Friday, October 5, 2012

October Haunting - The Haunting of Changi Series: The Haunted Wards, Torture Chamber and the Elusive Underground Bunker

The next bit of the Old Changi series describes various areas of the hospital not covered in my previous posts. They are accounts of a group of people exploring the hospital at night and providing photos of their explorations. While they didn't really encounter any paranormal activity, they definitely could not deny the feeling of dread emanating from the area.

The Haunted Wards

Inside the OCH compound, you can see many wards with high ceilings. Notice that the wards and rooms are never closed up. This design makes air ventilation easier for the wards didn't have any air-cond but ceiling fans! Now those wards are totally left empty except some fixtures such as fans, wall-mounted switches, basins and some built-up platforms on the floor. By using a bit of imagination, one can vaguely resemble how it was like when the wards were in use. Rows of sick-beds lined up the place, wounded soldiers and ill patients suffered and mourned in pain. Doctors and nurses in white robes busy walking in and out of the wards. Many patients who could not make it had their last breath right there...

The Torture Chamber 

Perhaps this is the 2nd most scariest place in OCH after the mortuary. Out of so many wards and rooms, we found one that is remarkably different. Even for today it has a kind of emergency red-and-white plastic tape barring it off from access. It didn't seems to safe guard people from any physical danger inside the room, but may be from something else... This particular room (rather we call it a chamber) unlike the others with open wall ends on top is completely self-contained. The walls are made of thick solid concrete and unpainted. Further inside you will see some concrete built-up structure as if it was used for securing something tight on the floor. One of the horrible signs is the metal chains with one end set loose and the other end securely fixed on the wall. It seemed strong enough to tie up a tiger. And, you can see maroon colored blood stains are still left on the floor. Absolutely horrible. One would expect to see such a chamber in a prison but never in a hospital! But don't forget, this is a military hospital used by the Japanese. There are many undocumented stories saying that during the war many "important" citizens and POWs were detained at OCH. Most had never been seen again, and they were believed to be tortured to death over here.

The Underground Bunker

The tunnel that led to the alleged underground bunker.
There are rumors saying that OCH has an underground bunker under the hill that connects to the barracks nearby. We found some suspicious spots that very few people know about. The first spot is the main lift at OCH inside has a button for going underground. But the lift now is immobilized. The second and third spots are the hastily sealed up mound by simply dumping plenty of concrete at the ground floor staircase, and the exit door at the other end of the building got tightly nailed shut respectively. This clue suggested us to believe firmer that such an underground bunker exists. Throughout the 70 years of history from pre-war British occupation to post-war Japanese occupation, it would be beyond our imagination on what secret treasures may have hidden down there. Having those main entrances to the underground bunker completely sealed up on the ground floor and the fact that we were not able to break in (and we never wanted to do that), we had to look for a secret passage if there is any. A bold idea though it turned out as a failure is to try search for the secret passage from top-down. Right on the top of the building there is a small open look-out space. From there we found a chimney which we suspected is connected to the underground bunker. People who were in underground did need some air vent for breathing. Ok, true enough, this was what supported our believed. However, like a long tunnel, the chimney was so narrow that can barely allow one person climbing in and out. By using some special equipment we descended our camera deep down to the tunnel and captured some photos. We were counting the depth as the camera went down: 1 meter, 2 meter, 3, 4, 5 ... The tunnel was long and deep even our strongest halogen light could not reach the bottom. It looked as if it were leading to hell. After 20 meters or so, we had found bats resting on the wall of the tunnel for one moment, but they were gone for the next. What does this suggest? The tunnel was not dead-ended and down there may live a kingdom of bats! A thought of it made us shivered. So for our safety, we called off this exploration, and we do strongly advise people PLEASE DON'T TRY IT. If you can ever get in, there will be more likely to have another police report of man missing in OCH than you can safely walk out in one whole piece.

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