UMS, Bukit Orang Bunian

Chancellory

Pic: The Chancellory building atop the hill in UMS.

Continuing my fright fest, I’m sharing with you a little urban legend tales of Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS). Heard ramblings from my Tamadun Islam and Asia lecturer (I swear this is from the horse’s mouth), there is more than meets the eye to the area where the current campus is situated at. The tale began that the area near the Yayasan Tun Mustapha Building (formerly known as Yayasan Sabah Building) used to be entirely a mangrove swamp area. The road network connecting the place to major towns like Kota Kinabalu and Indah Permai was non existent before the construction of the Coastal Highway. Tongues wagged that the bukit (hill) where the Chancellery building and hostels is present were the homes of orang bunian (spirit people). These beings have inhabited the forest and hills before people even settled around the area. When the idea for the setting up of a site for UMS was mooted it seems that the orang bunian would have to go lest they cause havoc to then campus populace. Thus recalled the lecturer, a bomoh was asked to come and menjemput (invite) the spirits to find a better residence away from their current home. Ceremonies and rituals were carried out to appease and compensate these home owners while the bomoh bargained with the folks for a settlement. Soon an agreement was achieved whereby the spirit people would move to another area (of which I can’t recall where). Busses were procured and again the spirits were ‘dijemput’ to ride in luxury to their new abode. Thus the land now belongs to us humans without the contesting of the orang bunian.

No campus is replete of its ghost stories as well, and many have said they have seen strange sights in campus while working through the wee hours of the night. The funny thing is that often the two faculties that is said to be visited by other worldly beings often contradict each other by stating that the incidents took place in each other’s school. The Engineering and Information Technology School have been much rife with tales of spooks. One that has been disseminated around is that there is a ghostly janitor that can be seen at certain hours of the night carrying out his duties and that wherever he went the room would grow eerily cold. Other tales was by a friend that said the moment he entered the toilet there, it was flooded and after the stepped out and re-entered the scene was back to normal. Another friend living in the dorm in campus once woke up in the middle of the night and was taken aback as he saw a shadowy figure hovering on the ceiling, he quickly ran out of the room and only came back the following day. Days later he asked to be transferred out into one of the other hostels. Another supposedly true tale is that certain parts of the campus were built on a Kadazan Dusun graveyard and maybe this is the source of some of the mysterious sightings. Should we believe such tales? I can’t well confirm it as mostly this was third party hearsay and should be taken with a grain of salt. It is up to you to judge but they do make campus life more interesting, imagine having a ‘hantu’ (ghost) sighting expedition as orientation activity :)