puteri, meaning a ghost princess, seducing the many quarry workers to meet a terrible fate. The article included a picture of the shrine today known as the German girl shrine. But also this article as well as the story itself lacks proper sourcers.
So for now, the haunted Barbie doll on Pulau Ubin belongs to a young girl that may or may not rest here. Better safe than sorry.
Malayan ghost lore is deep and it is ancient. And something leaves more questions than answers. Such is the case of the mysterious Kinarut mansion in Sabah and what became of it.
The ruins of a former manor house sits on a hill surrounded by woods. It looks over the Kawang River near Kinarut in Malaysia. Today, the ruins of the manor house is considered to be the Malaysian state, Sabah’s, main attraction. And it is apparently not only the living it attracts.
The Mansion in the Jungle
Once this area of Malaysia used to be called North Borneo, a British protectorate where Europeans came to get their hands on natural resources of the land, like rubber. And in 1910, a German manager of a rubber plantation called Kinarut Rubber Estate built a manor in Graeco-Roman style, pretty unique as the one of the very few stone houses in North Borneo.
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It was an Indian architect that stood for the design, and the construction was massiv. Around 200-300 workers from Java and maybe even Hong Kong worked on the house for four years to complete it with 152 windows, 45 doors and no less than 42 huge chandeliers.
Asimont died only a decade after the building was done and the manor itself was destroyed in 1923 by a British company. The question of why though, is still unanswered. What happened to the house? Or based on the stories that have been told ever since, what happened in the house to leave such a legend?
The Fall of The Kinarut Mansion
In its prime, there seemed to have been a bustling life with a full community, jobs and even cultural events like sports competitions. The mansion was well maintained and the rubber plantation seemed to be thriving until the Great Depression. But that hit the global market first after the mansion was supposedly demolished. So again, what happened?
In the Jungle: There is according to legend, something in the trees surrounding the mansion. Photo: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas
A house such as this is simply not complete without the haunted backstory. Locals living near the mansion reports that the area is haunted by a “Hantu Tinggi”, a type of Malayan ghost, usually disguised as a tree in a forest. It literally means tall ghost as stories of it often tell about a body so tall the waist up is hidden by clouds. and only exists in Western and Eastern regions of Malaysia.
The Rediscovery of the Haunted Mansion
Years went by without anybody paying the ruins any mind. The locals had only tales of demons and ghosts from this place. The rubber trade had dried up and North Borneo was now the modern Malaysia on the map of today. But the house would not be forgotten by history, not just yet.
The rediscovering of the house was made in 1990 when the Sabah Forestry Development Authority led an exploration of where to plant trees. Throughout the years it had been forgotten and rarely does people wander in this area. Why is that?
People passing by claim that they have seen something fast moving and voices in the night. This is mostly attributed to a pontianak, a Malayan female ghost that prays on human flesh. So perhaps this wasn’t the greatest place to erect a mansion at all. All that is left of the enormous building are ruins. The steps of white stone leading nowhere as the questions asked about the truth about the Kinarut Mansion.
The Okiku Doll, is a legend of a haunted doll that grows hair in Japan and is preserved in a temple looked after by monks. Allegedly it is haunted by the ghost of a girl that once received it as a gift.
There is something about dolls that makes us fall into a confusion about what is and isn’t real and we both love them and hate them in equal measure. The haunted doll trope is one of the most famous and creepiest. There is something about the almost lifelike object that takes us through the uncanny valley and makes us believe that maybe, just maybe, there might be something more behind those glass eyes.
This is the case with the Okiku Doll (お菊人形), a type of Ichimatsu doll (市松人形) which is a type of traditionally dress up dolls in Japan, often clad in nice kimonos with dark glass eyes. The chubby cheek dolls are as cute as they are creepy, and perhaps the creepiest that has been named Okiku lives now in a monastery, well looked after by the monks. This haunted doll must not be confused by the ghost story of Okiku, the maid:
The tale of Banchō Sarayashiki (番町皿屋敷, The Dish Mansion at Banchō) is a well known Japanese ghost story (kaidan). It was popularized in the kabuki theater tradition, and lives on in popular culture and folklore alike.
At first glance, Okiku just looks like an old doll, weathered by time with frayed hair and old clothes like so many dolls forgotten by their children. But there is a legend surrounding this particular haunted doll, and the legend keeps growing, apparently, just like the doll’s hair.
The Two Girls
The Okiku Doll: This Ichimatsu doll is called Miss Shimane and is a Japanese friendship ambassador doll. Photo:Daniel Schwen
There are some variations of this legend, as there often is when they happened a long time ago. The most told version of it, though, starts In Hokkaido, north in Japan, in 1918 at the Taishi Expo in August, bustling with life, people and stuff to buy, including dolls.
