So some of you may have served in the army during your National Service, or you may have friends who did. Either way, you can’t miss these famous horror stories from the army. Today’s edition revolves around every soldier’s favourite island – Pulau Tekong! Aside from the most famous story Stand by Organs, there are others that you may or may not have heard.

Stand By Organs – The most widely publicised story of Pulau Tekong. There are many variations for this story, but the common one being that many years ago, during a night training, one recruit went missing. And when they activated the entire company to go search for him at night, eventually they found him by a tree with his organs laid out neatly beside him in an orderly manner, just like how recruits arrange their items neatly for Stand by Bed inspections.

My experience: Till this day, there are no night activities in BMT that will exceed midnight (other than field camps) because rumour has it that they are afraid of something similar happening again.

Raven Girl & Her Grandma – One of the most well-known stories in Tekong is the ‘Raven Girl’. The name actually comes from the actual Raven company in Tekong. The stories/sightings started from there and spread across the entire island of terrified soldiers to this very day. One of the first stories I heard after arriving at Tekong for my BMT was that we should never put sweets in our locker. For if we do, the Raven girl would sit on top of your locker at night, swinging her legs against your locker with a loud BANG! BANG! BANG! , clamouring for the sweets inside.

*DONT PANTANG but scared lah no religious insurance, don’t play play*

Another variation is geared towards making us sleep by lights out. This is aimed at those recruits who miss their girlfriends and secretly stay up at night to text them. And those very same recruits have reported that they would see a small girl skipping past with her grandma, hand-in-hand along the corridor of their company.

What’s even more blood curdling is the dreaded roll call.

There is a number assigned to each recruit and each bed. If you are 4208, you are in Platoon4, Section2, Bed8. So the little Raven Girl would stop by the window, and peep in ever so prettily. She would start calling out each of the beds in that little sing-song voice of hers. “BED1…asleep. BED2…asleep…” she would trill. Eventually, she will reach your bed. And if you are awake and pissing yourself with fright, she would say:

“Ahma…why is Bed 8 still awake…”

*RUN ALREADY*

If you look out from Apache or Bronco Company at night, you might just see the Raven girl and her grandma sitting at the top of the apex ladder at the Standard Obstacle Course (SOC) grounds.

Here’s my own experience: When I was in BMT, Platoon 2 of my company always told us that every night, at around 3.00 am, they would hear a loud bang from an unknown locker in one of their bunks. It would be so loud that the entire floor would wake up. Some even claimed that they saw a small girl standing quietly by their window. This went for a week or so and they told their sergeants, who then told them not to think about it. Eventually, the ghostly occurrences stopped.

One day, I ignored their warning about not putting sweets in lockers. I did not hear any banging of my locker at night and everything seemed fine. But the next morning when I unlocked my locker, my phone was gone from my drawer. And after flipping through my entire locker I found it hidden within a stack of clothes. Nobody in my bunk knew the combination for my locker except my buddy, but poor bewildered guy swore that he never touched it.

Captain Black – Just like the Raven Girl, Captain Black has been sighted across the entire island from various companies. He is usually spotted on the parade squares at night, or at empty corridor windows. Captain Black would be decked in the army No.4 uniform, with a captain rank upon his chest. What’s so scary about that, you say? He had no face – It was just a mass of black, swirling shadows.

My experience: My personal friend recounted his ghostly sighting of Captain Black. He woke up one night at around 2am to the toilet, alone. While walking back to his bunk, he saw someone standing at the parade square looking up at his floor. This was not an uncommon sight for recruits who’ve been in the army. Officers and Sergeants would often yell from the parade square with their signature “HEADS OUT!”, and we would scramble to look down and receive their instructions. Occasionally, they would also be patrolling from the parade square to check if everyone had turned off their lights and were fast asleep in bed. My friend simply hastened his pace, not wanting to get into any trouble.

When he was back on his bed half a minute later, he lazily looked out of his bunk and saw the same figure from the parade square again. Standing outside his window. He got a good look at his face – Or rather, his lack of face. Terrified, my friend hid under his blanket, unable to shake off the feeling that someone was just there, standing directly beside his bed. Before he realised it, he had dozed off and it was morning. He never saw Captain Black again.

Some say that these stories were started years ago by the commanders to ensure that recruits sleep at night (Courtesy of Raven Girl and Captain Black), and to instil the importance of the accounting of strength in the recruits (Stand by Organs).

Regardless whether the stories are true, these sightings have been reported repeatedly over the years, decades of batches of recruits, all from different companies. Some people who reported these occurrence have never heard of the stories prior to their experience. Yet again and again, we kept hearing the same sightings, of that same little girl and her grandmother, a commander without a face, and other things that go bump in the night.

It’s up to you to decide, whether you want to believe them or not.