On 17 April 2017, Othman Wok passed away in Singapore General Hospital. In the days that followed, many citizens shared their memories of this remarkable man, who had rose from obscurity to become a member of independent Singapore’s first Cabinet. Some thanked him for his work as our first Minister of Social Affairs, a role which he used to found the National Council of Social Services. Others honoured him for his unofficial position as our “Minister of Sport”, pushing for the building of the National Stadium.
A number of politicians, including PM Lee Hsien Loong, dwelt on his loyalty to the PAP and the vision of Singapore as a multi-racial society, in spite of the threats of UMNO leaders who called him a kafir (infidel) and a khianat (traitor). “We are indebted to him, and will always be,” DPM Tharman Shanmugaratnam wrote on his Facebook page. “He made a multiracial Singapore possible, which matters more than anything else we have.”
However, amidst all these accolades for public service, there were mourners who honoured him for a very different reason. These were fans of his horror writings, especially readers of his best-selling short story collection Malayan Horror: Macabre Tales of Singapore and Malaysia in the 50’s, published in 1991. Malaysian columnist Farouk A. Peru actually praised him as a “literary genius” in an obituary for the Malay Mail Online.
What few young people realise, however, is that Othman wasn’t just another horror writer of the 1990s. He was a pioneer in the field, having originally written his tales in Malay as a young reporter for Utusan Melayu and Mustika magazine between 1952 and 1956. These stories were fantastically popular, making him a household name in the Malay-speaking world, years before his political career took off.
Pak Othman has already been honoured as a statesman, ambassador, journalist and entrepreneur. But perhaps he deserves another mark of distinction: that of Singapore’s very first horror writer.
Othman Wok: The Man and His Literary Legacy | Karyawan
Pak Othman: The Early Years
Born in 1924 into a family of Orang Laut descent, his upbringing was steeped in Malay tradition. He grew up with stories of his great-great-grandfather, killed by a tiger in Singapore before the arrival of Stamford Raffles; when he caught malaria at the age of five, he was diagnosed as being “kena sampuk” and was treated using rituals by a visiting dukun.
At the same time, his father insisted on giving him a modern education. Unlike most Malays of his generation, he studied the English language and developed a taste for mystery novels.
After the Japanese Occupation, he was swiftly recruited by Yusof Ishak, editor of the Utusan Melayu and future President of Singapore. He was set to work as a roving reporter, principally covering crime stories. Oddly enough, he was not seen as a particularly talented writer. His then-colleague and future Malaysian literary giant Abdul Samad Ismail dismissed his work, saying, “As a writer, he’s remembered most for his ghost stories.”
What, then, motivated him to begin writing ghost stories in 1952? Again, credit must go to President Yusof. "Malays just love stories like these and Yusof Ishak asked me to write one every week for the Sunday edition called Utusan Zaman,” Othman said in an interview with The New Paper. "Sure enough, the circulation almost tripled.”
Trailblazing Malayan Horror
It’s easy to see why readers fell in love with the stories. They’re a pleasure to read even today, whether in English in Malayan Horror, or in the original Malay in the collection Kisah-Kisah Seram dan Misteri. They’re filled not only with supernatural apparitions, but mystery, suspense, romance, murder and gore.
A pallor of dread permeates “The Golden Lantern”, which ends with a young man counting down the minutes to his death, after all his brothers have been killed by a pawang’s inescapable curse. In contrast, the plot of “Knocks on the Wall” is simultaneously sweet and horrific. Adnan and his maidservant Kak Jah discover a woman’s skeleton behind a wall; the two end up falling in love and marrying, while the dead woman’s ghost strangles her husband to death.
Crucially, these are not simply retellings of old kampung legends of pontianak and toyol. Instead, they are thoroughly contemporary, often set in urban environments, told from the viewpoint of modern professionals. As the protagonist of “A Mosque in the Jungle” says, “In this age of the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb, how could ghosts exist?”
Farouk A. Peru appreciates how Othman’s tales have a cosmopolitan, yet undeniably Malay flavour. “He normalised the Malay professional in different scenarios to show how they have truly embraced modernity, but have not left their folkloric elements which symbolised their heritage behind,” he wrote.
