Is This Malaysia’s Most Haunted Road?

We like to think that we are a bona fide news portal for all things automotive, but sometimes we like to let our tabloid side out and write about something utterly sensational and has no news value whatsoever. Halloween comes but once a year, so we’re indulging in our second article of our spooky news series. 

Have you already read: These Mysterious Vehicles will give you the Creeps

image credit:. www.rsvlts.com

We don’t know about you, but we’ve heard stories that make our skin crawl and made us avoid looking in the rear view mirror while driving at night. The ones that are the spookiest have to be about the notoriously haunted Karak Highway.

image credit: http://karakthehaunted.blogspot.my/

Karak Highway was built back in the seventies to connect Kuala Lumpur to Karak, Pahang, or for many of us, the route to get to Genting Highlands (another place where the supernatural abound). Rumour has it that parts of the highway paved over the burial grounds of the Orang Asli (the aborigines) and even runs through parts of their settlement, and thus it was cursed.

Not a rumour is that an abnormally high number of accidents take place along it, including one of the deadliest road accidents in Malaysia which happened back in 1990, when a pile-up involving a passenger bus, a tanker lorry, riot police vehicles, another lorry, a few taxis and other passenger vehicles killed 17 people; this incident fuelled the highway’s haunted reputation.

If you are a ghost-hunter (yes, there are some such people out there), then Karak Highway presents a cornucopia of spirits, from headless ghosts to pontianaks (female vampire) to vehicles with no driver (the spirit world already mastered autonomous/self-driving vehicles long before we did, you see). Here are three of the most popular stories that have spawned from the Karak Highway:-

1) The Yellow Volkswagen 

image credit: http://themosthauntedplaces.blogspot.my

So, there you are driving along Karak Highway one dark and lonely night, when you find yourself behind a yellow Beetle hogging the road. You politely and rightly signal that you are going to overtake it, and you do. A little later, What’s this? Another Volkswagen, also yellow! It is also travelling at a slow speed, so you overtake this one too. But in front of you, you draw up to yet another yellow Volkwagen. Your heart starts pounding and you break out in cold sweat. You step on the accelerator and overtake this vehicle too, and turn to look into the Volkswagen as you pass, only to find that there is no one behind the wheel...

2) The Lost Boy

So, there you are driving along Karak Highway one dark and lonely night, when you see a little boy standing in the middle of the road. You know that it cannot be a real boy—not at this hour, not at this lonely stretch far from any kampung or settlement. You carry on driving, pretending you did not see him. You speed up, hoping to get further away as fast as you can. Then, in the corner of your eye, you see something floating outside your window. It’s the boy, blood streaming down from his eyes, asking you “Have you seen my mother?”

Something like this...

image credit: giphy

The Lost Boy apparently is the spirit of a boy who was in the car with his mother when it crashed and they were thrown out of the car onto different places.

3) The Husband that went for Help

So, a young family was driving along Karak Highway one dark and lonely night, balik-ing kampung. They were travelling at an odd hour to avoid the heavy traffic that is expected during the festive season. The car broke down (like the start of many a B-grade horror movie). When no vehicle passed by even after awhile, the husband decided to go look for help—maybe a petrol station was not too far away.

He told his wife to remain in the car with the baby, and to lock the doors until he got back. She waited, anxiously. The child awoke and started crying, but still she remained in the car, as her husband had instructed.

After what felt like hours, a police car drove past and stopped just in front of the broken down car. One of the officers got out and called her to exit the car and come to them. "Jangan pandang belakang," he said ("don't look back"). She obeyed, and got safely into the police car with her child. As the police car sped away, she looked back to see a terrifying creature on top of the car, feasting on her husband’s headless body.

Come out, I dare ya...

There, that was a fun read, wasn't it? Tell us YOUR ghostly encounters on any of our Malaysian roads (really it's so that we can steer clear).