The Seventh Month

Isn't that the innocent looking boy running down the ward..... wait didn't he ddiii............. yesterda...........
Please be inform that you might be severely spooked if you read on. Do not do so if you are alone and if you work in any of the hospitals mentioned below!



Are doctors superstitious people. We shouldn't be, afterall we are practioners of modern science and firm believers of evidence based facts. But in reality, many doctors believe in the supernatural even if only quietly. This is perharps due to the fact that we understand that the locus of control is not within our hands. Live or Die, god knows who decide......

The Hungry Ghost Festival is a time where hints of such superstitions are dropped. For example, the surgeon might block his list and go for holiday. As the Chinese are a group of pangtang (superstitious) people, majority of patients will not choose this month to do elective (non-emergency) surgery. They are afraid that some spirit maybe lurking in the operating theater to cause the surgery to be a failure so that they can take over the body. While the OT might be sterile, one wonders if the strong disinfectant can clean all that is invisible to the naked eyes....... it is better to be safe than sorry.

Working in the hospitals, doctors are often the first to see a person leave this earthly world. He is after all the person to pronounce death. Eerily, death has a strange smell or rather a lack of it. Even in the coolest night or in the coldest room, you can immediately smell a dead body. It is not that the body has started decomposing...... but the lack of a humanly living ordour. Those who watched Spirited Away would remember the ghosts being able to smell living humans...... there might just be some truth in that!

As the hospital is the starting point for those leaving, it is considered a dirty place:

Alexandra Hospital
Some of my colleagues say Alexandra Hospital is the scariest because it is a pre war hospital and was the scene of many violent deaths during the war. Some colleagues think that there may still be some unclean stuff there. Some have told stories that the old SAF ward had a tap that will turn on by itself. Some have said that they have heard sounds of marching boots along the corridor in the dead of the night. Never walk down the spiral staircase alone at night, you might just see a a japanese soldier with entrails hanging out.

National University Hospital
This hospital is a relatively new building. However, its design is what makes it spooky. The hospital has a new wing which is connected to the old by a lonely walk way beneath a hill slope. The top of the hill leads to Kent Ridge Park. At night the lights are dim and the rustling sound of the trees are all you hear. There have been stories of people staying at KE hall on the top of the hill hearing the cries of a woman down this slope.
Pray hard that you do not get paged to see patients in the new wing during the night. If so begins the long and lonely walk down the dark alley way. One's mind will start to wander and before you even reach the middle of the path, you start to wonder if you are really walking alone.

KK Hospital
I was posted there around the same time that they were showing The Eye 2. For those who have not seen the show, it is acted by Shuqi about a pregnant lady who start seeing spirits when she was pregnant. She realised that there is a spirit beside every pregnant lady, waiting for the chance to be reincarnated into the body of the baby. Now KK is full of pregnant women. Everytime I am on call and have to walk into the Obstetric ward, I would start thinking of the show and half expect to see someone standing beside the bed. Worse of all there was the scene where a spirit was crawling out of the wall of the elevator. I had to keep looking over my shoulders for the next 2 months when I was in the lift.

Singapore General Hospital
Again for some reasons (prolly just to save electricity), there is no light at the alley from the on call rooms to some of the blocks passing through the staff canteen. The only light source is the refrigerator where soft drinks are kept. So you run towards the light as fast as you can and then run towards your call room quickly..... just to rest in your bed before you get paged again.......

Tan Tock Seng Hospital
The source of many a ghost story before it was renovated. Things have improved tremedously since then BUT there remains a fever ward where patients are isolated belonging to old TTSH. This wing is a fair distance from the hospital and despite the fact that the MO covering this ward has the lightest duty, many chooses to cover much busier wards. Is it because of the long walk from the main building across two isolated and quiet roads or is it because most have experienced something un-natural that they refuse such an easy duty?

Special Mention: Old School of Military Medicine Ulu Pandang Camp
This is not a hospital but many male doctors would have stories to share if they had done their time during NS in this camp. The atmosphere here is so high strung during the Hungry Ghost Festival that you see joss sticks and burnt incense littered by the road. It is said that at one time, prowling included climbing up to the 4th floor of the teaching block. Many medical officer course cadets and medics complained of seeing flying chairs and tables. That section of the prowling was eventually removed.
Not many can forget the eerie feeling or the strange Frangipani smell near the pre war pump house, or the strange banging sound from the inside of a empty basement bunk......
You see, Ulu Pandang camp was the site of mass massacre during WWII.

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