by D. G. Lum
Despite rumors that baby ghosts can enhance one’s luck, there is no safe and easy way to gamble. In fact, when gambling with the supernatural, a shortcut can potentially lead to a short life.
Chapter 7: Ghosts for VIPs Only
Have you heard that some casino hosts put their VIP gamblers in hotel rooms that are supposedly haunted in order to erode their gambling luck?
A VIP gambler—let’s call him ‘Mun’—that I met a few years back told me his story.
In 2006, an attractive lady named Kwan solicited him to gamble on board a gambling cruise ship. Kwan was a representative for a junket operator. Junket operators actively solicit keen gamblers to play in casinos. Generally, in return, they get a commission or fee from the casino for bringing in ‘guests.’
Mun accepted and boarded the cruise ship, which set off to international waters. He checked into a room, which was neat and beautifully decorated, then immediately went into action and went to the casino. That morning, he had a winning streak and made thousands for himself. By noon, the casino host who was servicing him throughout his gambling session, asked him to take a break. The host treated Mun to a great lunch.
After lunch, the host left to make a call. He came back to tell Mun that they had decided to transfer him into a better, bigger room. Mun was immediately taken to his new accommodation, which was located on the top floor of the cruise ship. The room was spacious and even more luxurious then the one he had been in previously, so Mun was delighted with the new arrangement.
Mun then decided to take a short nap, and he closed his eyes. After he slept, he felt something strange. He thought he could feel himself spinning in the air. He opened his eyes instantly and felt a bit dizzy. He did not know what happened or why he was feeling this way. “Perhaps I am getting seasick,” he thought and took some painkillers before napping again.
He fell soundly asleep. When he woke up, he realized it was already past 8:00 p.m. He had slept for six hours. He wondered why he was so tired. In fact, he felt more tired than he had before his nap.
Just then, he heard a knock at the door. He opened it and a young female cleaner was standing there. “I’m here to prepare your bed for the night, sir,” she said readily. Just after she spoke to Mun, her gaze shifted to the bed. Her eyes blinked several times, her facial expression changed, and she took two steps away from the door. Mun could see her bite her lips. She clenched her fists. Then, looking back at Mun, the cleaner said in a hurried tone, “I…I…I will come back later, sir!” She quickly disappeared from the corridor.
“What a weird person!” thought Mun, as he got ready to go down to the casino.
There, his luck changed. Mun made a couple of mistakes at the gambling tables. He began losing rapidly and found it hard to focus. Before he knew it, he had lost a round again. Hoping to win back his losses, Mun bet even more the next round. His losses piled up rapidly. Within an hour, he accumulated close to S$100,000 in losses.
Soon, he retired from his game and returned to his cabin. After walking back to his cabin, Mun saw a piece of paper stuck to his door. It said, “Meet me at the pub any time before 3:00 a.m. I have important things to tell you. From, the lady you met at 8:10 p.m.”
Mun was surprised to see the note and wondered, “Maybe she is a prostitute?” Still, Mun was curious and decided to meet her.
Mun bumped into the lady while she was doing her cleaning at the pub. The moment she saw Mun, she walked over to him and dragged him to the side. “I can see strange things,” whispered the lady. She was scared but anxious and was trying to calm herself down. “I have had the ability since I was young. So, you must believe me.”
Mun was confused, “Believe what?”
“I saw two ghosts in your room just now!” exclaimed the lady. “It’s true! They had long hair and nails and were right beside your bed.”
Mun was stunned. His first thought was that this lady must be nuts.
The lady stared into Mun’s eyes, and repeated herself with conviction. “Believe me! They were holding on to your bed as though they were going to lift it up! They looked back at me!”
It just seemed so unbelievable. Mun looked straight back at her. “I’m not interested in you, okay? Please don’t look for me again!” he replied as he hurriedly walked out of the pub.
