What really happened to the missing hikers that mysteriously disappeared at Sai Kung? Did they simply get lost and die in the dense jungle? Or could it be that there really is something of a mystic realm that leads to another dimension there?
Sai Kung is a popular place for hikers to enjoy nature away from the bustling urban life. There is however a dark side to this as many hikers are said to have disappeared from what has been called, this mystic realm or the Sai Kung Barrier 西貢結界.
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This mysterious realm is also located at a popular hiking area at the Sai Kung Peninsula 西貢半島, on the outskirts of Hong Kong.
People speculate as to what this is caused by, and some claim that the place is an entrance to a parallel timeline or something of another dimension.
Read also: Hoia Baciu – a place where there are also said people have been reported disappearing and reappearing as if coming out from another realm.
The Missing Police Officer
One of the more popular stories that are connected to this urban legend is the story about a missing police officer. The story got so famous they even made a movie based on it.
One day in 2005, a police officer was out hiking on his day off close to Pak Tam Chung and got lost. He called 999 for help as he knew precisely how it was done, working in the police force himself.
He gave his coordinates to the dispatchers, but they were unable to locate them. The conversation was strange and somewhat halted. They did send out rescuers, but to this day, he has never been found.
The Dead Boy Scout Leader
Just a month later there was another strange case that would happen in the area. Four hikers set out from Cheung Shand and went through Shek Uk Shan, Nam Shan Yung and Pak Sha O.
They stopped to rest close to where the missing police officer had disappeared just a month before. One of the hikers was a 23 year old experienced Boy Scout leader. He felt sick and asked the three women he was hiking with to go on without him.
Two days later his body was found by the police.
The Missing Bus Driver
Fast forward to 2009 there was another strange thing that happened in the mountain. A bus driver went missing in Sai Kung, but his belongings were found. His family called his cellphone and a fisherman answered it and said he had found it while he was fishing in the deep blue sea.
The bus driver became one of those who were never found again.
The Missing Hiker
In 2011 999 received a phone call near Pak Tam from someone asking for help, but the phone call was mysteriously strange, just as the police officers had been years before.
They couldn’t find the missing man this time either.
Found hikers that ended up dead were also discovered in 2019 and 2020 and 2021. It is after all a popular hiking area.
What Really Happened at Sai Kung
These mysterious disappearances have caused major speculations over the years. People disappearing out in the wild is perhaps not as uncommon as we want it to be, especially not in a jungle as dense as it is here with many places to go off parth, but so many over the years? What is it about this place?
A common denominator about these cases is that they were in the far northeast of Sai Kung, and whether it is a portal to another dimension or a huge python snake that got to the disappeared hikers, or even bad Feng Shui in the area that makes it haunted, you should always thread carefully and never off the path.
It is said that more than one station on the MTR’s Island line in Hong Kong are haunted. One of the most well known urban legends are the ghost suicide at the metro in Hong Kong at the Yau Ma Tei Station. It is also one of those rare cases where the urban legend came from a very true story.
Today the metro in Hong Kong is a convenient transportation method that can take you from Hong Kong Island, Kowloon as well as to the New Territories.
There are more than one story from the dimly lit underground of Hong Kong that have a more supernatural take. Disappearing train, women in white leaping in front og the trains and construction workers still roaming in the tunnels.
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And one of the stories in this article has yet to be completely debunked. Here is a look at some of the allegedly haunted metro stations on the Hong Kong underground.
The Ghosts of the Construction Workers at Rumsey Station
Rumsey Station: MTR Sheung Wan Station passageway (Rumsey Station reserved platform)
There are more than one stop on the metro that are said to be haunted since the construction on the tracks started in the late 1960s. Like Rumsey Station, an abandoned platform by Sheung Wan station. The Rumsey Stations platforms are located near Exit E, forming part of the passageways between the concourse and the open platforms, and they run perpendicular to the Island line platforms below.
They said that during construction there were so many fatal accidents that they had to abandon the project. Allegedly the ghosts of the construction workers can be seen and their screams can be heard around the East Lobby in the night.
