Kampung Kreepy

This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for family and friends. And also for simple pleasures and happy memories. Before we moved to the country, my Thanksgiving ritual included cleaning the house before the relatives came. I would put a movie on and have it playing in the background while I dusted, vacuumed and wiped. That movie was more often than not Jumanji (1995). Jumanji is a classic, great fantasy, and it’s become my go-to Thanksgiving film. (And don’t try to tell me it has nothing to do with Thanksgiving. Like Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, it ends in Christmas, so there.) After cleaning, I would go outside and rake. There are many oak trees in my old neighborhood, and their last leaves come raining down every year around Thanksgiving. I had a little front yard and it always made me happy to sweep up the leaves and deposit them at the curb. The leaves are picked up by the county and shredded into leaf mold, which the county offers for free to residents. What a great and environmen...

M.H. Boroson has done it again in this sequel to The Girl with Ghost Eyes , which I very much enjoyed . His protagonist Xian Li-lin, a young widow and Daoist (or Taoist) priestess in late 19 th century San Francisco, is back with her cadre of strange friends. They include a philosophical eyeball with the heart of a warrior, and a Buddhist monk that really is a tiger who wants to change his nature. Li-lin now is estranged from her father and works for a rival tong. In her new adventures, she is asked to solve the mystery of a nine-year-old girl who suffocates to death when flowers grow out of her nose and mouth. The villain here is interesting and original. Trust me, this one is a doozy. Li-lin herself is a memorable character. She is tough, occasionally obnoxious. She does her best to survive, a woman in a man’s world, armed with her quick wits, fighting skills, and Daoist magic. But it is her indomitable spirit that makes her an apt champion for women and girls who otherwise have ...

My husband and I came across this little critter during our walk this morning. The woolly bear caterpillar is a common sight in fall. Did you know there is a folklore associated with its brown and black segments? According to the old wives’ tale, the wider the brown segment, the milder winter will be. Conversely, we’ll have a longer and more severe winter if the black bands are wide. The position of the bands also matter. A thick black band at the head of the caterpillar indicates that winter will begin with harsh conditions. A thick black band at the caterpillar's tail end indicates that winter will end harshly. From the one that we saw today, it looks like it’ll be mild in the coming months. The woolly bear is the larva of the Isabella tiger moth. In fall, it looks for a dark and sheltered spot in which to hibernate. Don’t confuse the woolly bear with another caterpillar that has a thick coat of all-black bristles. That is the larva of the giant leopard moth, another common s...

In a nod to the Halloween season, I’d like to talk about what I consider one of the creepiest creatures in Southeast Asian folklore—the toyol. Some of you may already know what that is. A toyol is the spirit (some say zombie) of a fetus who died before he or she could be born. To create a toyol, a bomoh (a witch doctor or shaman from Malaysia or Indonesia) searches for the grave of a woman who recently died in childbirth. The bomoh digs up the mother’s corpse and extracts the fetus. He enslaves the fetus through black magic and binds it to a piece of its body, such as a sliver of bone. The bone chip is placed in a bottle in a suspension of corpse oil. The oil is produced by burning the chin of the fetus’ mother with a candle. Once the toyol is enslaved, it has to do its master’s bidding. In folklore, toyols were used to steal from the neighbors, harass enemies or vandalize property. In more recent times, it is said a toyol may help you obtain valuable information such as winning lo...

I had a thoroughly enjoyable evening Oct. 27 telling and hearing ghost stories at the Strasburg Community Library. The library is housed in a building that started out as a log home in 1778. In 1882, the property was bought—and subsequently enlarged—by one Dr. James Crawford. I and other library patrons traded our true-life tales of terror in the parlor, which served at one time as the room in which Crawford examined his patients. Let me just say there was plenty of atmosphere in the parlor for the event. One of the stories, told by library manager Cheryl Metz, involved the ghost haunting the library itself. If you’re at the library at night, you can sometimes hear footsteps as the ghost walks to and fro on the second floor. I also heard chilling accounts of homes haunted by the ghosts of civil war soldiers, shadow people, and disembodied voices. There was even one wendigo sighting. I shared a story in which an errant spirit attached itself to my mother after she drove by a graveya...

I’ll be participating in a Halloween ghost story-sharing event at my local library Oct. 27. I’m really excited about it because I love ghost stories, and my books feature ghosts, monsters and the supernatural. I have not personally seen a ghost. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t not believe in ghosts. I have gotten the chills in some places. Witnessed an actual apparition though? Nope. Well … maybe. There are at least two occasions in which I thought I saw something . The earlier incident was when I was much younger. I was backpacking in Europe at the time. I was in London, visiting a friend at an old building that had been converted into a youth hostel. It was in the afternoon. I went to the women’s restroom on the ground floor. You had to walk through two doorways connected by a narrow five-foot-long hallway to get to the restroom. The outer door opened to the lobby and the inner door led to the restroom. As I opened the outer door, I saw the inner door close behind someone just ahea...

I’ll be participating in a Halloween ghost story swap meet Oct. 27 at my local library.  I can't wait. I've loved ghost stories since I was a little girl. My mother used to tell the best ones, and every one of her stories was real ... so she said. They made such an impact on me that I wrote my own collection of ghostly tales.  My stories in Joss Paper feature Southeast Asian ghosts and folklore monsters. Please check the book out.  And please join us for the library event if you’re in the area. It’s from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Strasburg Community Library. It’ll be a chance to enjoy a slice of pizza and some chills. Don’t forget to bring your scariest tale of terror … ***** Strasburg Community Library 195 W. King Street Strasburg, VA. 22657 540-465-8464