Friday, February 15, 2008

runner up writing ghost story

Cuma pengan improve n participate pas ambil engish course at IALF. Benere ga ada ide sama sekali, tp Chris, my teacher, began it by telling her story when she was at Bali. So the only ghost story i have, is this......tmn2 alto maaf ya kalo salah, soale seinget ku ya mek gitu, hahahaha. Btw artikel ini masuk di student magazine december 07, udah di edit bbrp katanya, tp sebalnya ada kesalahan setting sehingga artikel terputus2 T-T. Ini versi aslinya , setelah revisi dr Chris sih heheh..


Ghost StorY

I never consider fengshui and hongshui as anything more than practical tips improving and balancing your life. Of course I believe what is unseen could give implication to some parts of our life. It is just that I have never seen a ghost or have the sixth sense like some of my friends do.
It was in late 2004, we moved to our new office. We were so delighted. It was a big house. A house. Can you imagine an office in a house? It was totally homey. It had two floors, four rooms, one big main room, a kitchen, a garage, and a backyard! With green grass of course. It was so perfect and looked like a wonderful gift for all of us, the employees, since our former office was a ruko, flat building, one average room with only one restroom. No kitchen, though we had some eating utensils such as several plates, spoons, forks, sauces that were brought by their fans. Really flat office, no other room for taking a rest or just escaping from our routine.
But some rumors got to us. They said there was a murder in the house so the owner moved out and gave it for rent. It was unclear, as a rumor usually was, a murder or a suicide. We never knew. But the next days some of us had some ‘special’ experience. Our office had night shifts which started at 5 pm till 9 pm. It was not that late at night but since we worked in two floors, so when the day shift was over it was such a quite office. Only one third of us worked in the night shift. Two third worked in the second floor, which had smaller room. It felt perfect for me to work. Peaceful, not many people and the internet connection was much better.
In our new homey office we had a coffee break time, it should be called tea time because we had it at 3 pm. But all the participants were coffee addicts so we called it coffee break. It was never planned, we just met, had coffee an a little chat so there we were, had a coffee break club! From that, another story begun. One of the editor told that one night she had a strange experience. She smelled a jasmine perfume. Since only two of them worked in the first floor, and the other editor obviously didn’t wear any of jasmine product. She just wondered where the smell came from. The other editor who was worked on the second floor, said the same thing. She had smelled jasmine perfume twice. First time she just spontaneously said, “Hey! Who is wearing jasmine perfume?” But no one admitted, and apparently no one adored jasmine. But then the other night it happened again. Not long after that she smelled something stank. That was annoying for her.
One day, on a lunch break, we had lunch with our operational manager. Well, she was just one of our own friends. We met her only at lunch time, since she was always busy with many of our company’s business. She said that the her housekeeper, who usually helped us clean our office once a week, had the same feeling. Uncomfortable feeling about the house. The housekeeper said that this house had ‘someone’ living. Penunggu, that what we call in our slang Javanese language. Sure, every place had ‘them’, based on that belief. Some annoyed, some did nothing to the residents.
Other annoying things happened on and on, in different ways. Another editor got annoyed with electricity, it went on whether he already had turned it off. Others had it like a sixth sense, he had uncomfortable feeling and scary by the time all the lights were turned off. He usually had to do the job turning off all the lights and locking the gate. He would do that very briefly, and he would curse if he forgot his stuff or key at the second floor while all the lights were turned off and we were all outside the house.
Thank God, until the end of the rent contract, which was when I had already resigned, there was no really bad things happened to all of them. No accident or incident. Instead, we really had many good times there. Graduation celebrations, birthday celebrations (which were almost every month!), annual meeting and gathering, even a fun Halloween party!
Now, in my new office, we had quite a similar story. One of my colleagues who had that sixth sense felt very uncomfortable in our studio at the second floor. It was a dark room and full of stuff. She always felt that there was ‘someone’ inside the studio looking at us, especially when the lights were off. The office boy had the experience in the first floor, in our consultant room. It was a small room below the stepladder. It should not be as spooky as the studio in second floor when it was dark. But that was in the middle of the night. He was passing that room before heading to the second floor. He heard a repeating sound. He was assuming that was a pen dropping from the table. So he dared himself to find out. It was really a pen, but it wasn’t dropped from the table. The pen was spinning. At that time he was thinking of what made the pen spinned. The more he realized, he got scared and abruptly he ran upstairs to his room as fast as he could.
Well, none of those stories could make me shiver, even if I had to work overnight all alone. What made me shiver was when my boss got angry, it was a terrible thing that ever happened, indeed.