Ghost Stories from Pulau Brani

When we were children, we loved sleepovers at our grandparents’ on weekends. We would gather after dinner in the living room and they would whisper tales between bites of fried bananas and sips of kopi, their voices low and full of warning. 

Ghost stories were told not just to scare us, but to anchor us — to remind us that Pulau Brani was alive with memory, layered with spirits, and steeped in mysteries older than maps. They spoke of shadowy, oily figures who crept through the night to trade forbidden things, of sea-spirits who came ashore only during high tide, and of builders who buried heads beneath houses to make them stand. 

We listened with wide eyes, caught between fear and wonder, and our second-hand memory of the island never felt quite the same after dark.

Orang Minyak: Black Bargains at Pulau Brani

In the dead of a moonless night, Pulau Brani lay hushed beneath a blanket of tropical heat and dread. The island’s very name means “Isle of the Brave,” yet even the bravest souls in the little fishing village felt their courage waver that night. Coconut palms stood motionless as if holding their breath, and not even the chorus of cicadas dared to sing. A strange anticipation hung in the salt-tinged air, as though unseen spirits in the mangroves sensed something uncanny approaching.

Out of the darkness they came: three figures, tall and gaunt, their bodies glistening with a slick black sheen. Villagers peering from behind wooden shutters gasped at the sight of these intruders – Orang Minyak, the oily men of legend, seemingly summoned from old nightmares into flesh. Their skin shone as if drenched in midnight oil, dripping and leaving trails of greasy footprints wherever they passed. Eyes like live coals smoldered in each shiny black face, and the stench of charred coconut oil and sulfur announced their presence before they spoke a single word. Clad only in shadows, they moved with uncanny grace, silent as wraiths; yet every plank of the jetty creaked under their weight like a low, mournful groan.

For a long moment, neither spirit nor mortal spoke or moved. Then the tallest Orang Minyak raised a bony hand and from the folds of darkness produced a burlap bundle. One by one, the specters revealed the wares of their dark barter. A keris dagger whose blade oozed with rust and blood, a string of black pearls that seemed to drink in the starlight, a small stoppered jar sloshing with murky shadows – each offering was placed upon an upturned crate in the dirt lane, as if on display at some infernal night market. In exchange, the oily figures pointed with dripping fingers at the villagers’ humble goods: bushels of rice, bundles of dried fish, woven mats and clay jugs of palm sugar. A strange compulsion fell over the people then; hearts pounded as they found themselves shuffling forward wordlessly, bound by an unspoken pact. Fear warred with fascination as trembling hands traded sacks of grain for cursed trinkets, and baskets of fish for uncanny treasures no one dared examine too closely.

As the night deepened, a low chant began to ripple through the gathered villagers. The elderly imam stood in the rear, quietly reciting verses of protection under his breath as his fingers crept along a string of prayer beads. Others clutched at talismans hidden under their shirts or whispered prayers to ward off evil. The Orang Minyak did not speak at all; their only voices were the wet drip of oil splattering on the ground and the soft clink of the traded objects. An oppressive hush swamped the village, broken only by the crackle of a lone kerosene lamp and the distant cry of a night bird that quickly fell silent.

At last, when their demands were satisfied, the three specters tipped their heads in unison – a grotesque gesture that might have been gratitude… or mockery. Without a sound, they gathered up the goods they had bargained for and began to retreat toward the black line of jungle. One villager, braver or more foolish than the rest, mustered the courage to croak out a question: “Who are you?” His quavering voice barely carried beyond his lips. But in the space of a single heartbeat, the oily traders melted into the darkness beyond the palms, as if they had never been there at all. Only a glistening trail on the trampled grass remained, black and shimmering under the faint starlight.

Dawn arrived timidly, as if afraid to reveal what the darkness had wrought. In the grey morning light, the villagers emerged to examine the eerie payment the specters had left behind. To their horror, the keris’s blade had crumbled entirely into flakes of red rust. The string of midnight pearls had dissolved into a sticky black puddle, and the once-sealed jar lay cracked open with nothing inside but a whiff of rot. Everything the Orang Minyak had given turned to decay with the coming of day.

Whispers spread quickly that Pulau Brani had been visited by something not human – a trade with the dead that could never favor the living. Ever since that night, the elders forbade anyone from wandering the island lanes after sunset on a moonless night, fearful that the oily phantoms might return with their cursed wares. Even decades later, the mere scent of burnt coconut oil on a stray breeze is enough to send those who remember into a hushed panic. They recall the night of the black bargain, when the Orang Minyak came out of the darkness to trade, and they wonder with a shiver if somewhere in the shadows of Pulau Brani, the oily ones still watch and wait for the next midnight exchange.