But back in the cabin, Mun kept thinking of what the lady had been saying. He brushed his teeth and hopped onto his bed. He looked to his left and right, trying to spot anything out of the ordinary. There was nothing. “Nuts! It can’t be real,” he thought, before closing his eyes.
The next morning, Mun woke up again feeling tired and giddy again. He never knew what hit him. He went to the casino again, played for a couple of hours, and lost even more. He thought had such bad luck.
At some point, he wondered if the lady cleaner was right. He might have been spooked by the ghosts and lost his luck. He left the gambling cruise ship with heavy losses.
A few months later, Mun had lunch with a friend. His friend told him he had experienced the same situation and also lost a lot. It turned out that they had both checked into the same room onboard the ship. It was also Kwan, the junket representative, who had invited him over to the cruise.
After their discussion, both gamblers vowed never to return to that cruise ship again.
Chapter 8: This is My Room. Get Out!
Many Singaporeans like to spend their holidays in the Genting Highlands. It is an inexpensive area and good quality accommodation is plentiful up on the mountain: there are now six hotels in the Highlands. There are more than fifty fun rides for the kids and hundreds of outlets for shopping and dining on Genting. It is like Disneyland for the whole family. The weather is always fine and cool, and Genting makes a great weekend getaway from busy Singapore.
Did you know that Genting has a long casino history, having obtained a license to operate the only casino in Malaysia back in 1969? The area’s first hotel, the Theme Park, opened in 1971. Seven years later, the Genting Hotel was built to accommodate more visitors.
At Casino de Genting, adults can go crazy over roughly 3,000 slot machines and 500 gaming tables. Each year, thousands of gamblers crowd its casino. Some come alone to make a killing on the gambling tables. Others bring their families along for fun and leisure. Those who seek fun have a good time.
However, many do not survive the casino’s financial slaughter and suffer losses. The more serious suffer from mental and physical torment. Some would take their lives because their losses were too great to bear. On the Genting Highlands, people say, some of the dead have never left.
The following is a story told by my mother. She was a regular visitor to the Genting Highlands Resort and its casino. She was staying in one of the Genting hotels when a peculiar incident happened. This is her story:
I love Genting. It is one of those places that I will never get sick of. My friend and sister-in-law, Gu Gu, shares the same passion for it. We often take an overnight bus ride to Genting and spend our time there over the weekend. It is fun.
On the second day of November, in 2003, Gu Gu and I decided to visit Genting again. It was our seventh trip to Genting that year. We booked ourselves into one of the Genting hotels for two nights and organized an overnight bus ride to get there.
“It will be fun!” said Gu Gu on the bus. Right before she went to sleep, she added with enthusiasm, “I checked the almanac. This trip will bring a windfall. I am going to win some money!”
I believed her. Gu Gu had been a lucky star with blackjack, her favorite game in Genting, before. Somehow, I didn’t feel as lucky as she did. My favorite game is the slot machines but I had never hit a big jackpot.
We arrived in Genting the next morning. As usual, Gu Gu helped me to check into the hotel. You see, she is more outspoken and the one who helps us get a better deal each time. At the wet market, she is the one who gets a 20% discount at the chicken stall while I pay the full price. That says something about her special ability.
There
was nothing unusual about our room. The window view was unspectacular, but the room was neat and tidy. The bathroom was clean and filled with a nice aroma.
“Let’s put down our things and go,” said Gu Gu eagerly as she put her bag in the closet.
“I would like a shower and a quick nap,” I replied, and eventually managed to convince her to take a break first.
However, we spent the whole afternoon in the casino. Gu Gu had a great run with the blackjack game. She made me sit right next to her and listen to her usual gambling stories. “If the dealer gets a six, you should stand…” she rattled on as I looked around the gaming floor for a lucky slot machine.
By 6:30 p.m., I was hungry. Gu Gu and I had our dinner in one of the restaurants and shopped around. At 9:00 p.m., we decided to go back to the casino one last time. This time, I managed to find a new slot machine and had a good time.
