Supernatural Delight...
Besides religion, there’s another thing many Indonesians believe in—ghosts. Here’s an Indonesian ghost story (non-fictional account?) as told to Layne as told to me:
People can go to visit shamen and “buy” ghosts—for a large enough sum, the shaman will give them the ghost trapped inside of a rock. The shaman summoned the ghost after 40 days spent praying and meditating in the forest. Once someone has purchased the ghost, it belongs to them and will do their bidding. Most people use the ghosts to steal money out of houses at night. In return for his services, the ghost expects to be fed breast milk by the woman of the house. If the woman doesn’t have a child, then she has to give birth to one so she can provide for the ghost. Of course, buying the ghost is not without its spiritual price—the act of owning the ghost guarantees that you go directly to hell. Shamen can be either good or evil—but buying a ghost costs you your soul.
This isn’t an isolated belief. I took an anonymous survey today in my class of year 11’s—the questionnaire was on things you might fear, with Yes or No beside each one. After they completed the questions, I collected them and passed them back out randomly so no one would be embarrassed. First of all, the biggest fear (before flying, heights, or bugs) was deep water. Turns out half the kids in the class couldn’t swim. But the real surprise came when we were talking about being scared of the dark. I said I was scared of the dark because a murderer might come get me, and asked why they might be scared. They all started murmuring that it was because of the ghosts. All of a sudden the goofing around stopped and it was very serious. They were scared of the dark because they believed the ghosts were there. When I asked how many of them believed in ghosts they just looked at me. It was suddenly clear that they all did. Every last one of them.
Later on this afternoon, I was hanging around in one of the offices after my classes waiting to be taken to the tailor’s so I could have my offensive skirt lengthened. I asked Suharyadi if he had ever heard about shamen selling ghosts.
“Oh yes,” he said, “certainly shamen can give people ghosts.”
“But what if they use them, do they go directly to hell?”
He nodded solemnly. “Yes, of course, right to hell. They had a ghost.”
This was all spoken about in a very matter-of-fact way. Apparently ghosts are people who are meant to go to hell but don’t want to leave yet. They are different than spirits, which are good souls that haven’t gone to the afterlife yet for some reason. I’m still trying to understand all of the details.
I asked if I could go to a shamen and Suharyadi became very nervous, like I was planning on buying a ghost and he feared for my soul. I was just wonderingif I was allowed to go—I really don’t think Javanese shamen and their ghosts are anything I want to be messing around with. Things were a little serious for a second—but then Pak Tedy started showing me how to do bird calls with my hands and all was forgotten.
posted by Caitlin @ 10:52 PM
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