Another story is that a worker there had seen a woman in white falling off the platform. Even after Sheung Wan station opened in 1986, there were stories of passengers who faced the same fate in the unopened station.
The Mental Patient at Whitty Station
MTR had planned to build Whitty Station as part of the Island Line, but the project was also abandoned. Some say that it was because of all the paranormal things happening during construction. Where Whitty Street Station would have been is now the HKU Station (formerly named Shek Tong Tsui Station).
There have also been claims that construction workers hear the screams inside of the Whitty Station tunnels. When they investigated the claims, they allegedly found a woman dressed in white on the platform that leapt onto the tracks when they approached her.
People have since speculated that it could be a patient from the nearby mental hospital, who have also a couple of haunted rumors. It used to be called High Street Mental Hospital, but today it is called Sai Ying Pun Community Complex. For more on this haunted story, check out High Street Ghost House, The Sai Ying Pun, in Hong Kong.
The Train that Disappeared at the Choi Hung Station
At the Choi Hung Station there are three, not two railway tracks like the other stations have and if we are to believe the legends, it is because of something dark. According to one urban legend, when they used the middle railway track, they found out the hard way that apparently this was a track leading directly to hell.
The story goes that when they constructed it the engineer decided it was time for a test run and brought some people along. They were supposed to drive toward Kowloon Bay Station, but after a good 30 minutes, they still hadn’t arrived and they had lost contact with the train.
The missing train did arrive at last though, but there was something wrong with the passengers. The people onboard seemed disoriented, some even passed away after they were being sent away to the hospital. It wasn’t clear what was wrong with them other than pure shock and fear.
When they investigated it they brought along a medium to help them shed light to the strange case. The medium claimed that the track led straight to hell and that the passengers had all seen something they would never recover from.
Because of this, they abandoned the track and built new ones that would lead to the meant destination and not pass through hell. Although the hellway track has been seen to be used to transport trains to the depot in Kowloon Bay at the end of the day.
The Ghost Suicide at Yau Ma Tei Station
Most of the hauntings in the underground stations can somehow be explained with a more rational and factual origin. But the ghost story from Yau Ma Tei Station is something a little more strange and difficult to explain. In November 1981 things were going fine at the MTR and the Yau Ma Tei Station. Passengers were coming and going as the trains stopped to pick up their passengers and take them away to their destination.
On this day though, something happened that no one has really been able to explain and even made the news. Passengers on the train reported seeing a young woman falling into the tracks at the station as one of the trains was rapidly approaching and running over her.
The passengers on the platform as well as the staff claim to have heard her screams as she was hit by the train and the driver of the train remembers the horrible bump as she ended up under the train.
They called for medical aid and sounded the alarm that a horrible accident had just happened. When the medics arrived to help, they didn’t find anyone. There was no young woman on the train tracks, not even a drop of blood could be spotted.
A Collective Hallucination in the Dark Tunnels
What was this strange incident about? The investigation couldn’t find anything and the whole thing was called a collective hallucination as more than one present at the station had witnessed it all.
There is also speculation of it being a ghost of a woman that maybe didn’t die that day, but had so in the past and now relieved her dying moments as a ghost.
When the story came back in 2012 in internet forums, a writer decided to dig into the story. The writer claims that someone contacted him and said that the person on the tracks back then was really a living 22 year old woman wearing white that fell into the tracks. In this version though she survived it all and is allegedly alive to this day as well.
Haunted by the executed prisoners from the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong, the Murray House was the site for not only one, but two big exorcisms to put the restless souls at rest.
Today the Murray House is a wonderful retail shopping place with a restaurant where people can marvel at the sea view from the historic building on south Hong Kong Island.
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The place used to be officers’ barracks for the British forces and used to stand at the corner of the Queensway and Garden Road.
The 4000 Executed People Haunting the Building
During the Japanese Occupation, the Japanese forces took the Murray House and used it as a command center by the Japanese military police. It was also a place of execution during the war.
More than 4000 citizens of Hong Kong were tortured until they were murdered inside of these walls.
These are the unfortunate souls said to haunt the Murray House.