A teenager named Eikichi Suzuki bought a doll for his younger sister in the shopping street of Tanukikoji in the city. Often, the girl is given the same name as the doll, but in most Japanese sources, they were not named the same, but the girls name was either Kikuko or Kiyoko. The seventeen year old brother was visiting Sapporo for a marine exhibition and the doll almost called for him to be bought for his dearest little sister.
The two or three year old sister grew very fond of the doll that was a gift from her brother and they became inseparable. The porcelain doll had an okappa hair style which was common for traditional dolls with cropped hair around the jawline and a short fringe over the forehead. It was around 40 cm tall and dressed in a traditional kimono.
She carried it everywhere and slept with it every night the following year, but the child-like play would come to an abrupt end. The little sister died however after falling ill the following year after some complications of a severe fever. Very likely to be Yellow Fever or the Spanish flu as it was ravaging across the globe during this time period of time. Or in some cases, Pneumonia is also mentioned as the cause of death.
The Haunted Doll at the Family Altar
The family initially wanted to place the doll together with their daughter in the grave but wasn’t allowed, or in some sources, simply forgot to put the doll in the coffin. The family mourned the loss of the daughter and placed the doll on the family kamidana altar instead, a practice common in some Japanese households to remember and honor the dead. There Okiku could look out at the mourning family that paid her tribute as if Okiku was their own daughter.
They prayed every day by the altar and started to notice strange things about Okiku. According to them, they found out that the hair of the doll was growing just like human hair. And the short okappa haircut grew longer, just like the hair grows of a 3-year-old child would have grown.
The haunted doll at the altar: The Okiku doll who once was a little girl’s favorite toy, is now placed in an altar to appease the spirit inside. She is know known as the doll that grows hair in Japan.// Photo: Picture first found source/via TinEye
At night they dreamt about Okiku and when they woke in the morning, sometimes they would find the haunted doll sitting by their side without having put her there. The strange occurrences started to get more intense and scarier with light flickering, banging in the house and strange voices and noises. The scary manifestations were usually around certain dates, like their dead daughters birthday and the day she died.
This led them to believe that the soul of their daughter was not at peace yet, and had entered the doll. They had shamans come to the house and meet Okiku and confirm it and believed they had to appease the spirit through the doll.
Offered and Displayed in Mannen-Ji Temple
They kept Okiku on their family altar until 1938 when the family decided it was time for them to move away from Hokkaido. In some sources they moved even further north to Sakhalin, an island between Japan and Russia. They felt that the best for the spirit of Okiku would be to remain on the island where she had been born and spent her few years alive.
It was then the family decided to offer the doll to Mannen-ji Temple located in Iwamizawa. The monks promised to care for the haunted doll and pay it the respect it had received at the family altar. The Okiku doll was given a special wooden box like at the home altar and placed at the altar with the monks looking after and taking care of her every need.
The monks at the temple noticed too that the hair of the haunted doll kept growing. When it was around 25 cm, they decided to cut it for the first time, and the doll’s hair was cut many more times over the years as the hair just continued to grow. Apparently, some of the monks at the temple had a dream that the doll wished for the hair to be trimmed regularly.
And after the war, when many Japanese were deported from Sakhalin, the brother who bought the doll came back and saw for himself how the doll had changed over the years. When he saw what the doll had become, he asked that the haunted doll had to stay at the temple permanently.
The Science of the Hair?
Dolls have always had some sort of an unfair reputation as haunted across the globe, and in Japan, this type of doll is no stranger to having supernatural and haunted rumors surrounding them. But this one is by far the most famous example in the country and of its kind.
Some sources try to claim that the doll has been examined by scientific tests that the monks have sent out to have tested, showing that the haunted doll’s hair really is of a human toddler, and growing just like one, although no one can explain just how this is happening. The place of the supposed test was sent to Hokkaido University School of Medicine according to some sources.
There are of course non paranormal theories as to why the hair seemingly grows from the haunted doll. The use of human hair on dolls is a well known phenomenon, especially before synthesized hair became the norm. One way they did it was to fold a long human hair, making it seem like strands of hair on the doll. Over time the strand of hair can glide out of place and look like it has grown. But then again, it is supposed to stop at one point in time, not just continue to grow indefinitely. So what is happening at the temple where the doll is still displayed?
Visiting the Haunted Doll
You can still visit the Mannen-Ji temple in Japan to see the haunted doll whose hair is reaching its knee, but you are not allowed to photograph it as the doll apparently has told you that it doesn’t like it at all. We must simply just take the monk’s words for the strange doll. The legend of the doll is continuing to grow, and has been the base of many movies and horror tales as well as the traditional kabuki plays.
According to the legend, the power of the haunted doll is only growing, bit by bit, just like the hair grows. and another rumor surrounding the doll nowadays is that if you get close enough to the haunted doll, you can also now see the growing of human teeth.
An online magazine about the paranormal, haunted and macabre. We collect the ghost stories from all around the world as well as review horror and gothic media.
