Those who venture to East Java will often pass through Surabaya, one of Indonesia’s most impressive cities.
Surabaya is a place with plentiful traffic, and much stress derives from the droning cacophony of motorbikes that never seems to end. Some people can only last a short time in Surabaya before this sensory assault drives them away for good.
Anxious to avoid this fate was a new arrival to the city’s Bungurasih bus terminal. Quick as quick, he found more transport: one of Surabaya’s ubiquitous blue taxis, festooned with the word ‘taksi’ to clarify their purpose.
The taxi driver greeted his fare with a broad, genuine smile. He had close-cropped grey hair, a visage beset by deep wrinkles and a wryly amused demeanour. He was dressed shabbily in the blue cloth of Surabaya’s transport service. But of greater depth was his piercing glare; when concentrating, his green eyes would flash to a crystalline brilliance, and when the moment passed, the little man would beam contentedly as though he now knew more than he let on. The unsuspecting newcomer received such a glare upon entering the taksi.
Now a passenger, the newcomer could swear, by the feeling of vague jostling, that at least three other people occupied the backseat. He had to remind himself that only he and the driver were in the taksi.
The passenger was no stranger to this corner of Java, nor the indefinable tension that filled the car. He thought back to his recent excursion to the acid lake of Ijen. It was an overnight journey from Banyuwangi, and the assembled sightseers drifted in and out of sleep as the car climbed steep hillside roads to its destination.
All the while, the tour guide gave a running commentary of the landscape. He shocked the drowsy passengers awake when he told them, ‘Keep your windows closed, and watch out for snakes, jaguars and paranormal activity.’
Two of those three things a traveller to a tropical climate may well expect. But the final one, shared in a nonchalant, relaxed tone, alarmed its audience. They spent the rest of the journey wondering if the moonlit clouds, rendered opaque from their viewpoint behind the car’s icy windows, were really phantoms crossing the sky.
The guide elaborated that when they reached the car park, from where the overnight trek to the lake would commence. The vehicle’s dashboard clock read 3am.
Ghost Story
‘I sat alone in the car at about this time. My clients had left for the crater, and there were only a few of us here,’ he said, motioning vaguely towards the food and coffee stalls dotted about the place.
‘I heard a chant, a bit like you hear at a vihara.’ He clarified that ‘vihara’ meant ‘temple’. ‘Many people, deep voices, but not speaking any words I knew.’ As he spoke, spirals of breath formed and swirled in the freezing air.
In the story, the guide looked for the source of these chants, a few minutes away from the car park. But upon reaching the spot, he was alone. The chants had stopped.
Upon returning to his car, though, the noise began again. He again went to check and experienced the same impish vanishing. This pattern repeated itself four times. The nonplussed guide then elected to doze in his car and ignore the hubbub.
His story did not end there. ‘I suddenly felt a heavy weight on my chest, like three people sat on me. They choked me and I couldn’t breathe. But I could see that no one was there. I knew it was a spirit. It stopped when I asked it to leave me alone.’
The guide described what happened as one might a shark attack or a volcanic explosion. A shocking but natural part of life in regions where those things exist, and to be respected as such. His neutral tone diluted the panicked frenzy of the incident.
The passenger concluded that in some places, people have an openness to spirits and things that outsiders are not wired to perceive. Reverie over and his mind back in the taksi, he tried to cross this chasm of disconnect. Thus, taxi driver and passenger practised each other’s respective languages, English and Indonesian. They shared their first names; the driver called himself Dn, the passenger went by Gideon.
Soon enough, the lack of a fluent common language meant Dn and Gideon ran out of things to say. Breaking the ice, though, had relaxed the pair. They sat pleasantly isolated with their thoughts as the streets, mosques and monuments of Surabaya sped by.
However, a spike in air pressure alarmed Gideon. A brief panic, heralded by a cold flash, overcame him. Gideon felt inexplicably exhausted, and thick tension filled the car.
He did not have to wait long for a resolution. At the next set of traffic lights, taxi driver Dn grabbed the steering wheel and stared at his fare in the rearview mirror. For a brief second, the driver emitted a gaze so pointed it could sharpen a blade, and it unnerved Gideon greatly.
From nowhere, the driver exclaimed, ‘Gideon! Alexander!’
Dn had just spoken Gideon’s middle name, so decisively that it had to be intentional. But the pair had only given their first names. The shocked passenger asked why Dn said ‘Alexander’. But the taxi driver would only say, in perfect English and with polite amusement, ‘I don’t speak English’.
Gideon was reminded of the Ijen guide’s story and thought that perhaps he too had met a Javanese spirit. The feeling of someone, or something, sat alongside him; the sudden draining. Both suggested a presence powerful enough to delve into his mind and share its contents with a willing listener, in this case, Dn.
The explanation did not satisfy Gideon, who felt saddened by the detachment between himself and Dn. They had shared something but Gideon would never know what, how or why.
The tension receded from the taksi like a burst balloon. Perhaps the spirits now roamed elsewhere in Surabaya, looking for other surprises to spring.
(NB: Everything that happened is in this story is true, but the framework is fiction. Not sure if that means the story is real or not. The names have been changed – partly to preserve anonymity but also because we forgot what people were called.)
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