This is a story about me and a group of friends who went to Pulau Ubin for one day and were lucky enough to have experienced all that we did and still manage to come back alive and in one piece..here is our story….

A group of us, totaling about 6 guys headed off to Pulau Ubin in the morning for a day of fun. The outing was impromptu, and all of us just got our stuff together on the next day and off we went by boat to Pulau Ubin. We spent the whole day cycling with me falling off my bike on a steep slope, providing all of us with a good laugh. Other than that, the day passed by quite uneventfully. We had quite a time cycling around the island and getting leg cramps in the process but as night fell we looked for a place to stay…and what a place it was..

It was about 5 in the afternoon, nearing 6 and we were at the deserted Malay Kampung on the west side of the island. The guys parked their bikes on a narrow path leading to the small, rotting wooden jetty, if you could call it that. Since all of the guys were tired out, 3 of the other guys decided to hop down to the beach and walk along the coastline to search for a suitable place to ‘thon’ the night. The other 3 of us, including me and my friends, Weili and the ‘humji’ Jifa were to look after the bikes. The other 3 guys, Jiahao, Yongjun and Kaihan set off across the rocks. Soon after, one of the guys, Jiahao came back to lead us by jungle path to a place that they found-The Swiss Cottage, whose name I was to learn later from an OBS instructor. By the time the rest of us reached there, it was already 6 pm and the woods were just starting to get dark around us. By 7pm, we could no longer make out our surroundings. Some of us decided to explore the house, which seemed to be decades old, with green moss covering the back of the house and all the signs of ageing and rot around, we began our exploration. We started from a storeroom leading to the kitchen. Since we found nothing of interest on the ground floor, we then proceeded up a staircase to the second level. There we found remnants of food cartons and whatnot. The 2 guys leading the whole team then headed down to the ground floor and then it happened..

As the 2 lead guys, Jiahao and Alex went down, they saw the front door of the cottage being kicked violently and with great force from the outside. The other guys, including me just thought that it was some of the guys going down the stairs rather noisily. The 2 of them backed up and yelled for us to come down and see. When we got outside, there was NO ONE!! Armed with some BB guns and torches, we then proceeded to check the surrounding area for any intruders. However, my ‘Humji’ friend, Jifa got the shivers and begged us to call off the search. Reluctantly, we agreed. The rest of the night passed uneventfully except for the fact that the double doors to the kitchen storeroom were open, considering the fact that 2 of my friends had blocked the bottom of the doors with bricks that they found. Nothing happened until after 12am, the ‘witching’ hour…….

At around 12am-1am, we were resting on the concrete jetty away from the house. We were resting quite peacefully and watching the sky for shooting stars. All of a sudden, JiaHao spotted a white flash across the water. Some of the others managed to spot the next few too and some fools in the group started to shine their torches around. However, the others did not spot anything. The next half-hour was spent in peace until the wind started to pick up and the sky turned really dark red. As we made our way up to the house, a gale was already blowing and somehow we managed to take most of our possesions, which consisted of a few bottles of water and some biscuits into the small storeroom where the 6 of us were cramped into that small space. All of us were really tired and hungry by this time and Jifa was so scared that he wrapped himself up in his transparent windcheater and covered his face. I didn’t do too well either, having to sleep next to the entrance to the kitchen. Jiahao and Kaihan didn’t get much sleep at all, what with their uncomfortable resting places on the rattan chairs and having to face the stormy scene outside.

A tropical storm was raging all around us. Rainwater was coming in from a broken window and the wind was slamming one of the other windows in the house violently, creating quite a din. Sounds from the animals of the night seemed to perpetuate the brief lulls in the storm, making it even more frightful. Menancing shadows in the storm suddenly took the form of 2 figures fighting each other as Jiahao would tell us later that morning. Later, when most of the guys had woken up around 5am, we could hear disembodied voices. At first, I thought that it was coming from a radio but there wasn’t any boats or even humans around the jetty, where the voices were coming from…

In the end, we made it back to the ferry point safely the next morning, except for Jiahao, who reported the most ‘sightings’. He had a bad spill on a 45-degree slope on our way back to the ferry point but apart from all that, we made it back to the mainland safely by the grace of God. If anyone wants a really frightening experience, try Pulau Ubin. It won’t disappoint you!!