Today’s Halloween. It’s okay if you dunno anything about the occasion, I don’t either. It’s some American tradition like Thanksgiving and Superbowl Sunday. But judging from all the TV programs, its supposed to be a day originating from Samhain where kids dress up like supposedly scary costumes (You want scary? Has anyone dressed up like a barrel of toxic waste? Or a walking monitor with the Windows blue screen of death? Or George W. Bush?)
Anyway, like I said, it’s an American thing. Even as hard as those local toy stores try to hawk the merchandise to us here. But speaking of all things scary, does anyone remember the series of books called “Bercakap Dengan Jin� It was a series of books quite popular in the 70’s and 80’s with a collection of short stories dealing with mostly Malay folklore ghosts and otherworldly creatures. You name it, they had it – jin, jembalang, syaitan, orang bunian, hantu kum-kum, pocong, orang halus, orang minyak, toyol, pontianak, puaka, the works.
Anyway, each story was usually a ‘true’ account about someone’s encounter with these ghosts, usually pregnant women or pawangs and dukuns. And they usually had these drawings depicting the horror of the victims accompanying the stories.
In my sheer boredom growing up in a Malay school, I actually did try to read a few of them, courtesy of my classmates. The stories, in retrospect, were quite mild and superficial by today’s standards, but you wouldn’t believe how many of my classmates were addicted to this stuff. Especially the girls! Some of these similar stories also appeared in other mainstream magazines and Sunday edition of papers, but “Bercakap Dengan Jin†was, at that time, the standard bearer in schlock horror.
I think the book is still around these days, sold in mamak stores together with the Mawi ringtone handbooks, URTV and Media Hiburan. I doubt I’d last a few paragraphs of it if I tried to today, it has gone the way of stuff like Gila-Gila, Mastika and Dewan Pelajar. Oh well, I suppose I could still give Gila-Gila a read…
11 Comments
Sashi
Jin? Isn’t that the Korean guy from Lost?
mott
mild? i got spooked everytime. malaysian ghosts seem more scary than western ones.
S-Kay
Hah. Mastika. I read a lot of those when I was in high school. Aunty’s fault for buying them.
Was just telling Naz about how Mastika wrote about this couple berzina and then suddenly mati. They found them dead with their private parts still joined together (prolly died in the middle of intercourse or something) and could not be separated even for burial.
Bercakap Dengan Jin sounds very familiar
fred
aha Gila-gila… there is a series of article in a mag that I read. “Siri Bercakap Dengan Jin” couldn’t remember which mag…
BTW the old gila-gila mag is still the best, but the one after the year 1998 start to suck… what do you think?
ponytales
Waa…now I know I am not the only Chinese reading all these so called “nonsense” that some ppl I know would not approve of during my secondary years…I like to curi my brother’s gila-gila oso…kekeke
born in '77
how about those kancil cartoon tv used to screen? anyone remember those?
“Jangan Monyet”
“Aku tak kisah, aku nak juga”
S-Kay
LOL….TV Pendidikan. Buaya dengan Kancil
simon
sashi – yes. he’s also one of the guys in Tekken!
mott – maybe becoz i dun like scary stories. western horror stories always very ‘lebih’ one.
s-kay – ok actually i never read mastika, but it was definitely popular. it still is. the thing i really tak boleh tahan about TV pendidikan is Bing, Bong and Brogg. Using clowns to teach English? What are we, idiots?
fred – i think its the same one, serialized in mags. always got hantu one.
ponytales – eh, my BM tuition teacher always says that the articles and stories in GG have very good written Bahasa. Yeah but no one reads those, we only read the cartoons… like “Dan Din Don”.
born in ’77 – yeah, i remember that one. smoke will come out of the monkey’s ears when he swallows the chilli…
Crazey
‘aha Gila-gila… there is a series of article in a mag that I read. “Siri Bercakap Dengan Jin†couldn’t remember which mag…’
The magazine is Variasari.
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