Expedition 4 takes us to 2 different places. First of all we wanted to re-visit Old Holland Road after our online research revealed that there was more to the road we were walking halfway before we u-turned the other time during our first investigation. There used to be a cemetry amidst the land that the closed up road led to. A chinese temple reputedly stood there as well. Was the voice of the woman we heard the other time deliberately trying to make us U-turn and not head towards what was out there? Today we will investigate the truth...
Old Holland Road
According to our research the other time, the abandoned road along Old Holland Road used to lead to a chinese cemetry. This was explained by Mr Lam Chun See in his blog (goodmorningyesterday.blogspot.com). However, other than some pictures of the place now and that of a chinese temple that used to stand there, no other pictures were shown of the place when it was still a cemetry. This led us to intensify our research to see if we can find more information regarding this cemetry at Old Holland Road. Here was what we uncovered:
Under the website 'globalsoundis.livejournal.com', one entry contributed by Mr Chye Y Y, gave some glimpse of the cemetry that used to occupy the vast land at Old Holland Road.
In this picture contributed by Mr Chye, it shows him and his family paying homage to their relatives tomb at the cemetry in 1965. Mr Chye used to live in a village next to the cemetry. The website mentioned that the cemetry was a Hakka cemetry that was part of the Ying Fo Fui Kuan. Soon after, the government took control of the land and relocated the tombs to the Ying Fo Fui Kuan cemetry near Bouna Vista. The cemetry at Bouna Vista was a far cry from the vast land of the original Old Holland Hakka cemetry. What remains a mystery is that the government never did anything to the land after taking over control, and till today it remains a vast piece of empty land.
Picture of the Ying Fo Kuan Cemetry at Commonwealth Ave, near Holland Village. Rumours had it that Mr Lee Kuan Yew's grandfather used to be buried in the cemetry at Old Holland Road and was relocated to this cemetry when the land was reoccupied by the government. Our investigation started right around midnight at Old Holland Road. The place was quiet. Flanked by loads of private houses, this place gives a serene and peaceful feel.
Immediately our first picture caught something weird. What is that yellow streak of light at the bottom right hand corner of the picture?? Ohh...just probably one of our torchlight....Moving along.... 
Moving along the empty patch of grasslands, we realized that there were plenty of humps and heaps of grass over various patches of land, as if they were remnants of the tombstones that used to be all over this place. Perhaps they were. Some orbs appeared around these places. Spirits of the past from the tombs of yesteryear out to greet us?
The place was generally peaceful. Not really surprising as cemetries are know to have a peaceful, calm feel considering they are the final resting place of many...
Some of the humps were bigger than others, like this one that we noticed. It spanned a greater area as compared to the others. Again, this points to clues that this place was indeed a cemetery in the past....
Dandelion flowers littered the entire place. Dandelion flowers are often associated with sympathy, affection returned and faithfulness. They are common in cemeteries and once again point to a certainty of the purpose of this place.
Some parts of the grasslands had weird shapes as well as flowers and shrubs that seem out of place. The various different kinds of flowers left behind the various tombstones could have laid its seeds here and eventually led to the growing of the plants all over the place.
At times, strange orbs seem to come, literally come out, to greet us from the patch of darkness... Whoever could have thought of 4 strange people coming at this time of the night to explore this place?
After walking around quite a bit, it was evident that the place and the various patches of humps are too a coincident occuring. We decided to test out one of these humps to check out the possible origin of what lies beneath the humps...
We walked around looking for a suitable hump to test on. We are careful not to intrude too much while remaining respectful. At this particular hump, we noticed that an orb seem to be hovering just above the hump. It could be a restful spirit of someone who's tomb used to occupy the hump it hovers above....
We finally found one hump and we started to explore it further. We used our bare hands to try to feel if there were any remnants of stone that might indicate that there was a tombstone. We did so carefully and without causing too much disturbances. We were able to conclude after some touching that the patch was already empty....Grass and some sand had actually been poured and laid over the empty, exhumed tombstone, therefore explaining the hump as the laying of the grass patch was uneven....
Agent MaxX then tried to use his feet to feel how big the whole hump could be. It was a pretty big circumference that covered the area, and certainly big enough to be that of a tombstone area. By then we had already concluded that this place was indeed a cemetery. But again, there was no paranormal activities going around here. All was extremely calm and peaceful. The strange lady 'crying' we heard the other time was not around as well. We decided to move on and walked towards the outside of the grassland....
Along the main road, there was another part of Old Holland Road that was shrouded by thick trees that resembled Christmas trees....The place inside there was dark, and the feeling was one that was darker than the main cemetery area. We wonder what lurks beneath those trees...
Somehow orbs seemed to be everywhere, but none of them were threatening at all. All was just calm and peaceful... As we walked along we came across a chinese cremetorium that seem to be where some of the relocated tombs may be now...the place was also one of calm and peace....
We ventured on the side of the road, and eventually came to an area where we noticed there were some concrete structures left on scattered areas of the grounds...curious, we went over to take a look....so far except for some humps of grass scattered over the area, our hypothesis is still open for debate whether this place was indeed a cemetery in the past. Here is the concrete structure we saw:
It was a pretty solid brick structure that was embedded into the ground, just metres away from the main road. Its top part was gone, but the growing of grass in the middle of the structure suggests that there was a hole in the middle of this structure.
We did more investigation, trying to feel where this structure may start or end....our hypothesis is that this structure could be part of the cemetery gates, where the entrance to the cemetery is. Since it is almost to the side of the roads, an old road/path could lead to this entrance. We stepped around the area for signs of hard land. Hard land would indicate where the formation of the entrance could be as it would need to be hard to hold the frame of the gates as well as form the sides of the pathway, whereas soft land would indicate the actual path into the cemetery...
