The Sweet Sweet Smell of Frangipani... Remembering SMM Ulu Pandan

The Seventh Month has been over for a month liao and today is Mid Autumn Festival, so Dr Og wishes everyone happy happy eat mooncakes and carry lanterns hor. Touch wood but if you thinking of stuffing yourself silly with mooncake, please learn the Heimlich maneuver first ok? 

But today, my topic is closer to if you suay suay choke and die, then the festive colourful lanterns. May not be auspicious but now what century liao, tiok boh.

Those of us who are old enough would have had the privilege of having trained in Ulu Pandan Camp which was were the School of Military Medicine was for a long time. Recently army released this video about SMM which prompted me to write this post (and help them promote their video la):

What they never tell you is that SMM is a super haunted place. (But I guess they did allude to it at the opening scene. The two chaps are probably ghosts being able to just appear and disappear...) I have briefly touched on this in my previous posts but since this video rekindled those memories, I feel it is timely to share in greater details.

During my time in SMM, many strange things happened. It was not long into the posting that we were told that one of the the prowling check point had to be brought down from the top level at level four to the ground floor as things like chairs and tablets were flying around ala Poltergeist in the classroom on that floor. The phenomenon was witnessed by so many that the senior officers did not protest when the request was made to move the checkpoint down. 

We were also told that the SMM grounds were where there was a massacre and many were executed and buried during WWII, making it super dirty. It was said that many bodies were excavated when they build the swimming pool which was never really ever used. 

Before long, strange things started happening in our platoon. We heard sounds of soldier marching ...Left Right Left Right Left... in the middle of the night. A platoonmate swore that a locked door of a basement bunker was shaking violently as if something was banging on it and trying to get out from the inside. Some other mates saw an old man squatting by the road side in the middle of the night, praying and sticking incense in the ground but no such man existed when we asked around. The atmosphere was getting pretty spooky even though we continued with our training like nothing happened.

We did find out later that the "soldier marching" was just one of our platoonmates sleep talking. The bugger too stress and still practicing his marching in sleep and the problem was fixed after one blanket party. The rest of it, we see no evil hear no evil, pretend nothing wrong.

What Dr Og personally experienced happened one late night when me and another platoonmate were on prowling duty. We were walking towards the back of the camp to the  pre-war pump room (those who worked or been to SMM will know the pump room) where the check point was. 

On reaching the pump room, there was a sudden strong whiff of sweet flower smell which I had never experienced before. I looked at my platoonmate and he looked at me. Without another word, both of us just started running as fast as we could until we reached the guard house. When I asked him why he ran, he said, "Dunno man, just felt suddenly super scared!" Exactly how I felt, gripped with fear. We didn't really talked about it after that as we were not too proud of ourselves. 

Only much later did I find out from my mother, after telling her the story on some random occasions, the significance of the sweet sweet smell of Frangipani.