Raising Hell in one of the city’s most haunted houses
Any other day, you wouldn’t notice. You know: the sort of thing that ordinarily melts into the urban maelstrom, cause for little more than perhaps a micro-pause and a snigger. But today, just hours before a midnight séance at what is reportedly one of the capital’s most haunted houses, it’s impossible to ignore. A large white Lexus swings carelessly out into rush-hour traffic,revealing the last three digits of its licence plate: 666. Demonic omen? I reach around and pat my backpack, pockets bulging with offerings and amulets. Here’s hoping…
Halloween – that most pagan of holidays – is almost upon us. As darkness falls across the land, just a few days before October 31 initiates the triduum of Allhallowtide, the pre-séance scramble is on.
Recording equipment? Check. Torches? Check. Chalk dust? Check. Salt? Check (but only after my fellow wing-nut for the night has raided the kitchen at Touk). White candles, symbols of protection and positive energy? Two boxes of pre-loved birthday candles will have to do (I’ve been busy). Ouija board? Check. Haunted house? Check, check and check.
Boo!
When the current owners took over what was once known as 44 Monivong Boulevard, they made a small but nonetheless significant change. According to Chinese beliefs, the number four represents death. To occupy a building of that number is courting danger. To occupy a building the address of which includes that number not just once but twice, back-to-back? Why, that’s practically tossing a lascivious ‘come-hither’ wink to Lucifer himself.
So it is we pull up outside Demo, the sprawling new drinking-games bar that occupies what is now officially #40 Monivong Boulevard. As colonial mansions go, this one has seen better days. The sleek set-up of the first-floor bar, alive with the tinklings and beepings of myriad board and computer games, belies what upstairs is a dimly lit labyrinth of odd-shaped rooms, darker-than-average corners and an impossibly out-of-reach attic that could be hiding… Well, God only knows. And it’s here, amid the rubble and ruin, that tonight we will attempt to raise the no-doubt less-than-grateful dead.
“When we first went inside, there were more than 150 bats which we managed to catch,” says one of Demo’s owners, a charming young Dutchman who politely declines to spend the night upstairs with only two lunatics, a Ouija board and the entire Other Side for company. “There were a few bats in the smaller rooms downstairs, but upstairs was just full of bats. Hundreds of them! When the first construction team came in, no one saw anything; everything was fine. The workers slept upstairs, but they didn’t have any problems; didn’t see anything. The sightings started when my business partner and I decided to move the spirit house that was upstairs in the main room to downstairs, in front of the door, facing outside. I thought that’s what you normally do, you know? We even had a monk come in and give some blessings; all that stuff.”
Weird
It was at that point that the going got weird. “We don’t usually do any business upstairs; as you can see, it’s very empty, very old and dirty. There’s just a staff room upstairs, but everyone was already too scared to go up there. One of my staff went into one of the smaller rooms for a smoke and saw a tall, Asian-looking man – Taiwanese or Chinese, not Cambodian – in all-white clothes, next to the open window, smoking a cigarette. It looked like one of my business partners, so he took a step further. Then the guy turned around, but his face was all blurred; you couldn’t see his eyes. He got really scared and ran downstairs and stupidly told all the staff, so now they’re sacared, too.”
But then it got weirder. “One of the event companies we use was supposed to decorate upstairs for our Halloween event: we’re doing a haunted house. One of my good friends, I took him around. He’s 23, from New Zealand, and there was a Korean girl around the same age. I showed them around and they had good ideas, but then they got some bad vibes. The girl, she’s very open to it, so she had started seeing things already. It was dark and we were just using the flashlight on a phone. She actually said there was a dark spirit following one of us non-stop – and it was really weird she said that, because most spirits are good-hearted, so long as you take care of them…”
And weirder. “Then she saw a small girl and a small boy. My friends were both pretty silent; I could see they were scared. We went into the next room, then we heard a noise in the room we’d just left. I heard it, too: it was a clicking sound. She said it was the small girl asking for attention, but that we shouldn’t give it to her. We went downstairs again and they both said they really wanted to help us, but they couldn’t decorate upstairs. The vibe was not good…”
And weirder. “One of my Cambodian business partners, who I’ve known for five years, she has these dreams and as far as I know they almost always come true. Staying in my hotel, she’ll wake up in the middle of the night and there will be ghosts telling her: ‘OK, I need three pigs, two chickens, one of this, two of these…’ Very detailed! The next morning, she’ll do that. That’s just her. She also had a dream about this place, that there are more than 20 spirits here. It was then we found out we shouldn’t have moved the spirit house, because it was there for a reason. She helped us bring it back and do the blessings. That was a week ago and, so far, no sightings. She says the spirits are now back in the spirit house. Before, because they no longer had it to stay in, that’s why they were wandering around.”
