Those who’ve served NS would surely have a ghost story or two to tell.
Just before the Hungry Ghost Month ends on September 2, 8days.sg reached out to Mediacorp actor Benjamin Tan to ask if he has any spooky stories to share from his army boy days.
While the 31-year-old actor didn’t reveal which camp he was in, Ben says he was mainly dealing with manpower administrative matters at his unit’s HQ at that time.
During his first night duty, Ben, who admits to being “more of a scaredy cat” and is afraid of the dark, thought he was not allowed to leave the lights on while sleeping in the office.
So he switched off all the lights, leaving only the green exit sign illuminating the space.
“I was seated at the desk near the exit, and I dozed off not long after. In the middle of the night, the office chair I was sitting on was suddenly pushed towards the table at a fast speed, and I woke up from the shock,” he recounts.
Ben woke up and jumped off the chair, thinking he was being pranked by his army mates.
“But I realised, it was impossible given the amount of space between the wall and the table. At that moment, in the corner of my eyes, I saw a dark figure running out of the office,” he says.
He quickly switched on all the lights and was unable to sleep for the rest of the night.
On another night, Ben was on the phone with his mum when he suddenly smelled a strong banana scent lingering in office.
After getting off the phone, he asked his army mates if they were having banana cake for night snack.
Their reply? “You crazy ah! Where got so good, banana cake? We only have biscuits lah!”
“I was confused because the smell of bananas was very, very strong,” says Ben, who shrugged the matter off and went to sleep.
In the middle of the night, Ben started hearing the sound of pens clicking over the partition between his duty desk and the desk opposite him.
“To be honest, I was truly terrified because the sound was so distinctive that it couldn’t have been anything else,” he says.
“I was thinking in my head if I should look over the partition or just continue to sleep… That’s when I heard the sound of people scribbling on paper, as if they were writing down something.”
Ben decided he would not look over in case he sees something he didn’t want to see.
The nights of terror didn’t just stop there.
On another night of night duty, Ben was told he could sleep on the sofa in the planning room of the office.
Since he had gotten more familiar and comfortable with the environment, he brought his blanket and pillow down to have a better night’s rest.
Suddenly in the middle of the night, Ben woke up and saw a distinctive black figure standing at the corner of the room.
“That was the most shocking thing ever because it was the closest I’ve come to seeing an apparition!” he says.
Paralysed by fear and not knowing what to do, Ben turned his back against the shadowy figure and tried to ignore what he saw.
“That room then turned very cold. The air turned still and the room turned so quiet that I could heard myself breathing so hard,” he recalls.
Out of nowhere, Ben heard someone shout: “Ben, wake up!”
Thinking that it was an officer coming into the room, Ben jumped up from the sofa.
“But when I ran out of the planning room and into the office, the whole place was empty. There was nobody but myself. That was when I knew something was really off because there was no way I could have misheard anything since the voice was loud and clear…,” he says.
He decided to stay awake until dawn before going back to his bunk, where he finally got some rest.
When Ben told his upper study that he saw something when he was sleeping in the planning room, the latter immediately asked: “Was it at this corner of the room?”
“I was shocked because that was exactly where I saw the figure! Ever since then, it was really tough to do night duties, especially on public holidays, when there was no one in camp,” says Ben.