From playgrounds to Red Light Districts and
movie theatres to cemeteries,
we wandered the streets hunting for haunting stories and mysterious happenings.
We had previously decided to spend a few hours one night just hitting all of the haunted places we could find in Wan Chai. We met up at 7:30 p.m. at the Wan Chai MTR Exit (since we both had to take the MTR to get there) and we headed straight off to Southorn Playground.
Southorn Playground was actually right in front of us. We entered the basketball courts and saw the site of a spooky tale: from neighboring apartment buildings, some children had gotten up at night and looked down upon the courts, only to see pale ghosts solemnly standing in line in the middle of the field. Right next to the tram stops, people had also seen ghostly queues of spirits that seemed to be politely waiting for the tram. Sometimes the basketballs people were playing with would appear to be heads bouncing up and down.
Actually, we learned that we were actually standing on World War II execution grounds. The Southorn Playground had been where the Japanese publicly beheaded their victims, and the ghosts appeared to be standing in line to be next. Supposedly they waited at the tram stop right outside Southorn because they wanted to get out of the execution grounds.
We could then see the Hopewell Center Building on our left. It had strange markings and designs towards the roof of the structure. We learned that the architect of the building had been told by feng shui masters to create the illusion of fire, hence the ring of red in a cigarette-like shape. There was also a need to balance fire with water, so there was a still pool of water added to the rooftop.
Lockhart Road, also known as the Red Light District, was a well-known street during the Japanese occupation. Sailors would come straight after docking to enjoy small luxuries and the company of women. Before visiting the luxurious sites on the road, though, sailors would get the suits tailored. Tailor shops were extremely popular as they were fast, relatively cheap, and of excellent quality.
Outside each of the establishments on Lockhart Road, shop owners would burn incense. There seemed to be a red bucket outside of almost every little place on the street. This all seemed completely normal, until we learned that the incense (burning paper money) was actually for the ghosts of the sailors and women that frequented the street, so that the ghosts would not disrupt business or cause any trouble.
Not only were there the red buckets for incense outside of each shop, but there were also little altars embedded on the outside walls of each establishment. These altars are probably even more common in Hong Kong than the incense. Offerings at the altars would vary depending on what was needed at the time. For example, ginger would be offered for power, the pomelo for order, oranges were for gold and money, and many others.
SHORT STORY: In 1980, there was a notorious murderer that operated along Lockhart Road, known to be a taxi driver that took prostitutes on their way home on late nights. He was known as the Rainy Night Butcher because he’d only stalk victims on days that were gloomy and raining. He would chop them into bits, remove their sex organs and preserve them in jars. Even stranger, he would take pictures and try to have them developed. After 3 murders, the photo developer finally suspected the Butcher and called the police. At the time there was no death sentence law in Hong Kong, so the Rainy Night Butcher is to this day alive in jail.
We continued walking down the street that made up the Red Light District and we eventually come to Wilson Parking. Who would have thought a parking lot could be haunted? Apparently, this building used to be a cinema. East Town Cinema. It was quite normal for young couples to go on dates to the movies. The girls would go to the powder room and ready themselves and the boyfriends would stay back in the theater. Well, one night, a girl went into the powder room and saw a ghost. At first she didn’t realize it was a ghost, she only thought it was another girlfriend touching up her makeup. But then when she looked closely she realized that the girl was far too pale and still to be a living being. She screamed and ran out of the powder room but the ghost appeared in front of her before she reached the curtains that separated her from her boyfriend. When she finally reached her boyfriend, she was dead.
Of course, this story just sounds like a cheesy made up horror story you tell your children... No, this case reached the newspaper headlines and named that building one of the many haunted places in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, Wilson Parking was closed by the time we got there, but apparently you can feel cold spots near the lower floors of Wilson Parking.
Of course, this story just sounds like a cheesy made up horror story you tell your children... No, this case reached the newspaper headlines and named that building one of the many haunted places in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, Wilson Parking was closed by the time we got there, but apparently you can feel cold spots near the lower floors of Wilson Parking.
