Some of you might chuckle at this question, but most people in Indonesia (excluding my father) do actually believe in them. There are several theories on why people believe in this idea which I’ll explain later in this post, but firstly let me tell you a story of my recent ‘encounter’ with what could possibly be a ghost.
So I went out with a friend and 3 other folks from the Couchsurfing community last weekend and as the night approached, we decided to just stay at my friend’s place and continued to chat there. Everyone was exhausted, the surfer couple finally called it a day and my friend crashed in his bed not long after that. It was 1 am, I believe.
Too awake, I kept chugging my last bottle of beer while also chatting and browsing on my phone. At 2 am I finally thought that it’s time for me to have some rest. There were two options available, a bedroom in the front side of the house or the couch. My drunken self thought the couch was more comfortable, partly because the bedroom has this “hell naw” atmosphere. You know, that kind of place which will make you feel “I am not sure if I want to stay in this place” because of some reasons that you can’t quite fathom.
Anyway, I turned off the lamp, made myself as comfortable as possible then suddenly I had this strange dream. I saw a vision of three children, probably around 6 years old approaching me. They were two girls and a boy with a bowl cut. The boy said “Mama wants to see you” to which I replied ‘’Yes, sure”.
The Mama was quite familiar due to the fact that she’s famous in Javanese folklore. I couldn’t really remember her face, but she had this dark, long, messy hair and, from what I can remember, she was shirtless and her boobs were erm, long and hanging. I mumbled “Oh, wewe gombel”. Pretty sure I displeased her because not long after she proceeded to half scream “You slut! Stay away from (my friend’s name)! Get outta here!” and then I couldn’t move my body at all. I am familiar with sleep-paralysis, in fact, if I am aware that I am experiencing one, I’ll proceed to think about nice things and try to make it a lucid dream experience. However, this was something else. I felt really scared and powerless, maybe the fact that a female ghost just slut-shaming me played a role in there.
After the struggle that felt like forever, I finally managed to get up, ran out of breathe. I checked my phone and it was around 3 am. Unsure of what I supposed to do, I knocked on my friend’s door and told him that I just had a scary dream about ghosts. Half awake, he casually said “Oh yeah, there’s a ghost in this house, I haven’t told you yet”. Gee, thanks mate.
Just today, I received a text from him that a female couchsurfer in his house also experienced the same thing. She slept in that “hell naw” room and got woken up by something passing on 3 am. She then opted to sleep on the couch with the lamp on. That’s an interesting pattern there.
When ghosts find you attractive
This reminds me a story of my other friend, let’s call him Dean. He told me a story of the old house where he previously stayed at, located near Kaliurang Street. So basically, there was a female ghost who’s very likely to find him attractive. She would show up on his dreams, move some stuff around him and what not. A little bit cute in a way. However, with big appreciation comes huge jealousy.
I remember a story of how this unusual admirer haunted Dean’s lady friend who stayed over and made her experience sleep paralysis. This sounds familiar, aye?
Furthermore, when she tried to wake him up, Dean was dead asleep which is strange. You can just sigh slightly heavily next to him and he would be fully awake from his sleep. Dean is a light-sleeper. I should be thankful of that at least, the ghost in my friend’s place allowed me to wake him up.
The unique pattern is both Dean and my friend are both Caucasian. This could make an interesting research topic actually, if only I can interview the right “people”. I have one possible title; The new shifting theme in female ghosts’ sexual preference: Can ghosts be bule hunters too?
Wewe gombel and my other first hand experience (?)
Wewe gombel isn’t really a new thing in our family it seems. My sweet grandfather who’s possibly the most honest and religious person I know told me a story about how he encountered this type of ghost. It was night, there was a power outage in the village and he had to attend something in the neighbouring village. There, under a tree, on the river, he caught a glimpse of a lady washing some fabric diapers. He wasn’t sure if it’s a person so he pointed his flashlight to get a better vision, and the “lady” just disappeared within seconds. I wonder if this happens in today’s context, will it be more likely to find a wewe gombel in a laundry place?
There’s also another story which more or less also involved my grandpa. I was younger and still had my innocence at the time, possibly around 5 years old. I was unwell and had a fever, so it was very difficult to fall asleep. Then suddenly, in the darkness of the bedroom where I slept with my grandpa and grandma, I saw ape-like creature jumping from the trestle of our old house. It looked around and then walked towards the bed. I was terrified.
