Thread by @thebencheah

Singapore is safe.

Which means Singapore is boring.

Singapore is a poor setting for most pulp-style stories.

Save for one genre:

Horror.

/1

https://twitter.com/ObserverWatches/status/1538905322655404032

To understand why, let's look at history.

The region we now called Singapore was originally settled by the Malays.

Prior to Islam and Hinduism, the Malays practiced a folk religion combining animism and shamanism.

These practices still survive today.

/2

2000 years ago, Indian ships first arrived in the Malay Archipelago.

As trade between Indian and Malay states grew over the centuries, the region absorbed Hinduism and Buddhism from India.

/3

Islam arrived in 674 AD. But it only spread across the region by the 12th century, driven by traders and travellers.

By the 15th century, the powerful Malacca Sultanate dominated the Malay Archipelago, and with it, the state religion of Islam.

/4

Chinese settlers arrived during this period as well.

During the 1300s, travellers noted the presence of Chinese residents.

With the Chinese settlers came Daoism and related folk beliefs.

/5

Sir Stamford Raffles arrived in Singapore on 29 January 1819, where he found a small settlement numbering 150 people.

On 6 February, Singapore became a British possession.

Trade and mass migration followed.

By 1825, the population exploded to 10000. /6

Migrants came from all over Asia.

China. India. The Malay Archipelago. Even the Ottoman Empire.

The British also sent their own people to administer and to live in their new colony.

And thus, Christianity arrived.

/7

These religions have their own belief systems, their own rituals, their own perspectives on the supernatural.

These separate peoples also have their own myths and fairy tales.

And they all collide in Singapore.

/8

Malay hantu. Muslim jinn. Hindu rakshasas. Buddhist pretas. Chinese yaomo. Christian devils.

Every entity of every faith found in the region, you name it, we got it.

Now enter the Japanese.

/9

The Japanese invaded Singapore on 8 February 1942.

The British surrendered on 15 February.

Then came three years of Japanese occupation.

Three years of night.

/10

The first taste of Japanese brutality was on 14 February, 1942, when Japanese soldiers massacred patients at Alexandra Hospital.

As the weeks and months and years passed, the occupiers engaged in ever-greater atrocities.

/11

Torture, starvation and murder of prisoners of war.

Random rapes, abductions, assaults and killings.

Forced labour, mass imprisonment, scarcity.

Sook Ching.

/12

The Japanese sought to purge the Chinese population of anti-Japanese sentiment, as part of the ongoing Sino-Japanese conflict.

Their goal was to eliminate at least 50,000 Chinese, 20% of the Chinese population at the time.

They almost succeeded.

/13

Their method was brutally simple.

They rounded up the Chinese population, then had 'informants' identify undesirables.

And who were these undesirables?

Whoever the informants fingered.

/14

The victims were rounded up, trucked off to killing sites, and systematically executed.

Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's first Prime Minister, narrowly escaped execution.

The Japanese admitted to 6000 murders.

Post-war records suggest it could be 2500 to 50000.

/15

The ghosts of war linger today.

Late at night, at the killing grounds, it is said that you can hear the screams of the unquiet dead, watch their blood stain the ground, sense the weight of their silent gazes stretching across decades and beyond.

/16

The Japanese also introduced Shintoism to Singapore.

Sort of.

The occupiers brought a shrine at MacRitchie Reservoir.

It's not open to the public now, and there's little left of it, but I'd visited it once.

Only one word describes it:

Otherworldly.

/17

Fast forward to Year of Our Current.

Globalisation brought the world to Singapore—and with it, the beliefs of the world.

Look hard enough and you'll find a burgeoning metaphysical industry, at the edges of polite society.

/18

Fengshui, bazi, palm- and face reading, divination and other Chinese practices.

Western astrology, numerology, tarot, crystals, Wicca, and other New Age ideas.

Self-proclaimed witches and magicians advertising their services online.

And stranger things in stranger places.

/19

The New Age is here, but the old ways remain.

Old beliefs. Old superstitions. Old gods and ghosts and entities stranger yet.

The supernatural is still with us.

It is a lived reality.

/20

One of Singapore's perennial bestsellers is a long-running franchise:

True Singapore Ghost Stories.

Ghost stories make up the shadow side of Singapore culture.

Everyone has heard of a ghost story.

Many have their own stories to tell.

/21

Singapore might be a secular society, but the zeitgeist is still attuned to the supernatural.

And now, at last, we see the true horror.

/22

Globalisation, materialism and modernity have eroded the traditional pillars of identity, including religious belief.

There is no state religion in Singapore.

Atheism is growing.

But demons and spirits, ghosts and gods, they are still with us.

They will not be denied.

/23

It is fashionable to believe in nothing.

But that means nothing walks with you.

And when at last you encounter the weird, the strange, the terrifying, you look and discover the awful truth:

There is no one to save you.

/24

Singapore is well-suited for horror and urban fantasy.

But I haven't seen anyone who can do it well.

And thus, I, the Herald of #PulpRev, and the enfant terrible of #SingLit, will step into the arena at last.

/end

*BUILT a shrine

The Japanese destroyed it before the British returned.