Episode 12 (Special Edition) – (Old) Changi Hospital

Date: 11th Jly 2009

Location: Old Changi Hospital via Halton Road

Time: 2330 hrs

Weather: Windy, Light Showers

~THE inevitable is about to happen eventually, as every thrill seekers, random I -wanna-see-some-ghosts groups or ghost hunters like us, must pay a visit once or more during their lifetime to this famed place. The so called ‘Most Haunted Place’ in Singapore, the (old) Changi Hospital.

The main building itself is 7 floors high.

~LOCATED in the Changi area, surrounded by old colonial houses turned into holiday chalets and next to an old army commandos barrack, the place seems shrouded in mystery as to why it has been left as it is for far too long. Built in the 1930s, the hospital was built by the British, it comes as a surprise that it was meant to be a military command quarters and barracks used by the British Army during the Japanese occupation of Singapore. It was captured by the Japanese as they were moving southwards into Singapore and thus was transformed into a military hospital, to tend to the needs of the injured during that dark period in Singapore’s history.

Fortunately, the gate was wide open, inviting all who dares enter it's premises.

~WELL, enough said about the history of this place. You can find out more about it on the net. And word has it that it is going to be turned into a holiday resort. Go to http://www.sla.gov.sg/htm/new/new2006/new0285.htm for more info on this.

~WE arrived at the location through Halton Road, right behind a cluster of chalets around the area. This is the best place that we could find to park our vehicles conveniently, (for free) without being issued a parking ticket. In this Ghost Hunt (more of a night tour), Datok brought along the kids this time. Well, there is no harm in bringing kids along as long as they know what he risks are, right? (Sometimes, it’s useful to bring a child along for any Ghost Hunts, as they are more prone to ‘seeing’ things which an adult possibly can’t. Read some though  provoking ideas from renown psychic Fiona Broome (http://hollowhill.com/children-and-ghost-hunting/).

The words 'Welcome To Hell' sprayed on the entrance into the building. Vandalism is at an all time high here in Changi Hospital.

~IT was drizzling with light showers that night. The cool winds from the sea was blowing into the area here, as there were no obstructions by other buildings, thus adding the creepiness and giving you occasional goose bumps now and then. We entered the area through the open gates at Halton Road. A few sources mentioned that there is a guard stationed here, but he was no where to be found. Maybe the ghosts of this place scared him out of his wits? Who knows these things…

This is the exact spot where Apek thought he saw something moving. Oh, kids...

~WE took an outer route before entering the 7 storey high building, that is encircling through the back, just scout for any unusual stuffs. Just then, Apek, Idah’s nephew, whispered to me, ‘Uncle, there is something moving on the roof just now.’ I said, ‘ Where?’ and he pointed, ‘There. On the roof.’ Well, sometimes kids can be cute, don’t they? But again, it might be true, or it could be a shadow created by our flashlights or just his young mind playing around with him a.k.a. imagination.

One of the first elevators that you will come across when entering the place from Halton Road. Guess it doesn't work anymore. (What could those words & numbers mean? Only the vandals knew.

Coming full circle, we end up at the entrance where the words ‘Welcome to Hell’ was sprayed purposefully on the patio, perhaps trying to scare passersby? Taking a left turn, we came across two elevator shafts, one with the doors still intact, closed while the other one which has no doors, where the elevator is notched on the upper floors.

The elevator shaft. Rain water drips down from the top. Has the lift been stolen?

~DON’T ever expect that the elevators here to be working, since the power to this place has been cut off. Our plan was simple: Go through every floors, look around into every crooks and crannies. That’s what we did in the end. Oh! How fun it is to be exploring an abandoned, ‘haunted’ hospital  on a Saturday night!

There was a striped red & white tape here. One might see that there is some construction going on here.

~AS we have cleared the flight of steps to the 2nd floor, we heard voices coming from the left side of the stairs. As I approached it to get a better hearing, it was gone. Well, one cannot help to see that the three buildings of Changi Hospital are connected to one another through gangways or corridors. We went up all the way to the 3rd or 4th floor (I think) and couldn’t get into the wards inside the 7th storey high building. Perhaps we need to go higher? And there isn’t any glass attached to the windows here, all the pieces were on the floor. Must be (again) the work of the vandal(s).

There were two portraits of 'Mr. Dick aka Tee Hee' around Changi Hospital. One is a painting of him with Red hair while the other is another picture of him being bald and black. Very creative work indeed by the vandal(s)!

~The silence of the night was finally broken by a group of rag tag chinese youngsters (and I suspected the voices we heard previously are them actually), with cans of beers in their hands approaching us. I don’t even bother to greet them as they are very rowdy and tend to make loud noises, behaving like uncivilized barbarians. Well, there it goes. Changi Hospital is a certified place for week-enders to come and search for ghosts, thus destroying our chances of finding one (ghosts).  They passed us first onto the upper floors and we continued our search for any unusual (and paranormal) activities around here.

We found the SAF (Singapore Armed Forces) Ward. Notice the lines of water marks going away from the puddle on the ground?

~THIS is the very first time that SGHC’s members have been here, so we don’t know much about the layout of the area. Somewhere on the 4th floor, there is the SAF ward, with it’s walls adorned with graffiti of all sorts. (Why do they enjoyed spraying onto walls so much? Were they doing badly during art class? Venting out their frustrations?) The floor here is a little flooded with water brought on by the rain earlier on. So there are tracks of people wandering around here and there as evident in the photo above.