The Two Exorcisms of Murray House
After the war the Murray House became a hot spot for paranormal activity, and the haunting of the place got so bad that the Hong Kong government ordered not only one exorcism, but two. One time in 1963 and the last one being in 1974.
The first time it was apparently an unsuccessful one as workers kept complaining about being harassed and plagued by ghosts. They found their work vandalized and blueprints they put out smeared and modified.
Another employer claimed to have encountered a ghost in the bathroom that tugged on his sleeve, but when he turned there was nothing there.
The Non-Buddhist that ordered a Buddhist Ceremony
In the 1974 exorcism, 70 Buddhists monks wandered the Murray House for two hours while chanting and burning offerings and the event was televised with a huge crowd gathered to see it all.
The haunting had kept on and in the 70s the building was used as an office for the Transport Department for the government and people wanted to quit because of feeling uneasy because of the ghosts haunting the building.
Interestingly the exorcism was commissioned by Brian Wilso, Commissioner for Transport in the colonial Hong Kong Government. Not a Buddhist himself, but a manager that saw he needed to do something that would keep the workflow in the building ghost free.
He later said this about the whole exorcism ceremony:
“I was required to give three TV interviews and five radio interviews, all with the same question: as you are not a Buddhist, why did you take part in a Buddhist ceremony? The answer was simple. If the Transport Department offices should be infested with rats, I would call in the rat-catchers and, if necessary, lend a hand. In the same manner, if the problem was ghosts, as in this case, I would call in the ghost-catchers, and if this meant my taking part in a Buddhist ceremony, I was happy to do so. But this did not mean that I was a Buddhist. The overriding point was to take steps to ensure that staff of the Transport Department could get back to work without being frightened to death by ghosts.” source
The Old Murray House at a New Location
Whether it worked or not is up to debate, but in 1982, they decided to dismantle the Victorian building and put it in storage.
Not until 2000 the Murray House was put up again and restored at the waterfront. With or without the ghosts that used to linger, remains to be seen. But not everyone is so happy about the way the restoration was done though:
“It’s like making a Frankenstein’s monster using an assemblage of body parts from different dead people. It’s not heritage, just a monstrous facsimile of it. The monster may look like a grown human, but it doesn’t have past memory and a soul,” says Lee Ho-yin, director of the University of Hong Kong’s Architectural Conservation Programme.
A long time ago, there were seven sisters that made a pact to die together in Tsat Tsz Mui, Hong Kong. And according to legend, there were also reports of them haunting swimmers from the depth of the sea.
In North Point there is a road called Tsat Tsz Mui Road (七姊妹道) that means Seven Sisters Road. Today the road is a place of office and residential buildings as well as shopping malls and restaurants. But there used to be beaches there.
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The road on Tsat Tsz Mui is built on reclaimed land, and underneath it all, there hides a tragic tale of seven sisters that are haunting the place because they never got a chance to live on their own terms.
The Seven Sisters Pact of Life and Death
According to legend, there was once a group of Hakka women, a group of Han Chinese people that fled from the north from social unrest in the Qing Dynasty and sought refuge in the Cantonese provinces.
The seven women who had been playmates all their life decided to become blood sisters and would die on the same day. The sisterhood lived in the same area and all swore a vow of celibacy and would never get married.
One day, the third sister’s family decided it was time to marry her off. She didn’t want to, but didn’t dare to oppose her parents.
The sisters were desperate, but saw no way to live their life as they had swore on. All of the seven sisters drowned themselves in the ocean the night before her wedding.
Tsat Tsz Mui Rocks on the Beach
Their bodies were never recovered, but when the tide receded they found seven boulders in a row. These were named the Tsat Tsz Mui Shek (七姊妹石), Seven Sister Rocks, and the village Tsat Tsz Mui Tsuen (七姊妹村), Seven Sister Village.
The Ghost of the Seven Sisters
Later the Chinese Recreation Club built the Seven Sisters Swimming Club in 1911 and hosted large bathing platforms that were destroyed during the Battle of Hong Kong in 1941.
Problem was the male swimmers though. Many went for an evening swim but there were so many cases of the male swimmers drowning, even though they were known to be strong swimmers.