---

Orang Siput: The Shell Traders of Pulau Brani

Silver moonlight bathed the shores of Pulau Brani on the night the Orang Siput returned. It was a humid night of the full moon, when the tide swelled unusually high and flooded the edges of the mangrove trees. In that luminous midnight hush, even the waves seemed to pause expectantly on the sand. The elders in their stilted huts exchanged uneasy glances; they remembered their grandparents’ whispers about traders who come from the sea when the moon and tide align just so. Few believed those old tales anymore – until a trio of silhouettes emerged slowly from the glittering surf, neither fully human nor creature of the ocean, but something in-between.

Three figures waded ashore with the slow, deliberate grace of ancient beings risen from the deep. The villagers who crept to their doorways to watch saw that each stranger was draped in tendrils of wet seaweed and crowned with a headdress of spiraled snail shells that reflected the moonlight. Their skin was as pale as sand and slick with brine, a translucent sheen like the belly of a fish, and as they moved, they left shimmering trails of seawater and slime on the rocks. One had eyes large and milky-white as the moon, another bore a twisted conch shell upon its back like a great hump. A hushed murmur rippled through the gathering crowd – “Orang Siput,” someone whispered, voice trembling. The snail-people of legend. These were the very spirits of the tide from old island lore, stepping onto land for the first time in a generation.

The strange visitors carried woven reed baskets at their sides, each brimming with giant sea snails and conchs from the ocean floor. Without a word, the foremost being knelt and upended a basket, spilling out a pile of glistening shells at the feet of the nearest villager. The shells were extraordinary – swirled with colors unseen in any ordinary mollusk, some faintly aglow with blue-green bioluminescence in the moonlight. In unison, the trio of beings then turned their glassy eyes toward the village huts, as if indicating their desires. Understanding dawned slowly: these oceanic spirits had come to barter, offering the bounty of the sea in exchange for provisions of the land. 

Gathering her courage, a fisherman’s wife stepped forward and placed a sack of rice and a clay jug of fresh water on the damp sand. One of the Orang Siput bent with a creaking bow and slid forward several fat, wriggling sea snails the size of a man’s fist – enough to make a hearty stew for the woman’s family. Seeing this, others came forward one by one. A length of woven cloth was traded for a cluster of strange conch shells that sang faintly of distant waves. A basket of mangoes and sweet tapioca earned a heap of dried kelp and rare coral. Even an iron fishing knife was offered up, and in return the pale trader placed into the villager’s hand a single immense pearl, its surface irregular and ancient, as though formed in the belly of something not of this world.

A hush fell over the beach as this otherworldly marketplace played out under the moon. The only sounds were the gentle lap of the tide and the faint clatter of shells as each exchange was made. The villagers moved carefully, entranced by the ancient rhythm of it all, conducting their business with eyes lowered in respect and fear. Some would later swear that a soft humming floated on the night air – an unearthly melody that resonated in the chests of those watching. Perhaps it was the voices of the Orang Siput themselves, or the sigh of the ocean carrying a whale’s distant song. No one could say for certain, but the melancholy sound made their hearts ache with equal parts wonder and dread. And among the onlookers, one silver-haired old man felt a chill of recognition: he spotted a distinctive spiral birthmark on the lead spirit’s pallid neck – the very same mark he had seen as a boy, decades ago, when these same beings last visited Pulau Brani. Not one of them had aged a day since that night so long ago.

As swiftly and silently as they had arrived, the tide-spirits eventually concluded their strange business. The tallest figure, seemingly the leader, raised a webbed hand, and the others drew their baskets closed, now filled with the offerings of the villagers. Cradling the rice, fruit, cloth and tools they had gathered, the three beings turned and began to wade back into the sea from whence they came. A young man unconsciously took a step forward as if to follow, but an elder’s firm hand on his shoulder stopped him with a silent shake of the head. None dared disturb the departure of the Orang Siput – they all remembered the old warnings that one who follows the spirits of the tide may never return. 

