I believe that it is a ubiquitous thing, having your elder, dying family members being accused of keeping ghosts and spirits.
In an effort to do some rudimentary research on ghosts and the supernatural, I turned to my family, which has been accused of 'bela hantu' before. If possible and interesting enough, I wanted to turn it into a documentary or a series of documentaries.
I found nothing.
The thing is, my family members who do not drink, take drugs or eat too much, all live to be very old before they die.
I might be wrong, but my paternal grandfather lived till he was 90++. Most of my uncles passed their 70th birthdays before they die. The youngest to die was in his 50s, I think. Women live longer. Slightly.
Normal human lifespan, I might add.
But to some idiots, whenever they see an ailing old person, that is a sure sign of supernatural powers at work.
I was told, when one of my relatives was terribly sick, that 'that one will not die until we perform certain pagan rituals'. That person died without having any of the said rituals because no one wanted to pay.
Please disregard my (dis)beliefs of the supernatural. I do not mean to impose my beliefs on anyone, and what I believe in is irrelevant.
What I am saying here is about the extremely rude accusations on my family that we harbor evil spirits.
I mean, my family members are naturally good-looking. Just because we retain our good looks till we are of old age, does not mean we wear susuk or keep hantu raya. We're just lucky, some of us.
Most people in the family have never starved or get into real serious 'I-can't-afford-food' scenarios. You'll be surprised about how many people complain of extreme poverty, where I come from. We're quite lucky, blessed, and most of us in the family have hardworking genes hardwired into our brains.
We do not keep 'toyols' to steal money from others.
And then, people who do bad things to us usually get their comeuppance. This is not due to us sending any offensive ghosts their way, but simply due to the fact that people who do evil things tend to have bad things happen to them.
That's a law of the universe.
Try it. Do something evil to someone. Talk bad about them behind their back, and never give them a chance to defend themselves. And then prepare a countdown as to when bad things start to happen to you.
Have your evil intentions. Please do. Act them out. See what happens.
How do you know whether you have evil intentions or not? Well, the first trick I learned as an adult was to face myself. Really, really, ask my own self for The Truth. What am I doing. Why I'm doing it. Who I'm doing it too. If anything bothers your conscience, then you have done something bad. Get real, motherfucker.
If you do not discover any evil intentions, then you are bullshitting yourself. Everyone has evil intentions. It's just a question of how you react to that.
So yeah, I got no ghosts. I tried to get some, cause I thought with superpowers, I can make money. But my family has none. Am not saying ghosts exist or don't. That's not the point. Point is, my family does not harbour any evil spirits.
And if any of our elder members start dying, and is not dead yet, that's not because he or she has any 'hantu raya' or 'jembalang tanah'. It simply means that with our genes, it is difficult for us to die.
Accuse my family again of harbouring any evil spirits, and I will summon all the demons of the underworld and send them to you. I will open the gates of hell and throw you in.