Ever since then, there have been legends that it is the spirits of the seven sisters in the water, taking their revenge on the men that wouldn’t leave them alone.
In 1934 the rocks were buried under the reclamation for urban development and the seven sisters with it.
The Hello Kitty Murder Case shocked Hong Kong and the world to the core when the skull of a woman was found sewn inside of a Hello Kitty Doll. One of the participant in the torture of the victim claimed that she was haunted by her and for years after the murder, the place itself was said to be haunted.
In 1999, a young girl walks into a Hong Kong police station alone, riddled with nightmares and guilt. The 14 year old teenager claims to be haunted by this dead woman for the last couple of weeks, and she truly believes she won’t be at peace until the girl confesses to what happened to the ghost that is haunting her.
At first the police disregards her statements, thinking she is delusional and making stuff up, but when she tells them about the horrible torture and murder she witness and even took part in, the police couldn’t ignore it.
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When the police started investigating the address the girl gave, they came to find something truly shocking and horrible. The apartment had been the sight of a crime were a woman had been held imprisoned, tortured and raped for over a month before she died. The body had been mostly disposed of, but stuffed inside of a huge Hello Kitty plush doll, they found the woman’s head. Therefore the murder case was called The Hello Kitty Murder Case.
Granville Road in 2016 in the Tsim Sha Tsui area were the gruesome Hello Kitty Murder took place.
The Harsh Life of the Kidnapped Hostess
The place of the Hello Kitty Murder was in a third-floor flat in the downtown area on No. 31 Granville Road (加連威老道) in Tsim Sha Tsui area in the Kowloon district. The inside of the apartment was filled with Hello Kitty memorabilia, including the big Hello Kitty Mermaid Plush Doll.
Fan Man-yee: The victim of the Hello Kitty Murder Case.
The victim was the 23 year old nightclub hostess and young mother, Fan Man-yee (樊敏儀)who had been missing for a month.
Her life had never been easy, and it ended in the most gruesome way imaginable. She had been abandoned as a child and grew up in an all girls orphanage in Hong Kong. When she got kicked out at 15 because she was too old to be there, she supported herself through sex work.
Over the years she turned into a drug addict and barely got by. She ended up marrying one of her clients who also were a drug addict, and lived with him despite their abusive relationship.
Then she got pregnant and had a child and decided to turn her life around. She got clean, left her husband and quit being a prostitute. Instead she started working as a nightclub hostess at the Romance Villa and hoped for a better future together with her son.
The Murderous Pimp and Drug Dealer
Her hopes got crushed fairly quickly however as bills were piling up and her nightclub was frequented by criminals, drug dealers and addicts as well as the Chinese crime syndicate, The Triads.
One of these seedy types she met was the 34-year old Chan Man-lok. He was both a drug dealer and a pimp and had a sexual relationship with Fan-Man. She once stole his wallet that had around $HK4,000 (roughly $500 USD) inside of it, but even if she gave it back at once Chan Man-lok realized she was the thief, he demanded more money from her that she was unable to pay. And because of this, he decided to kidnap her, thinking he would make money out of her by pimping her out.
A Month of Sadistic Torture
Instead he ended up rounding up his other accomplices, and ended up just torturing her in what seemed to be for no other reason than perverse and sadistic enjoyment.
The teenage girl given the cover name Ah Fong because of her young age testified that three men Chan Man-lok, Leung Shing-cho and Leung Wai-lun, all in their 30s and 20s abducted Fan Man-yee and tortured her until she died over the course of a month. She was the quote on quote: “girlfriend” of Chan Man-lok who also worked as a sex worker for him and she admitted that she even joined in on the beating on occasion.
Over the course of that month the men got high on drugs while they beating her with iron bars, raped her, burning her by dripping melting plastic on her, pouring chili oil on her wounds, stringing her up hanging from the ceiling for hours and other sadistic acts they came up with. She was even forced to smile and say she enjoyed the torture. If she didn’t it would only get worse.
