The haunting of Ginza Plaza: An innocent 'pen fairy' game takes a spooky turn
The haunting of Ginza Plaza: A childhood 'pen fairy' game goes terrifyingly wrong
At the hawker eye attached to the wet market, which was the outermost bounds of my permitted zone for biking, my grandfather and his WWII-survivor drinking buddies slurred their speech but never minced their words: The Japanese were coming back and information technology was the beginning of the cease.
Ginza Plaza. That was what they were talking well-nigh.
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Opened in 1992 along Westward Coast Road, information technology was the first of a grouping of heartland malls built in the 90s equally part of a decentralisation plan for commercial activities, and the most important real estate event in the Clementi West area that decade.
Named later on the gilded, high-end commercial commune in Tokyo, information technology was supposed to target the Japanese expatriate community, which already had the Japanese International School in Clementi. To cater to this market, Ginza Plaza had a fancy Japanese name, a belfry of serviced apartments, a Japanese Kimisawa Supermarket in the basement, and, well… that was information technology.
I couldn't get enough of C and her ghost stories, though she was still fundamentally a mystery to me.
It never really took off. The tenant mix wasn't phenomenal – at that place weren't large chains except fast food joints, and the rest of the units comprised modest-time jewellery shops, a few boutiques, hairdressers and so on. But Ginza looms big in my memory. Partly because I spent so much time at that place, but there was also something naive nearly it – grand dreams that clashed with a more mundane reality – which seemed to embody something both lame and sugariness nigh that period of pre-adolescence, when I was xi and 12.
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There, I befriended an older girl C, who worked subsequently-school hours as a salesgirl in a toy shop that sold board games, soft toys, and random trinkets.
She was the most fascinating person I had ever met: Already in secondary school, she had a boyfriend and could see ghosts. I begged her to tell me everything. And she did, in generous detail, virtually what she and her boyfriend got upwards to in the shower, and all the ghosts she had ever encountered.
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In return, I was an enthusiastic helper, and did the dusting, restocking and cashier duty for her while she sometimes disappeared for long periods of time on "smoke breaks".
She in one case warned against my bad habit of walking on my tiptoes. This tempted ghosts to follow me and trip me. She saw one little ane trying – a child in menstruum dress. Terrified, I stomped around like an elephant for days afterwards, crushing all supernatural pranksters nether my soles.
I couldn't get enough of C and her ghost stories, though she was however fundamentally a mystery to me. I had no thought what her full proper noun was, where she lived, why she worked in the shop, or why she would want to hang out with an eleven-year-old. I took her at face up value, at her discussion – which I suppose was a sort of kindness.
In any instance, I didn't ruminate. These were the pre-teen, pre-emo years. I was all the same, on the whole, pretty un-self-conscious, and acted without knowing or caring what others thought of me, which was, in hindsight, one of the nigh precious and irretrievable privileges of childhood.
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The concluding fourth dimension I went to the toy store, I brought a new girl with me – W, who lived a floor below my grandmother'due south flat. I wanted her to meet the super-cool older friend I made. But C was in a strange mood that day, clicking and spinning her pen non-finish, refusing to be drawn into conversation. Occasionally, she let out an aggressive sigh.
W was the 1 doing near of the talking, and every other sentence started with "Mummy says…"
It was a long afternoon with no customers. Eventually, even Due west talked herself out and wanted to exit. Distraught that this meeting was turning out and so badly, I tried to persuade C to tell us a ghost story. That was when C suggested that we played the "Pen Fairy" game.
The pen started to glide, so smoothly every bit if it was floating.
Popular in my primary school, this was a game where you made a DIY ouija board by writing down numbers and letters on a piece of paper, and instead of using a planchette (the pointing device), players held a pen loosely with their hands. When you asked questions, the pen moved to spell out the answers.
W and I had never played it. Only when C deigned to advise information technology, we both recognised a lifeline when we saw i. We agreed, heartily. Then C rapidly drew up the chart, we got our easily in position, and she fabricated the incantation.