At around 11:30 p.m., we decided to head back to the hotel room. It had been a long day for us. At sixty-plus years old, we were just two old ladies seeking some thrills in the casino. We just liked the feeling of being in it and seeing the crowd cheer. It was like watching a television program and experiencing the emotions of the actors in it. It kept us alive.
Back in our room, Gu Gu had a quick shower while I watched a Chinese program on the television. Her hot bath had somewhat filled the bathroom with a thin layer of vapor. I could see the steam coming out from underneath the bathroom door. Gu Gu has the habit of taking very hot baths. It makes her feel refreshed.
Just then, the lights in the room flickered for a second. I stood up and walked over to the switch to investigate. The lights flickered briefly again as I approached the switch, which was near the door. “Maybe it is the steam from the bath. Maybe it affected the circuit somehow,” I thought as I turned off and on the lights again.
Just then, there was a light knock on the door. I opened it but no one was there. “Maybe it’s just my imagination. Or maybe the knock came from the bathroom door,” I wondered.
Gu Gu opened the bath door and saw me standing next to it. “What’s wrong?” she said.
I told her the lights had flickered a while and I had heard a knock at the door, but no one was there. So, she checked the switch and also the door. Everything seemed normal.
“Nothing, lah,” she said. “I think the knock must have been a noise I made in the bathroom. The lights seemed okay now.” Gu Gu turned and hung her dress in the closet.
We went back to watch the rest of my program. It was a Taiwanese talk show about feng shui in casinos.
“Pang!”
“What’s that?” I called out with a shock.
Gu Gu replied, “I think it’s just the hanger in the closet. It must have fallen off.”
She walked to the closet and opened it. Her dress and the hanger were on the floor. She carefully put her dress back in place and hung it up again. “I think I did not hang it right the first time,” she said. She closed the closet and walked back to the sofa.
“Pang!” The same sound came from the closet once more.
“Not again,” said Gu Gu as she walked towards to the closet again.
This time, the lights flickered again for a couple of seconds, which was long enough for us to experience a second or two of complete darkness in the room. At this time, Gu Gu and I felt that something seemed rather unusual about these events: the flickering lights, the knock on the door, and the hanger falling.
Gu Gu checked the closet. The hanger was on the floor again, along with the dress. She decided to just leave them as they were and quickly walked back to me.
Then, we heard an even louder sound from the closet: “Pang!!”
It could not have been the hanger this time. Gu Gu and I looked at each other. We felt eerie. The lights flickered again.
Suddenly, someone knocked on the bathroom door, “Bang! Bang! Bang!”
We jumped out of the sofa and headed straight for the door. I wanted to dash out of the room and let Gu Gu figure out what went wrong in there. My first thought was that perhaps a hotel executive was just outside, waiting to tell us that the room beside ours was currently under renovation. This could somewhat explain how these events were happening.
Gu Gu turned the knob and opened the door. There was no one outside. I stared out into the corridor. It was empty and quiet.
At that instant, we felt a gust of wind blowing through us, as though something had just gone through the door.
Then, we heard, “Pang!!” The sound happened again, over by the closet.
Our faces turned pale. I held my breath. Something was not right in the room—there was something unnatural and ghostly about it.
I had heard from friends that sometimes gamblers kill themselves in their rooms after losing their fortunes in the casinos. As a result, some hotel rooms were filled with ‘dirty’ stuff. I had never believed in these rumors. But today, something told me to get out and run. And so we did.
We slammed the door behind us, ran downstairs, and headed straight down to the hotel lobby. We were frightened and breathless when the hotel employees came over to find out what went wrong. Gu Gu told them what happened and that we would never go back to the room again.
Two male hotel staff members courageously volunteered to go to our room to check it out, while a female staff member comforted us. I told them to bring all our belongings to us and that we would want to check out immediately.