The Horror of the Hello Kitty Murder
Hello Kitty: The Hello Kitty Murder got its nickname after where they placed some parts of the body.//Source
After she died they dismembered her body, boiled them and disposed of it as household trash or feeding it to stray dogs. Some of her internal organs were found in the refrigerator. The head they sew in the head of the Hello Kitty doll, although their motive for this is still unclear.
The exact cause of death is not known because of how little of her remains they found, and therefore there was also too little evidence to sentence the men for murder with intent, although it was clear she had died because of their abuse.
“Never in Hong Kong in recent years has a court heard of such cruelty, depravity, callousness, brutality, violence and viciousness,” said Hong Kong Justice Peter Nguyen after the trial, who sentenced the defendants to life imprisonment Wednesday after they were convicted of manslaughter. “The public is entitled to protection from people such as you.”
The three men were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to life in prison without chance of parole for 20 years. Hong Kong does not have the death penalty, but if it had happened on mainland China, they would have likely been executed.
The Ghost of Fan Man-yee at Court
Who really knew what would have happened to the case if the teenage girl known as Ah Fong hadn’t been convinced she was haunted by Fan Man-yee, and because of her torment and remorse, she ended up walking into the police station and at least helping to find the victim. Because of her young age and corporation she never received any punishment for her involvement in the Hello Kitty Murder case.
Many unusual events have occurred that are regarded as supernatural by the public. And rumors about something paranormal and strange going on started already during trial.
The forensic doctor in charge of the case revealed that when the evidence including the skull of the deceased, the Hello Kitty doll, and the clay pot used to cook the body were presented to the court, the entire court was filled with the smell of the corpse. No matter where the Hello Kitty doll was presented, nearby lights would flicker. The same light disturbance happened when the defense lawyer argued that the only illegal thing happened when they were disposing of the body. An observer of the trial refused this rumor though and said it only happened when the police played the defendant’s confession.
The Haunted Building
The building where the murder happened had strange things going on. A woman rented a unit on the fourth floor without knowing about the murder. Her friend often heard women crying at night, and at that time, there were no people living downstairs. It’s worth noting that this woman had suffered from sleep paralysis while sleeping.
Granville Road: The building were the horror of the Hello Kitty Murders took place in 2010. The murder occurred in Block B on the third floor, which was demolished in 2012 and rebuilt into the Soravit on Granville in 2016.
The hair salons on the first and second floors of the building had discovered Hello Kitty dolls of unknown origin when they came to work in the morning. When looking at the CCTV footage, they even saw that after the salon closed at night, there were figures walking around in the salon. The manager of the hair salon denied that unusual incidents had occurred in the store.
The wife of Hong Kong metaphysician Chen Dingbang said that in 2013, when she was relaxing in a bar on Granville Road, she saw a woman’s head staring at her from the opposite building. Later she learned that the unit was where the case took place.
The apartment building where Fan was tortured has since been demolished as no one wanted to buy or rent the infamous apartment that everyone in Hong Kong knew the backstory behind. It was empty for years and eventually, no one wanted to live in the other apartments in the building either.
Some claimed that after the Hello Kitty Murder the building itself was haunted by Fan and there were many who claimed to have seen her haunting the area.
In the end someone bought the empty building and demolished it in 2012. Instead they built a hotel there in 2016 named Soravit. As a memorial to what happened there, they placed three Buddha portraits in the hotel.
The theme song from a horror movie turned out to be scarier than the movie itself, after the so-called forbidden song called Nights of Entanglementshaunted the radio stations that played it.
Nights of the Night, perhaps also known as Nights of Entanglements (夜夜痴纏) was the theme song for one of Hong Kong’s horror films, and although the movie won’t scare you, the theme song of it will.
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The movie soundtrack was said to conjure up strange paranormal things when the radio DJ’s were playing it on their late night broadcasts and it was in effect banned and listed as a forbidden song after it because they didn’t want to take the risk.
The Occupant the Movie
The movie The Occupant (靈氣逼人), also known as The Tenant from 1984, was a Cantonese horror-comedy about Angie who goes to Hong Kong from Canada to work on a Master’s thesis focusing on Chinese superstitions. She rents a spacious apartment, without knowing it’s haunted by the ghost of a singer.
