My Fear of Ghost and of being a Ghost

I’m so afraid of ghost.

I constantly avoid a well outside my house after adzan maghrib. I avoid passing dark lanes and alley in the evening. I am even scared of dark corners in my own bedroom. I keep my eyes shut when I suddenly wake up in the middle of the night, grope my unveiled blanket and cover my whole body before stop quivering and start sleeping again. I am really afraid of ghost.

The ghost I am afraid of the most is kuntilanak, a woman ghost who is said to die in childbirth. Kuntilanak is described as a woman in white long dress, with long black hair covering a pale dead face. Ohhhhh…. Only to describe her look makes me frightened. I’m really afraid of kuntilanak.

And it scares me more to think if I would be one when I die. No! I don’t want to die and having my soul stays in a dark alley, wearing white dress and having long messy hair, crying constantly and spreading jasmine fragrant until the doomsday. No!!!!!

For my scare of kuntilanak (and of being like her), I cut my hair short a few days ago. In the night before I cut my hair, I was terrified by my own reflection in a glass window. Because I can’t stand the idea of having an appearance like the ghost I’m scared of the most, I cut my hair before a Sophie Ellis Bextor picture the next morning.

My fear is unbearable, though sometimes it is absurd. I don’t know why I am so afraid of this ghost. It is weird because a kuntilanak never appears before me. I have never seen one, except the ones in the television show, when kuntilanaks approach men who dare to stay in old buildings, fearsome alleys, or sacred chambers. It really scares the hell out of me to see a kuntilanak floating deadly approaching the show participant, with her head lean downward and her hair swarm around, though the ghost is on the screen.

My fear to kuntilanak grows even more when a frightening dream came to me one night, about a year ago. In the dream, a kuntilanak is trying to make friend with me. This ghost is really terrifying. In the dream, she stuck around with me wherever I went. She tried to make friend with me by telling me the things which will be happening to me the next day. And even worse, in the dream I could not just shoo her away because I thought it would be impolite. Instead, I tried to mutter the prayer Hail Marry in hum and haw, hoping for the ghost next to me to be vanished in a whiff of smoke. But she was not. This scary friend of mine just said in a dead voice, “Keep chanting, my dear friend. Your prayer makes me feel peaceful.”

I woke up and cried.

The dream haunts me until now. Her pale face is still in my mind, and I still cannot shoo her away. I cannot shoo away this kuntilanak’s pity dead existence, and her gloomy impression still sticks on a side of my memory. She was so real, so exist, and so dead.

After the frightening dream, sometimes I woke up in the dawn because I heard a voice calling my name or knocking at my room door. It was always dawn, at five, when the mysterious knocker or caller wakes me up.

I don’t want to assume anything. I cannot stand the idea of a kuntilanak in my dream is really exist and tries to reach me, to make friend with me, and kind enough to wake me up at five in the morning. But I cannot deny the feeling of her existence that lingers around.

I always remember her when I have to pass a dark alley, or when sprint home passing my alone well, or when I slip in my sheet in the night. I always remember a ghost of a woman, who dies when delivering her baby, stands helplessly in her white dress, spreads mystical jasmine fragrance, and cries sadly alone in a dark corner of an abandoned building.

My biggest fear is to see her appearance, or worse, to be her in the day I die.