Sure enough we did uncover a part of hard land, and that of soft land. This could indeed be the entrance and the gate of the cemetery! As we were testing out, what seems like an orb appeared near the gate structure...old caretaker of the cemetery coming out to greet us or see what we are doing?
Nearby to where this structure is, Agent MaXx spotted a small stream of water. It was muddy and clogged. However, Agent MaXx who is well informed, told us that for most cemetery, the outside and inside of it is usually separated by a small stream of river/water. And this is consistent to what we saw. After all the evidence that we had found along the way, we can quite positively mark that there is a high possibility that this place is indeed a cemetery in the past. However, haunting-wise, it has nothing to show for.
As we trooped along, more broken structures are found. The structure and materials found were consistent to that of the possibility of tombstone structures.....
Agent MaXx using a torch to see if he can uncover any words or red chinese ink on the stone structures....it drew up nothing....However, the irregular shaped patterns of the structure points to that of tombstones....
Overall, in the course of our investigations tonight, we found some humps of grass and quite a bit of stone structures...while the things we find here are not conclusive enough to say that they were tombstones, this place certainly holds remnants of the past and a forgotten history...We moved on, satisfied with our investigation but a little disappointed it yielded nothing paranormal....Certain spots we came across threw out some interesting pictures of orbs though....
While certain places in the grounds show some signs of structures left behind.....and trees that hold some spooks as we walked past them....but overall, this haunted place is debunked....
SPOOK FACTOR: 1/10 (for the mysterious finds)
DEBUNKED
BUKIT BATOK NATURE RESERVE
Our next investigation takes us to the scenic and beautiful Bukit Batok Nature Reserve, off Upper Bukit Timah and near to Bukit Batok. Morning joggers frequent this reserve, and it is also the site where the Mediacorp TV Transmitting Center is...it holds alot of interesting areas for photography, as captured in my collection of pictures taken here at the reserve:
This reserve holds some criminal history too, being the site where tales of unsolved rapes still linger through the minds of residents here...According to reports, a lady was raped and murdered at this part on 6th Feb 2001, while she was jogging in the reserve in the morning. The case was never solved, and the murderers of this hideous crime are yet to be apprehended.
And just last year, on 20th October 2008, another female body was discovered at the Reserve. The cause of death is a mystery, with some speculating she was a victim of a hit and run accident whose driver dumped her body here, and others who mentioned of tales of an execution by triads or drug traffickers. The case remains unsolves today....We started our investigation at the foot of the reserve and made our way to the top...
The entire place holds quite a heavy and dark atmosphere, even though there were lighted lamps in the reserve...somehow the air was still and the surroundings exceptionally quiet...
Certain parts of the reserve, I felt like there were entities around, either looking at us and ocassionally behind us, and when I had those instincts, I turned behind for a shot. Sure enough, there were orbs.
The climb was also tiring, and the feelings were not too threatening. I just felt they were there. The park used to also be a battle ground before Singapore fell to the Japanese. So the possibilities of residual haunting and strong emotions left behind were common. However, the rest of the team felt nothing, perhaps too tired out by all the climbing of the steps....
We reached almost the top where from that area we could see the huge limestone quarry on the other side. It was nice and majestic, and awfully quiet too....We then took a group picture together...
Trooping to the other side, we reached a memorial monument created to remember the history of this park. The Japanese had actually used part of this place to build a memorial for Japanese soldiers killed during the takedown of Singapore....so this place actually had a Japanese attachment to it....
Could this empty area below once hold the Japanese tombs of soldiers killed in action in the battle of Bukit Batok Nature Reserve? Could be.....
We concluded our investigations after an hour. We did not feel too much, except certain parts of the reserve where the air was heavier and there were feelings of presence around and within the bushes....but they were not threatening and likely to be lost souls of the past, soldiers who once fought and died in this grounds...
We walked our way back, tired and certainly thirsty....Saw a little kiddy bicycle along the way out...It was not locked or chained, just left there. Fishy?
SPOOK FACTOR: 2/10
Debunked!
3 comments:
HAhaha i think some of those humps were caused by me and some other random people. I used to cycle arond that area, and towards the southern edge of the field(way accross the field opposite MGS) there were mounts of dirt with wooden planks on them. BIKE RAMPS!!!! i thought. so for a while after that, i helped this mysterous person to build up his dirt mount bike ramps. however, i stopped when my dad told me that the place seemed a little "dirty" and there were many stones in the area which looked off, some of them with inscriptions. i finally totally stopped building when one day, i was digging for soil to put on the ramp, when i hit something hard. a large rock with many chinese words on them.
In the day, the ground is much more visible, and you can find many bricks and stones with stuff chistled into them
HAhaha i think some of those humps were caused by me and some other random people. I used to cycle arond that area, and towards the southern edge of the field(way accross the field opposite MGS) there were mounts of dirt with wooden planks on them. BIKE RAMPS!!!! i thought. so for a while after that, i helped this mysterous person to build up his dirt mount bike ramps. however, i stopped when my dad told me that the place seemed a little "dirty" and there were many stones in the area which looked off, some of them with inscriptions. i finally totally stopped building when one day, i was digging for soil to put on the ramp, when i hit something hard. a large rock with many chinese words on them.
In the day, the ground is much more visible, and you can find many bricks and stones with stuff chistled into them
oh i see! haha how long ago did you cycle over there? yes the place was a cemetery before. But it has since been cleared. thanks for the really interesting sharing of your experiences!
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