The song was sung by the cantopop singer, Connie Mak Kit-man (麦洁文) and the sound would play in the movie in scenes at night where the old cassette player is mysteriously turned on and plays the song.
Haunting Late Night Radio
From its release the song was called The Forbidden Song by radio DJ’s that reported about supernatural things that happened every time they played it on late-night radio.
They heard strange voices on top of the track and the lights in the studio switched on and off as shadows danced on the broadcasting room. Record players were also moving on their own.
DJ Cai Kangnian played this song on one of his late night shows and heard a female voice humming along with the melody in a crying voice, a part of the track that usually wasn’t there.
One DJ also claimed that he mysteriously wrote ‘I Quit’ on a notepad after listening to the song.
The singer herself has refuted the claim of her song being haunted several times in interviews and continues to perform it in concerts. She has also played along with the urban legend behind her song and sort of accepted the legend it turned out to have.
Even to this day though, there is no radio DJ that plays this allegedly cursed song on the late night radio.
Here is the Unofficial English Translation of the Cantonese lyrics of the song:
Misty night sky with rain and fog In the middle of the night, lying between the window screens obsessed with night and night long nights in your arms have my smile I pray you can stay let me love a thousand times But I know in the morning mist I will be alone and you will disappear like this night I just ask you to know that this moment is too short Please spread this body with kisses I only ask you to know that love is hard to break Across a lifetime of tears If I can be reborn in this world, may I never have to be alone again If I meet you again in another life Can you spend every night with me
The once huge floating restaurant Jumbo Kingdom used to be an iconic landmark in Hong Kong for decades. Now there is only a capsized wreck left and stories about good times at the restaurant as well as ghost stories that came from the place.
The Jumbo Kingdom (珍寶王國) was a floating restaurant in Aberdeen Harbour in Hong Kong for 44 years before capsizing because of bad weather and an iconic landmark for tourist to experience. It was built in the 1970s and has architecture with traditional Chinese vibes and luxurious decorations.
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After being in operation for so many years, it is no wonder that haunted rumors started to attach itself to the huge restaurant. Here are some of them:
The Spirits of the Drowned
Every night more than 2000 people could eat at the place and the visitors ate crabs, lobster and suckling pig at the place, and even if it wasn’t the best food, it was certainly an experience to eat there, looking out over the harbor.
Not all is glamorous dining at the floating restaurant though as the drowned bodies are taken to the underside of the restaurant by the current in the harbor. Even though they were not far from land, there was always a danger of the water and there were often search teams looking for missing people under the restaurant.
Some say that these drowned spirits latched onto the restaurant and haunted the place, trying to get ashore.
The Deadly Fire
Even before opening, there was a huge tragedy that struck the floating restaurant and lingered in people’s memories. Some say this is one of the reasons the place had such a haunted rumor about it.
After a fire in 1971, 54 people died when the four deck structure was set aflame in mere minutes after an explosion. This was even before it opened as a restaurant.
After these events, visitors, especially children for some reason have reported seeing spirits with no feet around the halls of the restaurant. Could it be the workers that got trapped during the explosion? Perhaps it is a mix of them and the lost souls that gets carried by the current.
The Rowing Women
Perhaps most mysterious of all, were the stories about visitors seeing a lone woman rowing towards them in the dark.
There are legends about a mysterious woman rowing a small boat at night by the restaurant that people are saying is a ghost. This alludes to the practice prostitutes used in Hong Kong back in the day when they rowed out to ship waiting in the bay to earn money from the sailors waiting in their ships in the harbor.
People think that the floating life full of life and lights in the bay reminds the spirits of the prostitute ghost at sea about their life and attracts them.
Perhaps something went wrong rowing out to the boats and the women are still rowing, long after their death.
The Haunted Remains of the Capsized Jumbo Kingdom
In 2022, the whole floating restaurant capsized after years of misfortune. It closed down during the pandemic, and never got to reopen after.
Perhaps now the floating restaurant itself will become a haunted ship, floating in the harbor in Hong Kong, never forgetting it was once an iconic landmark of the city.
Take a closer look at the paranormal activity linked to Ottawa’s iconic Fairmont Chateau Laurier and the unique stories told about its hauntings.
