The Other World - Hysterical Moments

For three days in a row, a group of students and a teacher of Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan (SMK) Tasek Utara 2, Johor Bahru had bouts of hysteria.
Last year, from Wednesday April 28 and 30, 15 Form Four female students and a female teacher, who were from separate classrooms went hysterical.

On Wednesday, the mysterious hysteria attacked three students from separate classrooms.
They were seen crying and having shouting fits.
But on Friday, another six students and a female teacher suffered the same fate.

Those who witness the incident on Friday saw a chain reaction as students were being possessed one after another.
One of them had to be held to the floor, with face bloated of anger.
The situation was at its worse on Friday when a female Form Four student, who seemed to be possessed by a spirit, threatened to jump from the third floor of a classroom block.
A group of male teachers had to hold the student down as she tried to jump off the building.

So intense was the hysteria that the school administration had to call healers from the Skudai Darussyifa' Islamic healing group to help calm the students.
The healer spoke with the spirit through one of the girls.
It said that its home had been disturbed.
They were calmed down within 90 minutes.
Fortunately none of the students or the teacher suffered any injury, as they were all pacified with the help of the Darussyifa' healers.

The hysteria was said to occur again on May 3.

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In July 2009, a group of 20 students at SMK Taman Daya 2, Johor Bahru, became hysterical that created panic among those at the school.
They claimed to see apparitions which looked like pontianak (vampire) and pochong (floating ghost in white burial shroud).
They screamed in fear after seeing 'something' in the classroom.
Their screams created a domino effect and soon, other classmates also screamed in panic.

Those apparitions had been seen by some of them since April, after a group of students returned from a dance competition at a shopping mall in Kulaijaya.
The sightings usually occurred at the fourth floor of the school which housed the classrooms of Form Four students.
Staff members were quick to act to calm them down.

That was not the first incident and it makes the other students uneasy.

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What causes hysteria that these students and teacher lose self-control?
What causes the mind to be unmanageable?

For the above incidents, hysteria at schools were due to the school being home to spirits, be it apparitions or other forms.
Or the reason students or teachers were susceptible nature of to be 'disturbed' or possessed by these unseen beings.
Those lacking spiritual strength make them susceptible to such intrusions.

For female Muslims who are unable to pray during their menstruation period, they are likely to be spiritually weakened during these time, thus this makes them an easy target for possession.

Sign of headcover worn by girls does not reflect spiritual strength.
To be spiritually strong, internal strength needs to be work on.

There are other causes too.
Hysteria maybe caused by humans who trespass on the spirit's or spirits' turf.
Occasionally youngsters, who liked to play outdoor late into the evening, collide with spirits or accidentally trespass into their 'home' during the few minutes before sunset.
Their homes could be disturbed.
Or these youngsters could accidentally be hitting and hurting these unseen being family members without them knowing it.

At best, try to avoid spending time outdoor, during the fifteen minutes before Magrib prayer call because that's when spirits roam around.
But the best solution is always to strengthen oneself spiritually with prayers and practising good values.

For those who believe, Al-Qur'an is the best remedy.
Aayatul Kursi, the last two verses of Surah Al Baqarah and the first ten verses of Surah Al Kahfi need to be explored.

Internet Addiction, Our Children, And Us

August 7, 2010 - Internet Junkie Children Have Parents Worried

PETALING JAYA: Parents and teachers have been left in a quandary as the onslaught of Internet games and social networking sites are bringing out a rebellious streak in many children.

“Why are you controlling my life?” – is the question often thrown back by children to their parents or teachers when they are confronted with their obsession with the Internet.

Teenagers playing online games at a cyber cafe in Kelana Jaya, a common scenario at almost any cyber cafe. - AZMAN GHANI/THE STAR

 

Norton, an Internet security company, produced a family report in 2010 which stated that Malaysian children spent an average of 64 hours online every month.

National Union of the Teaching Profession secretary general Lok Yim Pheng described the students’ obsession with the Internet as a silent killer which was “killing off” the interest of students in class.
There had been reported cases of students falling asleep in class after a whole night of playing Internet games and on-line chatting.
Lok had been ringing the alarm bells over this issue for the last five years.

She said there were also students who starved themselves during recess time because they wanted to save up for trips to cyber cafes.
“There have also been cases where stealing is involved,” she said.