As a non-Malay, I’m also struck by how the stories feature characters of different races. For instance, in “The Anklets”, a mortuary doctor encounters the disembodied feet of a murdered Indian woman. In “The Guardian”, an archaeologist’s assistant hunted down by a Dayak mummy—a tale almost certainly inspired by the Universal Pictures’ films about vengeful Egyptian mummies.
These tales also hearken back to a Malayan identity: a time when there were fewer cultural boundaries separating Singapore and Malaysia. Some tales here, like “The Ring-seeker”, are specifically set on our island; others, like “the Skulls of Kuala Banat”, take place in isolated villages and abandoned islands, the likes of which are foreign to us today.
The stories’ success was evidence of the public’s appetite for horror fare. It’s therefore possible that they directly inspired Cathay-Keris Productions to create the region’s first horror film in 1957: Pontianak. This film was wildly popular with Singaporeans and Malaysians of all races. It marked the beginning of Malay horror cinema, being followed within the next two years by classics such as Hantu Jerangkung, Sumpah Pontianak and Orang Minyak. Decades later, the horror lore of our region would be further developed by books such as Russell Lee’s True Singapore Ghost Stories series and Pugalenthii’s Nightmares series.
It’s arguable that such works laid the foundations for a shared Malayan culture, uniting us across race, class and nationality. Even today, a Singaporean or Malaysian of any race is likely to identify a female ghost as a pontianak.
The Later Fictions
Othman’s political career with the PAP lasted from 1959 to 1977, when he left Singapore to be the Ambassador to Indonesia. Officially, he retained his portfolio as Minister of Social Affairs until 1981. In practice, his relationship with the party had already taken a blow after news broke of his secret marriage to a second wife. PM Lee Kuan Yew reportedly met with him, telling him, “Go ahead, but if you can’t solve your problems, pack up.”
This did not bring an end to his work, however. He continued to be active well into his eighties. Nor did he stop writing. Between 1981 and 87, he created a further set of horror stories, published in Utusan Melayu and Berita Harian. These were later translated by Tan Poay Lim to form the collections The Disused Well and Unseen Occupants.
Intriguingly, Othman used these later tales to track the changes in the politics and landscape of Singapore. “Strange Happenings at Tanah Merah Camp” takes place while the narrator is doing military training in the Singapore Civil Defence Corps in 1966; the introduction notes that the camp grounds were later bulldozed to make way for Changi Airport. “Hidir’s Trial” is set during a fireworks show at the Padang in 1984; the main character follows a beautiful woman past the new Raffles City shopping mall, but finds himself time travelling to a colonial courtroom of the 1930s and executed by firing squad. “The Old Lady’s Hairpin” concerns a ghost at Toa Payoh MRT station, which only opened in 1987.
There’s also an autobiographical element to these tales. In several cases, Othman appears to be describing his own encounters with the paranormal. “The Disused Well” is told from the viewpoint of a Raffles Institution student in 1939, while “The Demon House” and “The Guardian of the House” are narrated from the viewpoint of a Singaporean ambassador to Indonesia.
It was also in the late 1980s that Lily Othman resolved to have her father’s early work republished. She travelled to Kuala Lumpur and explored the dark warehouses of Utusan Melayu, uncovering old copies of his stories. Former journalist Hussin Amid helped her to choose tales that reflected an old Malayan identity, meticulously transcribing the tales from Jawi into Romanised Malay. M M Basalamah then translated them into English. Malayan Horror ultimately sold 15,000 copies and went through five reprints.
Lily has told me that there is interest in republishing her father's biography and this first collection of ghost stories, both of which are hard to come by in bookstores. More tantalisingly, many more of Othman’s old tales still languish in the Utusan Melayu archives. One can only hope some enterprising scholar ventures into the archives, interprets them from Jawi and disseminates them, before they are lost forever.
When some politicians die, their countrymen curse them for leaving behind a legacy of fear. Pak Othman, too, left behind a legacy of fear, yet his was of a very different sort. He tamed our superstitions into a shared culture. He transformed terror into joy.
Let us return to his tales. Let him speak to us from beyond the grave. And let us give thanks to him for delighting us with horror.
About the Author
Ng Yi-Sheng is a writer of fiction, poetry, drama and journalism. In 2008, he won the Singapore Literature Prize for his debut poetry collection last boy. His other books include Eating Air, SQ21: Singapore Queers in the 21st Century and Loud Poems For a Very Obliging Audience.