He then proceeded to play with my grandma’s nose. I told myself “if I was just dreaming, then my grandma shouldn’t be able to feel anything”. To my surprise, she squirmed a bit because of the discomfort. This fact didn’t help at all, but at least me and this Genderuwo agreed that my grandma was probably snoring a little bit too loudly. It then proceeded to look at me, I couldn’t remember clearly what happened, but I could feel that it didn’t want me to make any noise and just stay still there.
So I tried my hardest to wake them up and told them what happened. I mumbled “grandma, grandpa, there’s an ape in our house!”. They finally woke up and told me that they thought it was silly because apes only stay in the zoo (They live in the forests too, grandpa and grandma!). Sighing and exhausted, they started to comfort me and made me a cup of milk to help me sleep. As I waited for my milk, I could see many unexplainable creatures. Snakes with mucus all over them, huge frogs, smaller ape-like creature who mocked me and wore my grandpa’s jacket which was hanged on a pillar. I was really scared and frustrated because none of what I said made sense to my both grandparents. They only looked at each other with confusion whenever I explained why I was crying. We agreed that the lamp will be on in the room so we can sleep.
Fast forward, about 20 years later. My grandma already passed away some years ago. It was a quiet morning and as I prepare some tea for my grandpa, he started to reminisce the old memory of me seeing weird creatures. There’s more of it, it turns out.
“Me and your grandma were in a difficult financial situation, we couldn’t afford to buy new beans for our tempe business. So this rich couple who’s rumored to work with spiritual creature to enrich themselves approached us. The lady insisted that we can use their beans, and we can just pay them half of the profit when they’re all used. We were hesitant because the beans weren’t in the best condition, but after long negotiation, we agreed to use them anyway.
Then the strange thing happened, you fell sick just hours after the beans were delivered. You cried all night and said that there are apes, snakes in our houses and it was really strange. We continued to produce the tempe with those beans and surprisingly they turned out really good and sold quickly. We were able to pay off the debt in no time. I still can’t understand why it can happen to this day”.
This story strikes me as I am writing this actually. Encountering ghosts situation is scary, yet there’s a scarier thing: To not have any money – just kidding. We, as humans, are generally afraid of the unknown, be it ghosts for which there’s no solid evidence, financial loss, plans gone wrong, basically anything that we’re unfamiliar about. Yet it’s fascinating how our survival instinct takes over when being faced with such situation. We try to struggle and fight against those evil supernatural power, we take a risky decision to get out of the problem, we try… anything that possibly will work! And that’s what makes us human and that’s wonderful.
Scientific approach
Alright, I’ll just slap a tiny bit of the scientific part to make this blog post a little bit less shitty. Science and ghosts don’t go hand in hand; There’s no universal agreement on the definition of a ghost and there’s no strong evidence of their presence. This short article will help you understand the logical approach on the concept of ghosts and why many people believe it: http://www.livescience.com/26697-are-ghosts-real.html
Also, based on this Mental Floss article: http://mentalfloss.com/article/70293/6-scientific-explanations-ghosts, there is a possible explanation on why you’re experiencing a ghost encounter, which are electromagnetic field, infrasound, toxic mold, carbon monoxide poisoning, anecdotes, or maybe simply because we want to believe.
Conclusion
Do I actually believe in ghost and what’s the message that I actually want to convey here? I don’t know. I certainly had some unusual experience and the pattern around those stories are a little bit too difficult to overlook, even though to be fair, the human brain tends to “trick” itself into making sense of everything. However, I don’t think that I need to start ghost-hunting, exercising my sixth-sense or being overly scared of things and what not. Ghosts (possibly) exist, maybe not in the conservative concept that people commonly believe and not exist at the same time, scientific-approach wise. One thing for sure though, ghosts as a topic is definitely an interesting story to tell and a lively conversation starter for your Indonesian friends :)
And anyway, writing this post also gives me a false sense of achieving something and enables me to ignore the fact that I’ve just wasted a couple hours of work.
And anyway, writing this post also gives me a false sense of achieving something and enables me to ignore the fact that I’ve just wasted a couple hours of work.
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