API Spooky Tour featured in TTG Asia Oct 6 Issue

[Anonymous]

TTG Asia is Asia No 1 Travel Trade Newspapers.

This is a write up of one of the Spooky Tours which API regularly conducts.

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TTG Asia Oct 6 Issue

Tried & Tested – Spirited away in Singapore

I KICKED off my high-heels and changed into sports shoes “just in case I have to run really fast”, and set off in the dark.

One night in September, during the Chinese Ghost Month, I went on a spooky tour with 30 others. It was organised and led by licensed guide, Mr Charles Goh, who is also the founder of Asia Paranormal Investigators (http://www.api.sg).

It was dead quiet inside Haw Par Villa as it was past closing hour. But the theme park was alive with shadows as the trees swayed in the wind and the moon played hide-and-seek with the clouds. It started to drizzle just as we were about to enter “hell”, one of the park’s main attractions where a series of tableaux illustrates the Chinese mythology of the 10 courts of the underworld.

Changi Spirit Tree was next. Although it was after 22.00, some Chinese were burning paper offerings there. A middle-aged lady lit joss sticks around the tree, creating a flickering necklace of light encircling the trunk.

I was fascinated by how the Chinese, Malays and Indians worshipped at the tree. Each group has its shrine and statues of deities, several of which are said to “visit” people in their dreams.

We proceeded to an old, abandoned house at Punggol. A few trees, believed to be haunted, stood near the house. When the crew of a local TV station filmed Mr Goh there recently, they saw what appeared to be the apparition of a woman with her head angled to one side.

We arrived at the Bukit Brown cemetery at midnight and walked down a sandy path with mostly unkempt graves on both sides. Photographs of the dead stared back when we shone our torches at the tombstones. It was my first nocturnal cemetery visit, and I found it pleasantly cool, quiet and peaceful.

The places we visited on the tour did not send chills down my spine.

Instead it was Mr Goh’s paranormal experiences: a mother with a child on each side of her all dressed in white pyjamas walking down a street filled with people burning paper offerings to wandering spirits during the ghost month, and the sound of “a heartbeat retreating from the bathroom (at his army camp) towards a crematorium down the ravine”.

His descriptions painted scenes in my head that would not go away as I tried so very hard to sleep. – Mak Ying Kwan

Mr Charles Goh has been nominated for this year’s Spirit of Enterprise Award. His tours run on an on-request basis. Tel: (65) 9878-8669, email: charles@api.sg.

Verdict: All talk and no action – thankfully!

Source: http://www.ttgasia.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12660&Itemid=28

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[Anonymous]

TTG Asia is Asia No 1 Travel Trade Newspapers.

This is a write up of one of the Spooky Tours which API regularly conducts.

---

TTG Asia Oct 6 Issue

Tried & Tested – Spirited away in Singapore

I KICKED off my high-heels and changed into sports shoes “just in case I have to run really fast”, and set off in the dark.

One night in September, during the Chinese Ghost Month, I went on a spooky tour with 30 others. It was organised and led by licensed guide, Mr Charles Goh, who is also the founder of Asia Paranormal Investigators (http://www.api.sg).

It was dead quiet inside Haw Par Villa as it was past closing hour. But the theme park was alive with shadows as the trees swayed in the wind and the moon played hide-and-seek with the clouds. It started to drizzle just as we were about to enter “hell”, one of the park’s main attractions where a series of tableaux illustrates the Chinese mythology of the 10 courts of the underworld.

Changi Spirit Tree was next. Although it was after 22.00, some Chinese were burning paper offerings there. A middle-aged lady lit joss sticks around the tree, creating a flickering necklace of light encircling the trunk.

I was fascinated by how the Chinese, Malays and Indians worshipped at the tree. Each group has its shrine and statues of deities, several of which are said to “visit” people in their dreams.

We proceeded to an old, abandoned house at Punggol. A few trees, believed to be haunted, stood near the house. When the crew of a local TV station filmed Mr Goh there recently, they saw what appeared to be the apparition of a woman with her head angled to one side.

We arrived at the Bukit Brown cemetery at midnight and walked down a sandy path with mostly unkempt graves on both sides. Photographs of the dead stared back when we shone our torches at the tombstones. It was my first nocturnal cemetery visit, and I found it pleasantly cool, quiet and peaceful.

The places we visited on the tour did not send chills down my spine.

Instead it was Mr Goh’s paranormal experiences: a mother with a child on each side of her all dressed in white pyjamas walking down a street filled with people burning paper offerings to wandering spirits during the ghost month, and the sound of “a heartbeat retreating from the bathroom (at his army camp) towards a crematorium down the ravine”.

His descriptions painted scenes in my head that would not go away as I tried so very hard to sleep. – Mak Ying Kwan

Mr Charles Goh has been nominated for this year’s Spirit of Enterprise Award. His tours run on an on-request basis. Tel: (65) 9878-8669, email: charles@api.sg.

Verdict: All talk and no action – thankfully!

Source: http://www.ttgasia.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12660&Itemid=28

[Author]

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