We continued walking down Lockhart Road and eventually got to the Metropark Hotel. I wouldn’t say that this is strictly a “haunted” building, but it was named haunted by SquareFoot (a property business that tracks whether or not the place you are renting or buying is haunted). In 2003, many of the people staying in the hotel were killed by the SARS virus and the number of people who died in that specific hotel made it haunted.
Another interesting thing about the more superstitious people from Hong Kong is the way they stake out a hotel and hotel room before staying in it. They first check that the room is not near any lifts/elevators and is not in the corner of the building. They then make sure that the room is not at the end of a long corridor. Of course, anyone familiar with Chinese superstitions will know that no one will rent a room on the fourth floor (because the Chinese word for “four” sounds extremely similar to the word for “to die”) as they are unlucky. When they finally decide on a room, they knock on the door first and then enter. They then look in all the drawers for the Bible. If the Bible is open they immediately check out of the room and find a new one (if the Bible is shut, then the room is fine).
Another interesting thing about the more superstitious people from Hong Kong is the way they stake out a hotel and hotel room before staying in it. They first check that the room is not near any lifts/elevators and is not in the corner of the building. They then make sure that the room is not at the end of a long corridor. Of course, anyone familiar with Chinese superstitions will know that no one will rent a room on the fourth floor (because the Chinese word for “four” sounds extremely similar to the word for “to die”) as they are unlucky. When they finally decide on a room, they knock on the door first and then enter. They then look in all the drawers for the Bible. If the Bible is open they immediately check out of the room and find a new one (if the Bible is shut, then the room is fine).
Gresson Street
We turned off of Lockhart Rd. and continued on Johnston Rd. We passed Southorn Playground and then past the tram (where ghosts were reportedly seen waiting for the train). We then turned off Johnston Road and up to Gresson Road. This road was filled with nighttime street vendors selling clothes, fake jewelry, bags, food, and anything else you can think of. At the end of this short road, the guide told us to look up at the building in front of us. What an eerie sight! There were three red lights shining out of a completely dark window in the middle of the building. The guide told us that this was actually for the indoors altars. Most apartments in that district had one to ward off ghosts and other vengeful spirits.
Star Street and Moon Street
We continued on Gresson Road and turned off onto St. Francis Street. At the end of this street was the looming St. Francis Canossian School (a school for blind children at the time). St. Francis was also the first cemetery in Hong Kong, but not in the way that you would think. In 1965, quite a few bones were dug up in the neighborhood. These were partial skeletons that were not in coffins and were too small to be adult corpses. We later found out that, during the Japanese occupation, military scientists would use the children of Westerners and Chinese alike to conduct science experiments on. These children were special though: they were blind. This made them even more helpless. After the experiments, they would remove the heads and dump the limbs in mass graves near St. Francis Canossian School.
After gazing upon this horrible site we turned onto a few small alleys. The alleys themselves could have been haunted with how narrow and dark they were (but no, these were just the backstreet alleys of Wan Chai at night). Eventually, we reached Star Street, then turned onto Moon Street and Sun Street. These streets were all part of the neighborhood that the lingering Japanese families made their living after the Occupation. The neighborhood was later dubbed the “Little Tokyo” of Hong Kong.
After gazing upon this horrible site we turned onto a few small alleys. The alleys themselves could have been haunted with how narrow and dark they were (but no, these were just the backstreet alleys of Wan Chai at night). Eventually, we reached Star Street, then turned onto Moon Street and Sun Street. These streets were all part of the neighborhood that the lingering Japanese families made their living after the Occupation. The neighborhood was later dubbed the “Little Tokyo” of Hong Kong.
We then turned back the way we came from and reentered the creepy alleys eventually coming upon another one of those altars that I mentioned before. Except this one was different. This altar was quite large and had more figurines than other altars did. Also, it was not embedded into the wall of some street shop but had its own structure in the middle of the sidewalk. We were stopped to take pictures when we noticed a door behind it at the top of a stairway. We decided to do a little exploring. As we were unable to open the door we had to look up what this gloomy door was an entryway to. It turns out, this door led to a bomb shelter that had housed many people from the impending doom of the Japanese occupation. As expected with war, many people died in the bomb shelter, but what was unexpected of these deaths was that quite a few of them were of unnatural causes. This explained the altar outside. People offered bean curd and other soft foods to the supposedly toothless ghosts to appease them. Another thing we noticed after descending the stairs was the huge metal frame above our heads. This frame used to contain a talisman for luck and protection during the Occupation.