Public complaints go-to man, Datuk Michael Chong said many parents had come crying to him saying they were at a loss over what to do.
“Their children spend countless hours on the Internet – with some cases involving primary school students surfing pornographic sites,” said the head of the MCA Public Service and Complaints Department.

Psychologist Dr Goh Chee Leong said the Internet was enticing because it was “very engaging and stimulating.”
“This problem is more prevalent in the middle and higher class families because they can afford to buy computers,” said the vice-president of HELP University College.

Mary (not her real name), an ex-addict, said that at the height of her obsession with online games, she only slept once every two days.
“I was 16 then. I was having teenage angst and like my peers, I needed a world where I could be in control and I could win,” said the undergraduate.
Luckily, she grew out from the phase when she was 19. Her bad grades were a nasty wake-up call, said the 21-year-old.

Father of three and marketing manager Simon Lee worries that his children will neglect their studies if they spend too much time on the computer.
But he could soon have a solution.
Software engineer Wayne Koong has invented a programme which slows down Internet programmes tremendously, to make the viewers get impatient and lose interest.
To know more about it, you have to log on and go to  http://www.internetoveruse.com.
- The Star

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Aug 3, 2010 - Depression Linked To Net Addiction

HONG KONG - Teenagers who spend excessive amounts of time on the Internet are one and a half times more likely to develop depression than moderate web users, a study in China has found.

Researcher Lawrence Lam described some of the signs of excessive use spending at least five to more than 10 hours a day on the web, agitation when the teens is not in front of the computer and loss of interest in social interaction.

'Some spend more than 10 hours a day, they are really problematic users and they show signs and symptoms of addictive behaviour ... browsing the Internet, playing games,' said Mr Lam, co-author of the paper which was published on Tuesday in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

The study involved 1,041 teenagers aged between 13 and 18 years in China's southern Guangzhou city who were free of depression at the start of the investigation.
Nine months later, 84 of them were assessed as suffering from depression and those who were on the Internet excessively were one-and-a-half times more vulnerable than moderate users.
'Results suggested that young people who are initially free of mental health problems but use the Internet pathologically could develop depression as a consequence,' wrote Mr Lam, who co-authored the paper with Zi-wen Peng at the Sun Yat-Sen University's School of Public Health in Guangzhou.

The depression might be a result of lack of sleep and stress from competitive online games, he explained. 'People who spend so much time on the Internet will lose sleep and it is a very well established fact that the less one sleeps, the higher the chances of depression,' Mr Lam said. -- REUTERS

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Jul 2, 2010 - Internet Addict Killed Mum

SEOUL - A South Korean court on Friday sentenced an Internet addict to 20 years in prison for killing his mother after she criticised his online gaming habit.

The 22-year-old was arrested in February on charges of clubbing his 53-year-old mother to death at her home.
Prosecutors had sought the death sentence.

In March, a 32-year-old man died after playing on the Internet for five days with few breaks.

A similar incident was reported involving a 28-year-old man in 2005.

In May, a 41-year-old man was sentenced to two years in jail after he and his wife left their daughter to die while raising a  'virtual child'  on the Internet.

Official data estimates the highly-wired nation has two million web addicts, or almost one in 10 online users.
South Korea has announced tougher rules to combat Internet gaming addiction. -- AFP

Paranormal Sighting In Learning Institutions With The Star

Does accounts of supernatural activities in schools are very much alive and well in this modern day and age?

Does sightings of apparitions and unexplained occurences are popular shared topics of conversations for current and former students of their eerie experiences?

About 3 months ago, StarEducation sent a callout asking students to write in their personal accounts of mysterious happenings in their schools or universities.

Based on The Sunday Star report on May 9, students walked down their journey doing their rounds in the local learning institutions looking at the creepy tales.

Colonial era schools such as this one in Kuala Lumpur tend to have more than their fair share of creepy stories.

Historic haunts
Invented or real histories of schools are a common starting ground for terrifying tales.

At the more historic schools around the country, it would seem that some of the troops who arrived in Malaya during the Japanese Occupation of the early 1940s have never left.
Tales of schools being former Japanese torture camps are a particularly popular explanation for apparitions of headless corpses and sounds of marching soldiers in the dead of night.

Perhaps the strangest tale in circulation at the moment are sightings of beheaded nuns in a well-known girls’ school in Kuala Lumpur.

 

While the school canteen may be the focal point for students during recess, it can at other times, turn out to be an eerie place where one can hear mysterious sounds and witness strange happenings.

