Last January, my great-grandmother passed away in her sleep. She was 97 years old. We were all very sad about it because we expected her to live longer and she had been hospitalized a few times prior to her passing and looked like she could survive a couple more years.

I remember being sad about it because I loved her. Even though I couldn’t talk to her much, I felt almost blessed having her because how many of us have been alive long enough to touch our great-grandparents, right?

Then came the shocker. Less than a month after her death, my mother told me that the person whom I had known as my great-grandmother wasn’t actually my great-grandmother.

The truth was that my great-grandmother had already passed away at the age of 75, way before I was even born. And all of us know that the person’s soul departs from their body when they die and the body being buried/cremated is just simply a body.

Apparently, my great-grandmother had enlisted the help of a good friend who specialized in black magic. Her intentions were pure and innocent. She simply wanted to be alive to see her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. None of us doubted that and we knew she didn’t have any ill thoughts.

How did we know that it was another being and not her?

Well, my aunt frequents this “bapak”[*] who told her about it. She had gone to him and told him about my great-grandmother’s condition. And then he himself removed the soul from my great-grandmother’s body. According to beliefs, a kept spirit must be handed down to descendants or be thrown away or else catastrophe might occur. Said spirit had a fondness for my aunt and she was being harassed (e.g. the thing would follow her home and stay in the tree opposite her flat window, etc). When it was thrown away, my great-grandmother’s body simply became a body and we buried her.

I was a little sad that she had to resort to black magic but I can only hope that God forgives her for what she did. I truly believe that she didn’t mean to cause any harm.