We then left the bomb shelter and made our way down to Pacific Place One and discovered some more recent horror stories.
SHORT STORY: 4 years ago (2011), the son of the CEO of China Life Insurance allegedly stabbed his mother 150 times. We couldn’t get anymore information other than that it happened in their apartment in Starcrest Apartments (across the street behind Pacific Place One) on one of the floors between twenty and thirty.
SHORT STORY: Another death in Starcrest Apartments was when a boy commit suicide by using gas from his oven.
SHORT STORY: Yet another death occurred in Pacific Place where a man leapt from one of the high floors in the building and landed right at the edge of the pond behind Pacific Place.
Now, are these individual deaths irrelevant to any kind of haunted essence that remained from the '40s or was it because of these ghosts and spirits that these people took their own life or the lives of others?
SHORT STORY: 4 years ago (2011), the son of the CEO of China Life Insurance allegedly stabbed his mother 150 times. We couldn’t get anymore information other than that it happened in their apartment in Starcrest Apartments (across the street behind Pacific Place One) on one of the floors between twenty and thirty.
SHORT STORY: Another death in Starcrest Apartments was when a boy commit suicide by using gas from his oven.
SHORT STORY: Yet another death occurred in Pacific Place where a man leapt from one of the high floors in the building and landed right at the edge of the pond behind Pacific Place.
Now, are these individual deaths irrelevant to any kind of haunted essence that remained from the '40s or was it because of these ghosts and spirits that these people took their own life or the lives of others?
We finally made our way towards the more renowned haunted parts of Wan Chai: St. Luke’s College and Nam Koo Terrace. We stopped first at a less known, abandoned building of St. Luke’s College. This building used to belong to an old couple in their 70s but is now blocked off by fencing and padlocks (so that’s why our picture has a fence in front...). Anyway, the couple tried to buy the building and turn it into a nightclub as the wife was sick and needed the money the nightclub would raise, but the Japanese officers refused and shoved them off the balcony in the back of the building. They died where we stood near the bottom of the hill.
After this creepy visit, we made our way to the most famous haunted building in Wan Chai, and possibly, Hong Kong. This building was also sectioned off behind fencing and other barriers, but the history was not. This building used to be a Japanese military brothel, but before that, it belonged to a wealthy Shanghainese businessman by the name of To Chun-man (杜). When the Japanese came, he was forced to evacuate his house to make way for the Japanese to convert it into a “comfort house” (as they did with many other buildings in the surrounding vicinity). Shortly after his return, To Chun-man passed away (1945-6) and Hopewell Holdings took over the property in 1988.
Fences and barriers don’t block everyone out, though. In 2003, eight middle school girls decided to break into the building to get a glimpse of the infamous building. They set up camp in one of the empty rooms and decided to play around with homemade Ouija boards. The girls gradually became agitated and one of the girls completely flipped and became psychotic. The police were then called and so the girls fled, but the girl who was the most affected refused to leave the property. She claimed she could hear a male voice calling from the second floor. The police tried to forcefully remove her from the grounds but she attacked them. Finally two policemen were able to wrestle her off the property and into a hospital for psychiatric treatment (along with two other girls that were affected).
Fences and barriers don’t block everyone out, though. In 2003, eight middle school girls decided to break into the building to get a glimpse of the infamous building. They set up camp in one of the empty rooms and decided to play around with homemade Ouija boards. The girls gradually became agitated and one of the girls completely flipped and became psychotic. The police were then called and so the girls fled, but the girl who was the most affected refused to leave the property. She claimed she could hear a male voice calling from the second floor. The police tried to forcefully remove her from the grounds but she attacked them. Finally two policemen were able to wrestle her off the property and into a hospital for psychiatric treatment (along with two other girls that were affected).
Image credits go to Alissa Byun.