Paranormal Origins

A long long hiatus, yes?

Well, I am back - maybe regularly - maybe sporadically.

Thing is, quite a few things have been happening in my life right now - more good things than bad, and honestly, it's just been a time-crunch for me to be able to put focus on things - I try my best not to do half-past six jobs ;)

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So I wanted to tell you the story of my late paternal Grandpa.

I had never met him.

When I was 6, I remembered my parents leaving my sis and me in the care of my maternal grandmother, and disappearing for a week.

Turned out that Grandpa had passed away in far away Taiping, Malaysia.

His is a unique story.

My dad and some of my aunts considered him to be a true genius - he could fix anything - he was pretty good with tinkering around. There was once he even made a machine, to churn out numbers - some say it was the first ever 4D machine in Southeast Asia. 

Grandpa was also a well-known mystic in Taiping in those days - he went by the moniker - Si Janggut (meaning The Bearded One).

The villagers all knew him, and quite a few went to him to get numbers, get blessed, and only God knew what else.

He was very into mysticism, and the paranormal. When he was younger, Grandpa had fought in WWII alongside with the British, and he was honoured by the British.  He received a sword, and a medal of honour from the H.M. The Queen herself apparently! 

When he was in England, he found books on the paranormal, and brought quite a few back to home to study them.

He went really deep into his study of the paranormal world, and it became his only focus in life.

So much so, that his own family was left in neglect, and finally one day, my Grandma had no choice but to leave him, packing her 9 children along, doing her best to give each child the best care possible on her own.

In the old days, divorce was very uncommon - you just left your spouse and carried on with life best as you could.

It was very unfortunate indeed, but that was how each had their lifepaths carved out.

The story goes that Grandpa had even studied, and eventually comprehended certain life mysteries. One of which was willing himself into having an Out-of-Body Experience (OBE). He became very adept at that, and could describe things that happened at the other side of the world.

He could predict numbers, and those gambling-addicted friends or neighbours would constantly seek him out for help, and that became one of his sources of incomes.  He was apparently pretty accurate with winning numbers.

Grandpa lived somewhere in a densely forested part of a village in Taiping.  He preferred it that way - keeping his privacy, doing what he did. And he did something which was strange indeed.

My dad told me that the few times he visited Grandpa, he discovered that Grandpa had taken to adopting a few pets.  A few pet cobras, that is!

Grandpa had found or bought these cobra eggs, and hatched them.  And these weren't any kind of cobras - these were King Cobras!

Pic courtesy of Google

So Grandpa took care of these snakes, and fed them a diet of milk and eggs, and they were quite contented with that.

Then one day in May of 1985, something happened.

Neighbours nearby started to complain of a terrible stench coming out of Grandpa's home.....Then a slew of newspaper reports came:

Grandpa had died.

He was found dead on his bed, body slightly decomposed, and surrounded by the cobras.

Naturally, it was assumed he had died from being bitten by his pet snakes. 

The state coroner did an autopsy on him, and the results:

He didn't die of a snake bite.

It was just simply - heart failure.

My dad says that after the body was removed, and they had to clear Grandpa's estate, the snakes came back and put up quite a battle to 'protect' Grandpa's things.

Dad and his brothers came with a bunch of policemen and villagers, and they had to eventually kill some of the cobras, because it simply became too dangerous.

Grandpa's house was a virtual dump, and anything could hide behind his mountains of newspapers and books which he kept piled up around his home.

One of my uncles, who at the time, was a pastor, found Grandpa's books of the paranormal - he declared it witchcraft and a sin to keep, and proceeded to burn all the books, unfortunately.  Even my dad was pretty pissed that his brother did that without asking anyone, coz those books were old, and quite simply had a historical value.

Anyway.

You could say, that these stories and origins had a part in starting me on my paranormal journey.  

Eventhough I never met Grandpa, I just know that we could have had long, deep conversations into these topics, and I would have had someone who understood things like I do.

Well... rest in peace, Grandpa.