For 100 years, the legendary Fairmont Chateau Laurier has been the site of strange and unexplained occurrences behind its Tiffany stained glass windows. The old hotel with over 400 rooms is said to have some guests that never really checked out.
From sightings of a ghostly woman in white to mysterious objects moving on their own, there are numerous tales of paranormal activity connected to one of Ottawa’s most iconic landmarks.
PS! It is not to be confused with the Fairmont hotel in Vancouver, which has its own haunted legend about the Lady in Red.
History of the Chateau Laurier
The Fairmont Chateau Laurier is a luxurious hotel built in the early 20th century as a symbol of Ottawa’s success and prosperity.
Grand Trunk Railway president Charles Melville Hays commissioned Château Laurier, and construction occurred between 1909 and 1912, but never got to live to see the opening himself as he died on the RMS Titanic on 15th of April when he was returning to Canada for the opening. Today it is said he is haunting the hotel that he never got to witness its opening of.
Since its opening in 1912, it has played an integral role in Ottawa’s social scene and political landscape, hosting many important figures from the past and present.
Sightings and Urban Legends Related to the Hotel
Even throughout its storied history, unusual and mysterious events have taken place in the Fairmont Chateau Laurier. Some of the rumors of paranormal activity are more mainstream and related to typical ghostly sightings, noises, and other phenomena.
Others appear to be grounded more in urban legend than founded fact—stories that could be attributed to the hotel’s romantic atmosphere or a bit of dramatism based upon its location near city cemeteries.
What is peculiar about this hotel though, is that there is a striking amount of vague feelings and senses rather than specific stories with not much details. Could it just be the atmosphere of the place that makes you feel so? Or perhaps there is something about the place or the building that plays a ghostly prank on your nerves?
The Strange Happenings on the 7th floor
But let us have a look at what the rumors are saying, and try to pinpoint the few clues that exist.
First, there have also been many deaths connected to the hotel, especially suicides of people that have jumped from the upper floor and many chalk up the strange happenings on the upper floors of the restless spirits of these people.
For many years the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation CBC had a radio studio on the 7th and 8th floor of the hotel for more than 80 years. The people that were working there reported about strange things happening in the nearby suite.
The Ghost Child
Among a general uneasiness, the feeling of being watched and creepy sounds and shakings in the rooms there have been spotted things as well people believe to be ghosts.
There have also been reports about the ghost of a child still roaming the hall.
One night in 1949 people on Po Hing Fong street in Hong Kong woke up to what was believed to be a mass haunting from the dead from world war two.
One summer night in Hong Kong in 1949, the residents in the Po Hing Fong street at the hillside of Taiping Mountain slept soundly. Summers in Hong Kong can be pretty hot and humid, even at night .
It was only a few years after the second world war where over thousands of lives were lost in the Battle of Hong Kong in 1941 and during the three years the Japanese occupied the Island, also in this old street the effect of the war was clear.
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In 1949, the Island of Hong Kong was again governed by the British, and people paid a lot of attention to the warring going on over at the mainland. The communist revolution in China led to a population boom in Hong Kong and people were still trying to get on their feet after years of war.
The Collective Ghost Vision
During one of these hot and humid summer nights, the people living in Po Hing Fong street were suddenly awakened by a huge commotion outside. They flocked to their window to see what was going on.
Outside were hundreds of people seen running for their lives. Truck they recognised from the war was seen passing by in the otherwise silent and deserted night. The chaos of the scene was something they had seen during the Japanese Occupation, but why now?
According to the people witnessing it all, the people in the street ran as they were fearing for their life and calling out for their loved ones, trying to get away from an unknown enemy.
This vision lasted for several minutes, the people kicking up dust, making the Po Hing Fong street almost misty. In the end both the people and the trucks all disappeared in the mist and the calm and peaceful night returned to as it had been.
The next day the neighbors met outside and asked if anyone else had experienced something strange during the night. It turned out that everyone had heard and seen the same thing. And they all speculated that it was the spirits that had died in the Second World War.
