Pay attention to the feelings, hunches, and intuitions that flood your life each day. If you do, you will see that premonitions are not rare, but a natural part of our lives.
– Larry Dossey, physician and author
I think my mother is a clairvoyant and believes in the supernatural, ghosts and spirits!
Apparently, she can see ghosts, speak to them and if she asks them to leave, they go peacefully!
Spirits have always followed us wherever we went, particularly when we stayed in old haunted colonial residences.
My eldest sister Cynthia’s extra sensory perception (ESP) is uncanny as my mother’s Welsh-Malay; she once met the ghost of old Indian lady who would also visit her before she fell asleep at Bukit Peringgit in Malacca.
One day during breakfast, my brave sister, who was unfazed by the supernatural said: “Mummy, the old lady with long black air covering her face, came again last night and sat at the edge of my bed looking at me lovingly.”
To which my mother replied: “If she comes again, tell her to leave because you got school the next day.”
Unlike Lily, that’s my mother, who often encountered apparitions, ghouls and the like, I was an unbeliever and typical adolescent who was always in trouble with my mother!
One starry midnight in Alor Star while driving home after an outing, mum suddenly pulled up on the roadside.
Half asleep, I woke up in the car with its engine running and cheekily quipped, “Why’re we stopping? I’m sleepy!”
She looked at me with her bulging eyes and scowled, “You dreaming or what? You didn’t see the young Malay lady with a kebaya crossing the road?”
I swore I didn’t see a soul on the lonely side lane but before I could answer, my impatient mother threatened me and quipped, “You want a back hand?”
According to mother, the lady was a ‘langsuir’ or ghost of a woman who died while pregnant or giving birth and the nearly Langkawi islands were reputed to be full of these flying ghosts eulogised as a fanged vampire in the 2004 film ‘Pontianak Sundal Harum Malam’.
According to my mother, the lady was floating six inches above the ground, as she crossed the road and then “flew off” into the sky across the vast padi fields.
Six years later in Kuching, my Malay girlfriend and I were to see our first ghost and since then I became a believer.
Twenty years later in 1985 in the remote village of Ba Kelalan in north Sarawak I had another spiritual experience.
But the holy kind!
Former Kenyah pastor and veteran Sarawak cabinet minister Datuk Seri Joseph Balan Seling showed me a video of hundreds of people looking up at ‘balls of fire’ and ‘dancing lights’ in the sky.
Without wasting time, I flew 1,000km from Kuching by Boeing to Miri and by connecting flights at Lawas to Buduk Nur at Ba Kelalan on the border with North Kalimantan!
I wrote in the New Straits Times (December 2, 1985): “I saw a video-tape recording of one of the miracles … women dressed in white skirts and yellow blouses looking up to the sky.
“Then as they clapped their hands a small ball of light appeared in the sky … songs of praise and clapping seemed to bring the ball of fire closer and slightly larger.
“As it zig-zagged in the sky, the villagers of the Sidang Injil Borneo (Borneo Evangelical Mission) continued singing … it appeared to be keeping in rhythm to the choir.”
Several police reports had been made since the initial sightings in April 1985, and it was curiosity that lured me to visit the hills watered by quaint streams and brooks that nourish padi fields which sustain the community.
It was where the Lun Bawang built a church on Sarawak’s highest peak, the 7,000-ft high Gunung Murud, a mountain I have climbed that is now a bastion of peace.
I was told since the appearance of the dazzling lights in the Kelalan valley, the lives of the community of 1,500 people living in cluster of nine villages — Buduk Nur, Long Langai, Long Lemutut, Long Ritan, Long Rusu, Pa Tawing, Buduk Bui, Buduk Aru and Long Rangat — had changed for the better.
Apparently, a Christian revival was led by farmer Agung Bangau was taking place; after the former’s encounter with ‘God’ at Gunung Belinggi mountain complex.
In my interview, Agung spoke of his journey with an angel who brought him to a place he called ‘heaven’.
As sceptical as I was, I continued to interview many of the villagers and they told me the same story of miracles of a burning bush and how rice had been turned to flour.
It was in this valley interspersed with bamboo groves, that I met an evangelical Indonesian pastor ‘Pendita’ Yohanis Sakai from neighbouring Krayan in North Kalimantan (KALTARA) — the man introduced me to the historic figure of Joshua or ‘Yahweh’ in Jewish, Jesus as Christians know Him.
Nearly 40 years later, I continue to be an avid follower of Pak Yohanis who had started his Bible College called ‘Yayasan Pintu’ — or gateway to heaven, at the City of Samarinda, the capital of East Kalimantan (KALTIM).
He convinced me that the miracles were real and challenged me to follow in his footsteps, bravely venturing into ‘unchartered’ spiritual waters in Kalimantan.
On my first night at Ba Kelalan, I had the first encounter with an unholy spirit, but after Pak Yohanis laid hands on me, I was healed and was born again.
Yohanis and Agung, who were of the same age, were distantly related; the former an Indonesian Lun Dayah and Agung, a Malaysian Lun Bawang living in a Buduk Nur about 20 miles across the border.
Lawas, the last Brunei possession which was ceded to the Brooke government; Trusun was ceded in 1885 for $4,500; and Limbang and Lawas were annexed by the Sarawak government in January 1890 and January 12, 1905 respectively.
Before Lawas came under the control of the Brookes, it was inhabited by four rebellious chiefs — Tok Route of Long Tengoa, Dawat Tubu and brothers Ukong and Dayong Kelupan from Long Semado.
My first off-road journey was on foot when I joined a group of Lun Bawang women and children from Ba Kelalan who were visiting relatives across the border.
Arriving an illegal ‘Jalan Tikus’, I changed my mind and turned back because I did not have my passport and if arrested the consequences could be dire.
Back in Kuching, my plan was to explore Lubok Antu and the neighbouring Province West Kalimantan province (KALBAR).
Before long I had befriended a prominent member of the Memaloh community who was born in the village of Putussibau — last rural settlement on Borneo’s longest river the 1,100-km long Kapuas, established by Dutch Major George Muller in the early 1800s.
He was the venerable law graduate Drs Semagat Jacobus E. Frans, a prominent Kalimantan Dayak Catholic tipped to become the Governor of KALBAR.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
