Solved – The haunting of Jalan Batai

API Investigates a case of Skeletal Hauntings in a House in Jalan Batai

1st News:- 13 July 2006

SINGAPORE : A skeleton has been found at an abandoned house at Jalan Batai in Upper Thomson.

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The remains were found slumped over a toilet bowl at about 3pm.

 

The police did not know how long the body was in the house.

One neighbour said she had been living there for one and a half years but they had never seen anyone coming or going.

They had heard that two elderly sisters lived there.

“The owner of this house told us it’s an old lady but we don’t know how old she is exactly,” said the neighbour.

The body was discovered by National Environment Agency officials when they came to check for dengue.

They got a locksmith to open the door and found the skeleton in the house.

Police said the case is now under investigation.

Neighbours, who had not smelt anything recently, were spooked by the discovery.

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“I can’t describe my feelings actually but I am more worried about my children. I am going to keep this from them. At times they do ask if someone is staying next door and we told them there are,” said one neighbour.

Police have yet to identify the age or sex of the skeleton.

Officers are now trying to identify the body before informing the next of kin.

They are treating the case as an unnatural death.

 

2nd News – 14 July 2006

Skeleton found in house: Sad, lonely death for mystery victim

Neighbours thought elderly woman who lived alone for past 2 years had moved out.

MANY people had been trying to reach whoever had been living in the house. 

There were bank statements, reminders to pay water and electricity bills and a warning from the taxman about paying property tax left outside the door. 

There was even a cheque from the Central Depository, dated May last year. 

It was clear that there had been no one – at least no one alive – in the one-storey house at 17 Jalan Batai, off Upper Thomson Road, for some time. 

The water, gas and electricity had not been used since around the middle of last year. 

Neighbours thought that the elderly woman, who had been living alone there for the past two years or so, had moved out. 

Then, late last year, one of them was worried enough about her to call the police. 

Said the neighbour, who lives three doors away: ‘I last saw her many months before Christmas. Sometime before the end of last year, I felt very uneasy because I haven’t seen her and there was food being hung at her gate.’ 

The police came, knocked, and went away when there was no reply. 

Then on Wednesday, officers from the National Environment Agency (NEA) broke into the house, acting on complaints from neighbours that mosquitoes appeared to be breeding there. 

Inside, they found a human skeleton lying face-up on the floor of the squat toilet. The upper half of the skeleton was lying across the toilet bowl. The gender could not be established and if the corpse had been wearing clothes, there was no longer any sign of them. 

Mr Kunji Rahman, 85, who lives two doors away, said the house used to be occupied by a woman and her two daughters, who had been living there since he moved in 50 years ago. 

‘I’ve lived here for 50 years, but never spoke to them,’ he said. ‘They didn’t like to talk. 

‘Three years ago, the old woman died, leaving her two daughters. Then, about 1 1/2 years ago, I saw only one woman left.’ 

The woman was often seen going out at night with a guitar slung over her hunched shoulders. Her sister, often seen squatting on the porch and staring at the sky, seemed to have disappeared. 

When The Straits Times visited the house yesterday, the porch was littered with letters. 

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Inside, the living room and two bedrooms were filled up to waist level with plastic bags stuffed with clothes. There was no telephone. Instead of lamps, bulbs were fixed to overhanging sockets.

There was an old clock that had stopped at 11.45 and a picture of Jesus on the wall that seemed to indicate the occupant was Catholic. 

There was also a sewing machine, a metal music stand and a guitar, which lay against a broken bed frame in one of the rooms. 

Yet it doesn’t appear that the occupant was short of cash, judging by bank statements and the cheque laid at the door addressed to a woman called Pearl Tan. 

Neighbours were amazed to learn that a corpse had been decomposing in the house with no smell detected. According to forensic scientists, a corpse takes about a week to skeletarise.

Police took the skeleton to the mortuary at the Health Sciences Authority’s Centre of Forensic Science on Wednesday. 

They have classified it as an unnatural death and are trying to find the next of kin. 

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Forensic scientists will likely need dental records and DNA tests to identify the deceased, a person apparently so alone in the world that the mystery person’s death had passed completely unnoticed.

Read the conclusion to this Case in our Forums.