It was reported last week that several schools in Pengkalan Chepa, Kelantan were struck by mass hysteria ; students possessed by demons and screaming and yelling and gyrating, seeing one particular Malay ghost called pontianak’. In Indonesia this evil half-dead woman is called ‘kuntilanak’. There were movies made of these two ugly-looking, foul-smelling, blood-dripping, and nail-stuck-in-the neck shrieking or ‘mengilai-ing’ female poltergeist.

The case of girls in school dorms or dorm-like habitats in micro-chip assembling plants such as those in Penang is not new. Growing up, I recall elite boarding schools such as those Mara Junior Science Colleges experiencing ‘mass hysteria’ and group-dynamics demon possession as well.

In Kuantan in the mid-70s, it was that one ghost that looked like an angry belly-rubbing monk from Thailand, that ‘bomoh-Siam-looking’ ghost sitting pretty on the rooftop of the girls’ dorm. On girl ‘saw him’ and the girls’ dormitory was humming and screaming and ghost-dancing and praying, and the bomohs were called in. He brought a live chicken as a tool for healing.