C was standing behind the counter, and Due west and I in forepart of it, the customer's side. We were holding onto the pen lightly with iii fingers, elbows resting on the counter. If anyone exerted whatsoever forcefulness, it would be obvious, I thought.
The pen started to glide, so smoothly as if it was floating.
While it circled the paper lazily, C led with the initial questions. Were you a man or a woman? How did yous die? How old were you?
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Afterward these pleasantries, where we constitute out the spirit died in a car accident when she was 18, W and I, shyly, ventured our ain questions.
Would it rain tomorrow? What would our PSLE scores exist? Did any boy like us? If so, who?
Some of the answers were plausible, some were gibberish. All were agreeable – at least to Westward and me.
"When would I get married?" I asked.
The pen went to the number two, then v.
"How many boyfriends will she accept earlier she got married?" West asked.
Three.
W squealed and punched me on the arm, and I was almost to ask the same question for her when C asked, "Where are yous in the room?"
The pen shot to the very edge of the newspaper – the space between W and me. Due west and I had been standing well-nigh shoulder to shoulder, but we shot autonomously immediately.
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The pen proceeded to dawdle around the paper in an idle, hostile fashion. My eyes didn't cartel to leave the paper, and I could sense W'southward shoulders heaving.
Fear makes people do strange things. In a shaky phonation, she asked a bizarre question: "When will my parents die?"
My arm jerked forrard and to the side. The pen started to make mad zigzag motions, dragging and then hard on the paper it almost tore.
"Your question made her angry," C said to West. "At present she'due south going to possess 1 of y'all."
Westward began to weep.
"Go to the storeroom to get a mirror," C told me.
"What?"
"Get a mirror. Any mirror. I demand to show her her reflection to scare her away."
"Simply…" I glanced at my hand on the pen. Releasing it meant the spirit would possess me – wasn't this what all the stories said?
C gave me such a forceful wait that I abandoned the pen and ran straight into the storeroom. I flicked the light switch on. The space, no bigger than a broom closet, contained a unmarried shelving unit with unmarked boxes. Randomly, I ripped through boxes, digging through bundles of pens, telephone charms and sticker sheets, growing more than desperate with each disappointment.
My present fright was compounded by a greater fright: The ghost was probably doing unspeakable things outside, and it was up to me, unlucky me stuck in this lousy storeroom with zilch mirrors, to stop it.
I froze.
The back of my neck knew first, so the knowledge spread to the rest of my body. Someone was watching me.
I renewed my assail on the boxes. By luck, the next one revealed lipstick cases in inexpensive chinoiserie material, the kind sold in shops in cheap tourist shops. I picked up a tube and clicked it open up – a tiny sliver of mirror reflecting my wild eyes – and snapped it shut.
I last thing to do: Turning effectually.
Taking a huge, bracing breath, I whipped effectually with my optics airtight and ran back outside.
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Recently, I wondered, why are children so drawn to ghost stories, or horror in general? Part of the reason has to be that horror, with its ghouls, spirits and demons, confirms what we merely intuit: That beyond this normal everyday world nosotros know is some other world. One that is hostile and incomprehensible.
When I returned to the shop, just C was left in the shop, perched on the high stool, kicking her legs. The piece of newspaper was abased in forepart of her.
The worst had happened, I thought. W was expressionless. But C'due south air of leisurely boredom said otherwise.
"Where's West?" I said after a while.
"She left."
She was digging under her nails with the pen. My world virtually ended and she was in that location cleaning her stupid nails with that stupid pen.
"What happened?"
"We found a mirror in my bag," she said, absently.
"And?" I was and so angry I was shaking.
"The ghost left," she said. "She left Ginza."
Adeline Chia is an art author-editor based in Singapore and the associate editor of ArtReview Asia. New episodes of My Singapore Life are published every Sun at cna.asia/podcasts.
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Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/entertainment/life-in-90s-singapore-the-haunting-of-ginza-plaza-220801
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