Other Tragedies on Po Hing Fong Street
The Po Hing Fong street has gone through many name changes and it used to be called Market Street.
The cul-de-sac – originally the site of Dr Sun Yat-sen’s center for anti-Qing revolutionaries and where the prominent businessman Chau Siu-ki owned property, and the future governor, Sir Cecil Clementi, lived while he was a civil servant – was the scene of a fatal accident in 1925 during a flash flood.
On July 17, just before 9am, nearly 80 people were killed when the torrent of water – after days of heavy rain – led to the collapse of a retaining wall on the corner of Caine Road and Ladder Street.
Chau and members of his family were among the dead.
Alternative History of the Mass Haunting
The story about the summer night in 1949 and the ghost of people from the Second World War is the most reposted version of the haunting in this area. There are however alternative versions, or maybe it is simply many of them.
The other version follows the same pattern on a summer night, but this was in 1948, and the ghosts are supposedly from much earlier times.
If these two stories are from the same haunting is unclear, but there are way more notices for a mass haunting in news clipping in 1948 than 1949.
Po Hing Fong Today
Many sources claim that this story was featured in local newspapers in Hong Kong, but there are yet any hard sources of this that we have found and can feature in the article.
Today the dead end street and the surrounding area of Po Hing Fong has transformed into a new hipster neighborhood and is nicknamed PoHo. It is an art district with bohemian cafes, boutiques and design studios, and little of the haunted past is visible to this day.
As day turns into night, the district comes alive with live music performances, pop-up galleries, and unique events that showcase the innovative spirit of PoHo. While the neighborhood has shed its eerie reputation, some locals whisper tales of mysterious occurrences and unexplained phenomena, adding an intriguing layer of mystique to the pulsating energy of PoHo.
Inside of the once stately building, horrible crimes were committed against women. The Nam Koo Terrace, otherwise known as The Wan Chai Haunted House in Hong Kong gives a testament to the ghosts of the past.
There is an old red brick historic building in Hong Kong that the plan is to make into a fabulous wedding venue. The Nam Koo Terrace is also one of the city’s most well known haunted houses and also goes by the name, Wan Chai Haunted House.
The Nam Koo Terrace (南固臺) is a two storied building on No. 55 Ship Street that is now mostly covered in moss. The historical building in the Colonial Eclectic style was built in 1915 and used to belong to the wealthy To family who were merchants from Shanghai.
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The Nam Koo Terrace also used to belong to Chun-man who rented it from the To family, a silk salesman who was also a member of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. This was until World War Two happened and he was forced to leave his home as the Japanese invaded.
The Deadly Military Brothel
Back in the day under the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong the Japanese soldiers used this building as a military brothel as well as a place of torture during the Second World War.
Comfort women or comfort girls were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II. Estimates vary as to how many women were involved, with most historians settling somewhere in the range of 50,000–200,000.
Several of the buildings in the city turned into these so-called Comfort Houses for the imperial army. Luke’s College and the Tung Chi College were also converted into this type of building. Brothel is too nice of a name for it though as many women were brutally raped and according to the legends, also murdered.
After the war, the house went back to the To family who continued to use the house until 1988 when it was sold off. Perhaps because of the gruesome haunted rumors surrounding it?
The Headless Ghost of the Prostitutes at Nam Koo Terrace
It is said it is the ghosts of the women that had to stay in this place, so called Comfort Women haunt the building, roaming headless in the night. Some even go as far as claiming insanity after staying in the house and once, papers like the Oriental Daily covered one of these cases.
In 2003 on the 30th November, there was a paranormal investigation by a group of eight young middle schoolers that spent the night to test themselves and the haunted rumors. The night didn’t go as planned though and the group saw more ghosts than they bargained for.
After the night it was said that one of them claimed to have been possessed by one of the ghosts they had encountered. According to the police, three had to be put into psychiatric treatment from the trauma they experienced that night.
Perhaps in another world this would have been the thing that made people think twice about getting close to this cold spot of tragedy, but the opposite happened. Over the next few days people flocked to the place to get some of the same experience as the middle schoolers did and the house stayed in the headlines of the newspapers for a long time.
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