Ball and Chain

Story told by:
Sara de Souza
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Yet another story told by my mother.

She's grew up in Muar, Johor. That house has a concrete base and the rest is made up of wooden planks (but nicely done).

She told me that when she was young, she used to sleep in the common room i think. And every Muslim fasting month, she could hear someone pacing up and down outside the window on the concrete pathway. It sounded as if that someone had a ball and chain strapped to his leg, like what prisoners would wear. She could clearly hear the sound: Clank clank clank.

I think only she and another sibling could hear it. The others did not. She said she could not see anything outside while the sound continued.

Sometimes instead of a ball and chain, she could hear someone walking up and down with heavy boots - similar to those that WWII Japanese soldiers wore.

It was because apparently during WWII, Japanese soldiers were captured, killed and mass-buried in an old well and covered in soil. And that well sits right behind the house. But now it can't be seen much because the soil had levelled. You can only see a slight hump in the ground.