It’s thus with more than a touch of trepidation that, long after the last client has wobbled his way out of the bar, my fellow Ghostbuster and I finally kneel in the dark before the softly glowing spirit house. The cold of grit-covered floor tiles shoots through each kneecap and into the brain, threatening to unseat the board perched precariously between us. By the flickering light of only a few bright-coloured birthday candles (by the time we’d lit the last, the first was a tiny puddle of pink wax), two lone voices bounce off the bare, crumbling walls, ricocheting up into the rafters and waking the more-than-a-few leftover bats. “Spirits of the past, walk among us. Be guided by the light of this world and visit upon us…”
The séance
We’re following, to the letter, the rather po-faced Edwardian instructions given by one William Fuld in the US on the back of his 1902 ‘Mystifying Oracle Talking Board’ parlour game, one of the world’s first patented Ouija boards:
‘Place the board upon the knees of two persons, lady and gentleman preferred, with the small tablet upon the board. Place the fingers lightly but firmly, without pressure, upon the tablet so as to allow it to move easily and freely. In from one to five minutes the tablet will commence to move, at first slowly, then faster, and will be then able to talk or answer questions, which it will do rapidly by touching the printed words or the letters necessary to form words and sentences with the foreleg or pointer.’
(This information comes, of course, from a trusted source. On museumoftalkingboards.com, there exists a virtual Ouija board you can actually use. I know. I tried it. I asked the online talking board, in earnest: ‘Will I ever be a rock star?’ This was its reply: ‘YES, and I’m not a gay deceiver. The successful man is one who starts at the bottom and wakes up. The only person who can succeed by letting things slide is a trombone player. Everything some men touch turns to gold. Everything I touch, they make me put it back. Most guys who claim to be self-made men knocked off work too soon.’ So there you have it.)
Minutes pass. Numbness starts to set in below the waist, countered only by shooting back pain. Scattering dust bunnies prompt spastic sneezing fits. We wipe the board down and start again. Eventually, after several increasingly imploring incantations, our fingers are no longer consciously controlling the pointer. With the slightest of sounds, like miniature nails scraping down a midget blackboard, the planchette begins to inch its way, haltingly, across the board. The answer to the proverbial question ‘Is there anybody there?’, as it turns out, is ‘Yes’.
The thrill is palpable. Minuscule bolts of electricity shoot from where flesh meets plastic, up your fingers, across your shoulders and down your spine. I can’t feel my feet. ‘What is your name?’ Again, for a few electrifying seconds, nothing happens. Then, more ponderously than before, the pointer glides beneath our fingers – in inch-long, staccato increments – first to the letter J, then the letter G. Eyebrows unanimously raised, we ask more: ‘Will you stay and talk with us?’
Again, stillness. Then, with steadily increasing speed, the pointer pulls our fingertips toward ‘No’. We exchange glances, barely able to make out each other’s outlines in the all-swallowing darkness. Cautioned in every document we could find not to risk courting negative energies during a séance, the defining question comes: ‘Do you want us to leave?’ Nails scrape against blackboard for what was to be the final time that night.
‘Yes’…
WHO: Things that go bump in the night
WHAT: Haunted house
WHERE: Demo, #40 Monivong Blvd.
WHEN: 8pm October 31
WHY: We are not alone
Diary of the diabolical
THURSDAY 30
Spooky Castle
Prize for best Halloween costume. 5pm at The Summer, #18 St. 294.
Halloween Dinner
A Halloween-themed, three-course surprise menu, mini Halloween festivities, and a dark dining delight cocktail promotion, complete with lollipop. 7pm at Dine in The Dark, #126 St. 19.
FRIDAY 31
Halloween Fiesta
3pm at Cantina, #347 Sisowath Quay.
Spooky Castle
Prize for best Halloween costume. 5pm at The Summer, #18 St. 294.
