The Ghost Village of So Lo Pun

In this remote ghost village in Hong Kong, it is said it was deserted after a tragedy that killed most of the villagers. What really happened in So Lo Pun that makes it a desolate place today?

One of Hong Kong’s oldest villages is an abandoned one and the remains are found in a dense forest northeast in the New Territories.

Hong Kong is perhaps best known for its small living spaces and they have even reclaimed land from the sea to build more space for their residents. In the New Territories that takes up almost 90 percent of Hong Kong’s territory, it only stands for half the population.

Within the many jungles there are plenty of abandoned buildings and whole ghost villages. And some of them have a haunted legend attached to why it’s abandoned.

The Prosperous Village too far Away

So Lo Pun (鎖羅盆) is found within the Plover Cove Country Park and was once the home of generations of the Wong family. They migrated from Mainland China and a person named Wong Wai hing was the founding father of the So Lo Pun village around 872 AD.

This area used to be quite prosperous, with rich and fertile soil, but today it’s seen as an inconvenient way to the more urban areas and therefore not really a place modern people wanted to live. Or could there be something more to this story?

Today the village is completely abandoned and according to many people, also haunted. There are many reasons as to why the village got a haunted reputation.

The Locked Compass

One of those is from the hikers that have been hiking around the Plover Cove Country Park and when entering the village area, the compasses have stopped working. That led to the village being called So Lo Pun that literally means that the compass is locked.

There are also more wild rumors saying that one of the hikers met a ghost and got so scared he died of a heart attack.

The Drowned Villagers

But what really happened to this once so prosperous village? It really wasn’t that many decades ago that the residents left. Why did it end up abandoned and reclaimed by the wild after such a long history and generation that called it their home?

Supposedly there was a terrible accident that started the abandonment of the village decades ago. According to this legend, most of the villagers were on a boat on their way to a wedding when tragedy struck and they all died when the boat went down.

The remaining survivors from the village didn’t want to stay and almost overnight the town was abandoned, leaving haunted rumors behind.

The Descendants left

What did and didn’t happen is up for debate, but it is true that the people living in the village eventually packed up their belongings and left for other more urban places in Hong Kong or even foreign nations.

Supposedly they only return to their ancestral village during the Taiping Qingjiao. But what the true villagers or descendants of the village have to say about the haunted rumors, is unclear.