The word “hantu” strikes fear into the hearts of most S.E.Asian children in my childhood days.
It means “ghost / spirit” in Malay / Indonesian. There were lots of hantu films in my younger days, which we children couldn’t watch without at least one adult present for us to clutch.
Adults, especially male ones for some reason, loved to scare us with hantu stories at night — no point telling them in the glare of daylight, not effective enough, not so much fun.
The big house where I grew up had a red skin banana tree (not common) at the bottom of the back garden. The loo was also at that end of the house.
One night, the womenfolk (two aunts, three older sisters, two maids) sat in the covered patio after dinner, and one of them started to say that hantu-hantu* reside in these red skin banana trees.
A bit later, I had to go to the loo. I dug my sister out of bed and made her go with me, insisting that she stand outside by the door AND keep on talking loudly so that I could hear she was there.
(Singapore, 1960s)
* In Malay / Indonesian, one just doubles up a noun to make it plural, e.g., kawan / friend is kawan-kawan in the plural.
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