The corridors of the SAF wards. to the east of this picture is the 7th storey building. The ceiling looks like it's going to fall off any moment now. Beware!

~ THE SAF ward building that we’re in is just 3 storeys high. Nothing much to be found here, except for broken glasses and stuffs. We headed out to the next area and that is back to the other building(7th storeys ) and went up to the 4th floor.

The wards. Open concept design to ventilate the area as there were no air-conditioning here.

~AT this point on, I noticed that the sounds from the group of youngsters were no where to be heard. Maybe they have left? Good riddance! We moved along, looking here and there, shining our flashlights around in the dark, until I felt a cool breeze blowing against my right arm. I turned and found that there is a small room here with no windows, overlooking the thick brush and trees out there. As I entered, I noticed that there is an offering of some sort on the ledge of the furniture.

Another view of the hospital from the 4th floor of the wards.

~THESE sorts of Chinese offerings are commonplace in places where known spirit or supernatural activities occur. Maybe as a way to appease the restless spirits of the dead? The ones that are haunting this place? Only the ones who made these offerings can bring it to light.

A makeshift altar in a small, rectangular room.

~UP till now, the readings on the EMF are a usual 0.5 – 0.6mg (Milligauss), no spikes were recorded. Out of the room and on to the other end of the ward.

At opposite ends. Spot the difference? The Thrill Chillers caught an apparition at the end of this corridor. Genuine or a manipulated photo? You decide. (Click the link below)

~FINALLY, we found the creepy corridor that SGFreakyLinks & The Thrill Chillers went through before. What is so important about this place is what THEY had captured on film. The article can be read by going to http://www.sgfreakylinks.com/old-changi-hospital-ciii/. The corridor is a narrow, barely 4 persons, should to shoulder could squeeze through. Moving slowly, getting no spikes in the EMF, we carefully thread through to the other end.

The group of peoplethat we met were mostly malays, and there are still more of them all over the place!

~ANOTHER surprise this time. I smell some sweet fragrance that I know of, which is called kemenyan in malay and benzoin in english. Now these small stones when burnt gives off a sweet fragrance and smoke will build up as well. It is mostly used in rituals of cleansing or a sinister one. That decides on the users intentions. As I approached the source of the scent carefully, I was flabbergasted to see a group of 20 to 30 people on the last building of OCH near Netheravon Road! I saw a man with long, messy hair (probably a medium) was moving around a room holding a tray of benzoin! I told the rest to stop and wait behind me. I exchanged greetings with one of their members and I felt the urge to ask him: Excuse me, what are you guys doing? Which I did.

Benzoin aka kemenyan anyone? Trays full of it were found on 3 separate locations, spread around the area.

~THE stocky guy replied that they were trying to lure out the ‘Pontianak’ I said,’Hmmm…why? What happened?’

~THE guy said that last night, one of their friends saw a lady in white standing in of the corridors. Then a big bird came flying out of nowhere and disappears into one of the rooms. ‘So we’re to see it for ourselves.’ he replied. And I asked him who is he (theguy with the tray of benzoin), and he told me that he is a kind of a medium (I will call him the ‘Medicine Man’). And I asked him nicely whether we could stay and observe, and he was fine with that. He told us that the kids can sit together with another group of youngsters on a big carpet. So we waited around just at the back of the corridor where it was presumed where Thrill Chillers caught the apparition, and we waited…and waited…and waited….

The group of people that was sitting down in a circle was facing here, everyone waiting for something to make an appearance.

~LATER on, Idah told me that the ‘Medicine Man’  shooed them away. Maybe we’re outsiders or maybe we didn’t pay him to let us stay here and watch? I couldn’t help myself but I noticed that there were so many of them. And there is this group of girls and boys seated in a circle on top of a carpet, everyone was facing in the direction of a small building at the other end. How on earth could they expect to lure the ‘Pontianak’ out with such a crowd? My wife (Idah) even said that maybe ‘she’ is around here, observing them and she might be rolling on the floor giggling to ‘herself’!  At this time the rain has stopped. We waited around for around an hour or so. Boredom got the better of us. (It is a fact that Ghost Hunting may take hours of sitting at a place and nothing would show up!- that depends on the number of people you brought along).

The group were seated right below the building in the bottom right corner of this picture. I dare not take a picture of them or I might incur the wrath of the 'Medicine Man'!

~SO we got our feet off the ground and head back to where our vehicles were parked. We had to backtrack, and backtrack we did. On the way down I stopped for awhile to get some pictures of the wonderful graffiti around OCH, especially near the lift-landing.

Idah's nephew being lead by Rafidah, with Aidi Iskandar and Datok behind them. Good bye OCH.

CONCLUSION:

When a place is too well known for being haunted, and if it is accessible to anyone, it starts to get over-crowded. Especially during the weekends. So, what we have learnt for this trip is that Ghost Hunting at famous places during weekends is a no-no. Even though we were expecting some spooks to appear, there were none. No presence felt, no spikes in the EMF, we did had our own kind of fun, finally getting to visit the place. Maybe, just maybe next time we’ll come back here again… and this time not during the weekends!

Below are just some of the pictures, enhanced by me or else they will look really dull actually.

The wonderful creativity of our vandal(s) a.k.a. Graffiti Artists.

A Cross & the name of ALLAH. Peace in the end?

Well, satan isn't here tonight boys!

And who could this be? Tee Hee?

Wow! We didn't know that!

So this is the disco that the Pontianaks like to hang out for a booze aye?