(Changi Chalet is another well known haunted place in Singapore.) Three of my girlfriends and I booked into a chalet in Changi – this was many years ago and those chalets, the old bungalow types, are not there anymore – and that was when we had the fright of our lives. We aren’t superstitious people and since that incident we have tried to explain away what happened, but that night you couldn’t blame four teenage girls for being scared to be alone in a chalet in lonely Changi with hardly anyone else around.

I remember that we asked the keeper if the place was haunted, because it looked so creepy from the outside. He never made any reply, making it all the more creepier. It made us a bit more sorry that we hadn’t invited any boys along to stay with us – this was supposed to be a sort of pajama party. Anyway, we managed to settle in after a while – no barbecue, we had decided that by consensus, and we were starting to get chatty and beginning to make some noise when one of the girls said she heard the front doorbell ring.

From where we were in the living room we could see the porch outside. There was no one there so we thought she must have been mistaken. She too said, yes, we were right, she must have imagined it. We were chatting away again, chewing the cud, rather loudly I might add, when she said, “There it goes again.” This time we were all quiet and looking hard at the porch from where we were. There certainly was no one there. We could see the porch clearly Mom where we were. If there were anybody out there ringing the doorbell, we should have been able to see the person for sure. So what could she have heard? Then all of us heard it. Loud and clear. It was the doorbell. One of the girls screamed but we quickly hushed her. Then we heard it again, and again and again, each time getting louder and more insistent as if someone was angry and demanding to be let in.

We didn’t know what to do. Everybody froze. All our eyes were fixed on the empty porch where the buzzer was. After a little more of the insistent ringing, the bell stopped. Then we heard it. The back door was creaking open. All of us screamed and ran out through the front door. We didn’t stop running until we reached the next chalet. We banged on the door, thumping away without caring about anybody, afraid like hell. The man who opened the door was in his pajamas and he looked a bit nervous. All of us pushed past him and stumbled into the living room. There were four other men there, all of them also like the one who had opened the door. They were seated around the table and they clearly had been gambling. “Uncle, uncle,” we cried, explaining what had happened and begging to be allowed to stay in this chalet with them for the night. They looked at each other as if they thought we were mad, but finally one of them said, okay, we could stay.

I can tell you, that night we hardly got any sleep. When one of the girls wanted to go to the loo, she forced me to go along and stand guard outside. From where I was, I could hear her singing Amazing Grace to give herself courage while doing her business.