This post was written by Hanna Alkaf, author of The Hysterical Girls of St. Bernadette’s.
5 Books About Hauntings from Southeast Asian Authors, Because We Know Our Ghosts
There are two surefire ways to summon Southeast Asians on social media: Talk about our food, or talk about our ghosts. The boundary between the supernatural and the natural world is thin for us; you might say you don’t believe in ghosts, but you’ll also still take all the necessary precautions because after all, you can’t quite be sure. In fact, if you talk to any of us, you’d be hard pressed to find one of us who hasn’t experienced one or more of the following:
- Had a school set on or around the site of an old cemetery or mass graves;
- Felt the cold hand of fear trace goosebumps up your spine when you suddenly smell jasmine on a dark night;
- Asked for permission before entering or doing anything in secluded areas, especially jungles;
- Heard a story about the lady who detaches her head from her body and flies around with her entrails dangling from her neck (she gets around a lot);
- Experienced, or know someone who experienced, an episode of mass hysteria.
Each of these has appeared in my stories at one point or another, but none are as fascinating to me as the phenomenon of mass hysteria – unexplainable outbreaks of uncontrollable screaming, crying, laughing, or even dancing that have occurred throughout our history for centuries now. In fact, I find it so fascinating that I wrote an entire book about it.
But of course, I’m hardly the only Southeast Asian author tackling ghosts, ghouls, and haunted places in my work. If you’re into stories of hauntings from authors who understand what it means to grow up with ghosts, here are five books to scratch that itch:
A Mosque in the Jungle by Othman Wok
Translated from the original Malay, this is Othman Wok’s legacy, a collection of the short ghost stories he pioneered as a young reporter in the 1950s. In fact, his is touted as “the first examples of horror fiction in either Singapore or Malaysia, in any language,” and while I can’t claim to know whether or not this is true with any authority, I can say that this collection serves as a wonderful introduction to the region’s ghosts, served up in a style that, as a Malaysian, calls to mind scary tales whispered under the blankets long past the time you were meant to be asleep. They may be terrifying, but there is a familiarity to these tales; these are our ghosts, after all.
She is A Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran
I’m a sucker for a haunted house, and there is none more haunted than the one Jade Nguyen’s Ba is renovating in Vietnam; the very house Jade and her sister Lily are stuck in for the next five weeks. Jade knows it isn’t forever. She just needs to stick it out playing Happy Families until she gets the college money she’s been promised. But the house has other ideas. Night after night, Jade wakes up paralyzed; the walls hum and thrum; a ghost bride leaves cryptic messages: Don’t Eat. And neither Lily nor Ba believe her. There is a growing sense of dread and disquiet in watching the mystery – and as it sometimes feels like to the reader, Jade herself – slowly begin to unravel.
The Dark We Know by Wen-yi Lee
The Dark We Know is Singaporean Wen-yi Lee’s debut novel, though frankly, you wouldn’t be able to tell if I hadn’t put that right upfront, so capably does she weave her tale. Our story follows art student Isadora Chang, reluctantly returning to her hometown, Slater, to collect the inheritance left by her abusive father after his passing. After the deaths of two of her childhood friends, Slater is the last place Isa wants to be. That is, until her last surviving friend Mason convinces her that that they were murdered by a supernatural entity…The Dark We Know draws a map of scars left by generational trauma and invites us to follow it deep, deep down into the abyss to confront whatever waits for us in its depths. Check the content warnings, then gird your loins.
Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho
I bet you thought I’d choose Zen’s more recent novel, Black Water Sister (and you should read it even though it isn’t on this list, because it is wonderful!). But this deftly written, imaginative, distinctly Malaysian short story collection holds a special place in my heart. Every story is its own feast, and each is flavoured with its own particular magic: orang bunian, imugi, ghosts, witches. My personal favourite is The House of Aunts, an unsettlingly wholesome tale in which a teenage pontianak learns to navigate the world with an arsenal of aunties backing her up. A perfect blend of the familiar and the fearsome.
Beauty is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan
One afternoon on a weekend in May, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years… From the first sentence, Eka Kurniawan sets you up for a rioutous, bawdy, horrific, bewildering, bewitching ride through a scathing critique of Indonesia’s turbulent past sneakily wrapped in one family’s epic saga. Scenes are drawn out with a brutality and violence that can often take your breath away, either because they’re beautiful in their savagery, or because it feels a lot like you’ve been punched in the gut repeatedly. For this reason, while I do think this is a worthwhile read, please check content warnings and proceed with caution.
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