It’s only 9pm. The library is still opened but something strange is already happening. Some students reported the lights along the corridors of the three storey building was turned on and off. Others reported hearing things.

Chung Ling is a very famous school in Penang, Malaysia. It is supposedly the best school in the state, if not the country. Ex-Chung Ling Students’ Association can be found all over the world and they have annual conventions around the world every year. To the local, the story of Chung Ling’s ghosts is perhaps the most common ghost stories.

During World War II, many Chung Ling students were involved in a movement fighting against the Japanese occupation. The movement was so wide spread that the Japanese felt a strong sense of threat from these intellects. Hence, the Japanese set out to kill all the students from Chung Ling, or at least those suspected of being a member of that movement. The school building was used as a prison by the Japanese as well as an execution centre by the Japanese.

Most of the present building was built after the war. It is a very big building with the main building alone consists of six blocks. However, certain parts or blocks of the building are pre-war buildings.

Many people, civilians as well as the Japanese army themselves, must had been killed in the school ground during the war years. So much so that up until present day, the school is often link to a lot of unexplained happenings. Besides the lights turning on and off for no reason, most stories were related to a troop of army marching in the school corridor.

A cousin of mine himself witness the lights being turned on and off repeatedly at night. He told me that upon seeing that, they knew something unpleasant was going to happen. So, he and his friends fled the school immediately.

Many have reported hearing the sound of army marching along the school corridors at night with the lights flashing. Some even reported seeing the army troop themselves. There are numerous reports about such incidents however the most ‘version’ is as follow:

First the lights will suddenly turned on. A few seconds later, it will go off. Then it will come back on. After a while, the sound of army marching on the corridors with those heavy boots can be heard. If the witness is ‘lucky’, he/she may start to see those marching armies appearing out of nowhere and many have reported that the armies are all headless.

It is not clear to me nor it has often been mentioned if those army were Japanese or the students who were being executed by the Japanese during the war. Most people said that they were the Japanese but if one think carefully, why would the Japanese armies be headless when the hundreds of head being chopped off weren’t theirs?

However, this story has been going on for many years or perhaps decades. According to my brother who is studying there, there is student in the school who has gone insane after seeing those headless army. The boy, although unable to study any more, still wanders around the school some times.

Another story about the school happened in the school toilet (or in certain parts of the world, washroom — we don’t usually distinguish them precisely). Indeed it is a big school and hence, the toilets are amazing huge as well. When I was in that school (for only two weeks), I often joked about the toilet being a ‘toilet complex’ rather than just an ordinary toilet.

I am not very clear about the stories of the ‘toilet complex’ but what I understood was that all the toilet doors will open and shut repeatedly (note the similarity with the lights here). Then all the tub will turn on by itself and what comes out are not water but blood.