When the male staffers came back, they were carrying our bags. They said everything seemed to be working properly. Everything was normal. Yet one of them said they did not see Gu Gu’s dress in the closet. It was gone.
We stood there in the lobby still trembling from our ghostly encounter and wondering what we should do next. We were too afraid to stay in the hotel.
The staff then arranged for us to check into another hotel, a newer one in Genting Highlands. This time, they sent someone to check the room beforehand to ensure everything was in order.
Tired and horrified, we made our way to our new hotel room. We did not sleep well that night.
The next morning, Gu Gu decided to go back to the haunted room. Her dress was expensive and one of her favorites. She was determined to get it back somehow.
“Ghost don’t come out in the day,” she said and added, “I must try.”
I told her to go by herself, as I was too afraid.
So, Gu Gu went back. She told me that as she stepped out of the lift, she spotted an old lady cleaner a few rooms away from the haunted one. Gu Gu took the opportunity to ask the cleaner if she had seen her dress while cleaning the haunted room.
“Is this the one?” the old lady cleaner asked as she took out Gu Gu’s dress from the rubbish bag. “I found it in the bathroom. You must have left it there to dry but forgot to bring it with you when you checked out.”
Gu Gu then asked the old lady cleaner if she knew of any accidents ever happening in the room we had stayed in.
The cleaner looked at Gu Gu and paused for a moment. “Mmm… Actually, I heard that about four years ago, a young Chinese model slit her wrists in the bathroom and died. She lost everything while gambling in the casino and owed a local loan shark a lot of money. She was only thirty-three years old when she took her own life.”
Gu Gu took a quick breath and said, “Well. It’s not my dress. You can throw that away.”
I waited for Gu Gu in our new hotel room. When she came back, she told me everything that the cleaner said. I asked her why she did not get her dress back. She said she did not want to wear something that had been worn by a ghost.
We checked out of the hotel the next day and did not go back to the casino. The thought of having to stay for another night gave us frightened goose pimples. It would take us some time before we were brave enough to venture back to the Genting Highlands.
Chapter 9: A Frightening Experience in a Hotel Room
Some people I know think the hotel rooms in the Genting Highlands are haunted. My friend, Jamie, who used to
work in the Genting De Casino, heard numerous ghost stories concerning hotel rooms in Genting. His friends and acquaintances working in the various hotels in Genting told him these ghost stories.
One of the most bizarre stories my friend Jamie ever heard concerned a particular room in one of the hotels. A close friend working as a housekeeper in that hotel swore to Jamie that it was a true story. She said one of her guests told her the story, and he shared it with me:
A boy named Ken and three of his good buddies decided to spend their junior college holidays at Genting Highlands. They had planned the trip for some time. There were many attractions in Genting Highlands at that time (back in 2003) but the casino was definitely at the top of the list for these four youngsters. The group of seventeen-year-old boys hoped they would get a chance to sneak into the casino for the first time in their lives.
Everyone reckoned Ken would have no problem getting in since he was tall and looked mature. “The guards will think he is twenty-one,” cheered Han, Ken’s close buddy. “He will be our representative for this casino trip”. Ken and Han, the oldest boys in their group, made all the necessary arrangements for the trip – including the coach transfer, hotel accommodation, and so forth. To save money, the four boys booked one deluxe hotel room. It would be crowded but the guys reckoned it would also be fun to spend a night together in the same room.
On the departure day, everyone was on time to catch the coach except Billy, who was ten minutes late. Billy, the best-looking but shortest boy in the group, was also the most superstitious. Before he left home, his mum (Mrs Kim) gave him four yellow-colored amulets. Each amulet was supposed to ward off evil spirits and protect the wearer.
On the coach, Billy passed each of the boys an amulet. Ken and Han readily took theirs. However, the most scientific of the group, Tony, simply refused to accept the amulet from Billy, saying, “Please! I don’t believe in this sort of thing. Take it away.”