 Although the brutalities committed during that era cannot be denied, conclusive proof of all the exact spots where the Kempeitai (Japanese secret police) murdered their victims is hard to find.

Consultant Mavindren Naidu however, believes that his former school in Ipoh is a hotbed of paranormal activity.
“From 1943 till the end of the war, the Japanese government did have their headquarters in Perak.
“It’s not surprising then if some of the locations in my school were previously used as execution spots by the army,” he says.

Mavindren claims that his former schoolmates have seen silhouettes of bodies hanging from trees, and screams echoing down empty hallways.
“I’ve experienced the screams myself once, while waiting for my father to pick me up after co-curricular activities.

“Maybe it was a classmate pulling my leg, but there were no other students around and it didn’t sound human...” he says.

 

Many a student will swear to spirits lurking in empty classrooms.

Declaring himself to be a sceptic, Tan Seng Hong says a misunderstanding of history can easily cause rumours to spread.
“Some say that my school was a prison, or that it was built on an ancient tribal burial ground,” says the secondary school student.

“But my school is fairly new, and this area has always been a commercial one! Of course, if I believed the stories to be true, I too would feel scared or see things that aren’t really there.”

Permanent residents
As they tend to be located in isolated surroundings, boarding schools are rife with supernatural anecdotes.

One of the most infamous yarns is that of the boy who wakes up in the middle of the night at his dormitory room.

Upon seeing dark shadows hovering along the beds of his fellow students, the boy pulls up his covers and pretends to be asleep.

 

The abandoned Shih Chung school in Penang is supposedly haunted and the abode of different types of ghosts.

The terrified boy then hears a disembodied voice singing: “The rest are asleep, but one is awake.”

Civil servant Shazliza Ramli thinks that such tales are a way of keeping students in check.
“You can be sure that once a student hears a story like that, he is bound to keep to his bedtime,” she laughs.

Shazliza adds that another common “happening” at her former residential school in Kelantan is the doppelganger effect.
“One story I can account for is when a friend of mine had to go home for the weekend due to an injury. 

"But the night warden claimed to have seen my friend wandering around the corridors late at night, and thought she was rude for not answering the warden’s calls."

 

Sightings of apparitions are often spotted along empty corridors and at disrepaired stairwells in schools.

“Upon learning the truth, the warden subesequently refused to do the night shift again; but I think it was an effective caution for the girls, because after that, none of us loittered around at night!” she says.

Residential school student Azfar Masom meanwhile, thinks that his seniors just take sadistic pleasure in scaring the wits out of younger students.
“This is especially true when we have overnight leadership-building or camping events,” says Azfar.

“The students would do things like sneaking up on unsuspecting individuals who dared venture out to answer the call of nature.

“The teachers have more subtle techniques — when doing the head count at the end of the day, they would add an extra person to make it look like we had an unexpected ‘guest’ sharing our tent for the night.”

Tertiary terror
At higher education institutions that are built around dense jungle areas, the old wives’ tale goes that empty buses were sent from the proposed site to the middle of nowhere.

It is said that this was so that bus drivers could transport unwanted spirits to their new “home”, away from the university.
While the sprawling campuses of some local universities appear spacious in broad daylight, taking a nightly stroll in them can be an unnerving experience for even the bravest of souls.

Economics student Sandra Ooi claims that sightings of a lone woman in white are common at her campus in Selangor.
“When my boyfriend came to pick me up one night, he said he saw a girl dressed in white in the distance.

“Thinking it was a student looking for a lift, he slowed down his car — but as he got closer, she disappeared.

“Several of my male classmates have seen this girl while walking back to their dorms,” she says.

In similar vein, Wong Li Ping is certain that she has personally experienced the urban legend of her former private higher education institution in the Klang Valley.
“I saw a person standing on one of the balconies of the hostel block facing mine,” says the sales executive.

“Suddenly the figure leapt down; I thought I had just witnessed a suicide.

“I immediately started to dial the emergency number, but when I glanced up again, I saw the figure standing there as before.”
Li Peng adds that the scene repeated twice, before the figure completely vanished.

Although there is no concrete validity to the relations above, they do reflect the Malaysian appetite for the supernatural.

As Priya Kulasagaran conclude in this writing, "Whether you are a believer or not, the very least these stories do is plant a small seed of doubt when walking down a lonely corridor."