Some people get paranoid when the Hungry Ghost Month rolls around. They see a “ghostly encounter” in every damn thing.

I usually don’t. I’m very aware of the principal that people see what they want to see, because people like to be thrilled and shocked and teased, so I like to underplay coincidences and strange occurences.

Therefore, I’m going to underplay this following encounter.

Encounter #1

It was on the second day of the Hungry Ghost Month, just the day after the Goonfather and I watched the documentary, A Month of Hungry Ghosts.

The Goonfather woke up to prepare for work. His alarm clock had awoken me. I remained in bed and looked around the room blearily as he walked to the bathroom.

As he opened the bathroom door and stepped in, I heard the sound of rushing water.

He kinda paused for three seconds, then stepped out again and looked at me.

“Why did you leave the tap on last night?”

The wheels in my mind creaked into overdrive trying to start up.

I tried to remember what had happened last night. My mind was a haze of sleep and confusion. I remembered that I had brushed my teeth, turned off the tap, wiped my mouth, then gone to bed.

The best response I could muster was, “I don’t know.”

Later, when I was more awake, I decided that it was only 10% possible that I had left the tap on carelessly. Turning off the tap is very much fixed into my nightly ritual of teeth-brushing. It comes just before wiping my hands and mouth.

And if I had really neglected to turn it off, I would have been able to hear it as I stepped out of the bathoom because it’s quite loud.

It’s 2% possible that either the Goonfather or I sleepwalked and turned on the tap in the middle of the night. But we don’t have a history of sleepwalking.

It’s 10% possible that it was a “ghostly encounter”.

That makes 22%. I don’t know what other possibilities there could be. Nothing really makes compelling sense.

And then, I sort of relegated this incident to the back of my mind. There are more important things to worry about in life, such as what the water bill will be like at the end of the month.

Encounter #2

Yesterday, I was out having coffee with a couple of friends. The conversation turned to the Hungry Ghost Month.

One guy was telling us that, the day before, his mum and maid had argued over who had left the tap running in the kitchen. Both of them swore it wasn’t them. So his mum concluded that it must have been ghosts.

A bell rang in my head.

Running tap!!

I recounted my experience, then, and the guys looked at me, and I looked at them… and we decided that we didn’t want to commit to an opinion.

I think none of us wanted to outright say that those were ghostly encounters because we are children of science.

It would be quite thrilling to see something supernatural in these encounters but then we can’t deny that people do leave taps running by honest accident.

I don’t know. You can read what you want to read.

Perhaps you have a running tap story to share, too? LOL.

Incidentally, Omy.sg is running a series of campaigns around the Hungry Ghost Month. There’ll be tons of spooky stories around the bilingual portal. If you’re interested, check out it out here.