Trick or Treat
Regency Cafe opens its Little House of Horror for Halloween evening. Dress up in Halloween costume and enjoy 50% discount. 6pm at Intercontinental Hotel, #296 Mao Tse Tung Blvd.
Yadah Halloween Party
Starter kit + special Western menu + 2Halloween cocktails + soft drinks + Halloween make-up + prizes, Tickets: $22. 6pm at The Beat, #21 St. 148.
Halloween Costume Party
WithDJ Toni from Sri Lanka. Free pick up, free food, free drinks and party games. 7pm at The Tap Room, #1784 National Road 5.
Scare Box: Halloween
Games, spooky menu and funky beats spun by the scariest DJs in town. Prize for the best dressed. 7pm at Show Box, #11 St. 330.
Halloween Party
7pm at Metro Rahu, #159 Sisowath Quay.
Arrival of The Dead
Free shots for best Halloween costumes. 7pm at Frost Bar, #10 St. 246.
Halloween Party
Scary buffet at Mekong Restaurant, followed by costume party at QBA Bar. 7pm at Cambodiana Hotel, #313 Sisowath Quay.
The Blue Corner Halloween Party
Halloween buffet, free cocktails, live music, Halloween costume contest. 7pm at The Blue Corner, #37 St. 63.
Halloween Dining
A Halloween themed three-course menu, festivities and a dark dining delight cocktail, complete with lollipop. 7pm at Dine in The Dark, #126 St. 19.
Halloween Costume Party
Food, games and prizes. Tickets: $15. Kingdom Breweries, #1748 National Road 5.
Halloween Concert
Halloween cocktails $3. 7pm at Cabaret, #159 St. 154
Hell on Wheels
Bus tour to four venues, starting at Duplex. Tickets: $10. 8pm at Duplex, #3 St. 278.
Haunted House
8pm at Harem Lounge, #154 Sisowath Quay.
Kimchi Collective Halloween
The best in electronic party music, as well as Michael Jackson’s Thriller and maybe even Ghostbusters. 8pm at Chinese House, #45 Sisowath Quay.
Halloween Party
8pm at Metro Hassakan, #271 St. 148.
Demonism
DJs Bluesabelle, Shaman, Rob Bianche, WengWai, Simon C Vent, Dr WahWah, Low Renz. 8pm at Demo, #40 Monivong Blvd.
Spooky Halloween Party
8pm at Nomad, #46 St. 172.
Halloween Costume Contest
8pm at Maison Saint Tropez, #31 St. 174.
Halloween Spooktacular
Live music, drink specials and prizes. 8pm at Sundance Inn & Saloon, St. 172.
Hillbilly Halloween
With Joe Wrigley & The Jumping Jacks. 9pm at Sharky’s, #126 St. 130.
Halloween Party
Prize for best costume. 9pm at Top Banana, #9 St. 278.
Halloween Bloody Rock
With the Sinville Road Show. 9pm at Slur Bar, #28 St. 172.
Spooky Night
Sepia band and Halloween specials. 9pm at DarlinDarlin, Nagaworld.
Dia De Los Muertos
A proper Halloween atmosphere, through the cold and dark walls of the club. 9pm at D – Club, #3 St. 278.
Haunted Circus Party
9pm at F Club, Level 5 NagaWorld.
The Adobo Conspiracy Halloween Gig
9pm at Equinox, #3 St. 278.
Ghost Invaders
Scary surprises at Nova’s haunted house. 9pm at Nova Club, #19 St. 214.
Zombination
DJ Bree &RackyZ. 10pm at Code Red, opposite NagaWorld.
Halloween Party
10pm at Zeus Club, #468 Monivong Blvd.
Halloween Party
11pm at Pontoon Club, #80 St. 172.
Halloween Thriller Night
WithDJs Kdeb and Black. 11:45pm at Heart of Darkness, #38 St. 51.
SATURDAY 1
Haunted House
8pm at Harem Lounge, #154 Sisowath Quay.
Ghost Invaders
9pm at Nova Club, #19 St. 214.
Blood Bath: Halloween Party
Guest DJs & freaks. 9pm at CodeRed, opposite NagaWorld.
Helloween Party
With DJ Fud. 9pm at Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
Halloween Party
11pm at Pontoon Club, #80 St. 172.
SUNDAY 2
Halloween Horrors
11:30am at Himawari Hotel, SisowathQuay.