A couple of heritage posts ago, I mentioned one of Kuching's purportedly haunted buildings.

The Villa Aidid, on Jalan Bukit Siol, which we visited today, is another such. There's not much hard fact to be discovered about this place, but judging by the number of videoed visits and comments, its reputation for being "seram" (creepy, eery, horror-like) is well established.

It is generally asserted that the identity of the owner is still a mystery. But it is widely reckoned to be the abode of pontianak and pocong (if you need a primer on the region's ghosts, see here), as well as other spirits that "hover" inside. As this writer puts it, matter-of-factly: "It's normal, right, if it's been left for a long time, it will be full of demonic ghosts."

According to this account, the Villa Aidid is reputed to be the house of a rich person whose daughter committed suicide, but again there's no certainty about who the owner is/was, and why the villa was abandoned. According to this author's story, she and a group of friends, on a night-time visit, had a disproportionate amount of trouble manoeuvring their car, and one of them saw a pocong.

This one says the whole Bukit Siol area is full of mysterious powers, one of which the author had to contend with after his visit.

It's one of those sites that you could walk past without realizing if you've not been alerted to its presence (in fact, we did exactly that just over a year ago...)

It was obviously an elegant building, and its pillars and verandas still lend it great presence. On this sunny day the area was filled with birdsong, and the only disturbance we encountered was the over-eager mosquitoes.










We fairly frequently walk to Kubah Ria market, and come back along the north bank of the river. So we've often passed this little graveyard, but not stopped to photograph it until the other day:



According to the sign, the cemetery, which was already in use before World War II, was bombed by the British Air Force in 1941, creating a large hole in the central area.

The story reminds me of Thomas Hardy's Channel Firing: "That night your great guns, unawares, shook all our coffins as we lay... We thought it was the Judgment-day... Till God called, 'No; Its gunnery practice out at sea just as before you went below; the world is as it used to be: all nations striving strong to make red war yet redder..."

Anyway, its disfigurement notwithstanding, the little graveyard was still in use until 1982, and is still a tranquil spot.