This happened to me during last year’s Hungry Ghost Festival. I am presently having a full time job but I attend night class three times a week. That day, I was home early as I have taken half a day off from work.

I was very tired by the time I got home so I decided to lie on my living room’s sofa and rest for awhile before going to school at around 6pm. I told my mum to wake me up as she was planning to go out that evening.

She woke me up at around 5.30pm and left. I was too tired and lazy to wake up so I gave myself another 30mins of rest. At around 6pm, I woke up to a start as I heard a woman chanting. I tried to open my eyes but they just failed to do so. I can see through a tiny opening of my eyes that the chanting came from this lady in red kimono sitting just 2 steps away from me on the floor.

Her face was turned away from me. I can only see that she’s got black short hair with fringe. She had her right arms outstretched holding onto a stack of neatly arranged paper money. The strange thing is, usually, for paper money, there is a chop of silver or gold with red wordings on them but in this case, it was just yellow paper money with no designs on them. She continued chanting and chanting and I started to feel very sleepy. I told myself if I don’t wake up just then, I don’t think I will ever wake up.

Funny thing is, I own a dog and at that point when I was struggling with myself to wake up, my dog was walking around the area where the lady is sitting. I have heard that dogs can sense stuff like that but the unusual thing was, my dog seemed nonchalant with the specture. For 15mins I tried to open my eyes fully. I got so frustrated that I closed my eyes for 1 min and opened them again, this time, I was able to get up and rush out of my house for school.

That night when I came back from school, I told my mum who went to an incense shop in Tiong Bahru Road to get me some incense to burn for the restless spirit. Someone there told her that when a spirit doesn’t want a dog to see it, the dog wouldn’t know. Which was what happened since my dog couldn’t sense the lady while she was sitting there chanting.