So the villagers simply watched in awed silence as the water rose to the visitors’ knees, then their waists, then their chests. Under the moon’s silvery gaze, the trio of figures seemed to dissolve into the shimmering reflection on the waves. In moments, only the crowns of snail shells were visible, floating for an instant on the surface, until those too sank beneath the dark water. Not a word was spoken on the shore until the last ripple of that unnatural calm faded and the night breeze finally stirred the palm fronds again, as if the island itself had exhaled a long-held breath.

In the days that followed, the villagers spoke of the encounter only in cautious whispers. The elders declared that the Orang Siput were ancient guardians of the deep, and that honoring their barter kept an old balance between land and sea. Ever after, when a full moon swelled the tides, the people of Pulau Brani would leave a humble offering by the shore – a pyramid of rice or a jug of fresh water – before nightfall. None dared neglect this ritual, for no one wished to invite the wrath or hunger of those ageless snail-spirits. Even now, generations later, the tale is told in hushed voices around the kampung fires. They speak of how, under a ghostly moon, the ocean’s eerie emissaries came ashore to barter, and how on that night the line between human and spirit blurred on Pulau Brani, when the ancient Orang Siput walked once more upon the land.

---

The Penebok of Pulau Brani

Midnight draped itself over the stilt village on Pulau Brani, a suffocating velvet darkness laced with the salt of the surrounding sea. In that hush, the usual chorus of crickets and cicadas fell eerily silent; even the stray dog under the coconut palms refused to howl, as if something was near. The silvery glow of the moon slipped in and out of heavy clouds, casting the skeletal frame of a half-built house in ghostly light. Its wooden stilts jutted from the earth like broken teeth, waiting for a soul to fill the void between them.

Rahim stood alone by the frame of his new house, a lantern trembling in his hand. Each night he toiled late to finish building before monsoon season, but tonight the air felt wrong – thick with an unnamed dread. He remembered the elders’ warnings whispered over the cookfire: A house needs more than nails and timber to stand. It needs blood to bind it firm. Rahim had dismissed such talk as superstition from a darker time, but now, as the wind died and the shadows deepened, those words churned in his mind with a nauseous weight.

In the village, people still whispered stories of the Penebok – a mysterious figure, half-man and half-spirit, who came on moonless nights when a new house was raised. It was said the Penebok crept in to claim a life, beheading an unwary soul and burying the severed head beneath a pillar. The sacrifice, they claimed, would anchor the house with unearthly strength, and generations ago some desperate builders might even have secretly courted this dark help. But to Rahim, such an idea was unholy – a vile transgression against both God and the natural order. He spat at the ground as if to expel the very thought.

A sudden creak cut through the silence – the sound of a footstep on new wood. Rahim’s heart kicked in his chest. “Who’s there?” he called, voice low to avoid waking his family in the hut next door. Only the lap of black water against the stilts answered; he held his lantern higher, its dim orange beam skittering over the unfinished floorboards and up the frame. The night pressed at its edges, and for a moment nothing moved except the restless shadows.

Then he saw it – a shape at the far corner of the house, crouching by the base of the central post. At first it looked like a man working in the darkness, hands busy in the soil, but the way the figure moved was all wrong – jerky and soundless, as if not touching the earth at all. Rahim’s breath caught, but he forced himself to bark, “Hai! What are you doing?” as he stepped forward. The shape unfurled into a tall silhouette; in the lantern’s quivering light, Rahim glimpsed a pale, indistinct face with eyes black and bottomless, and the figure – if it was truly human – clutched a parang, its blade slick and dripping in the dark.

A coppery scent drifted on the air, and Rahim’s stomach turned. He realised with dawning horror that the soil around the pillar looked damp – as if freshly wet with blood. His mind flashed to his daughter, little Ayu asleep at home — or supposed to be — and terror seized him. He had left her under his wife’s care, but what if…

Rahim lunged forward with a furious cry, raising his lantern like a weapon. The intruder — the Penebok, it had to be — moved unnaturally fast; in a single stride he vanished behind the pillar. Rahim reached the spot only to find nothing but a shallow pit dug at the foot of the wooden post. Inside the hole gleamed something white. With shaking hands, Rahim angled the lantern down, and its light fell upon a severed human head, eyes staring sightlessly upward.

He knew that face. It was Pak Ariffin, the kindly old night watchman from the docks who had gone missing just hours before. The head sat grimacing in silence, already slick with wet soil and strewn with ash from some ritual incense. The earth around it was sticky and red.

Rahim stumbled back, stifling a scream as his legs nearly buckled with the realisation that the foundation had been fed. The Penebok had buried the head while its blood was still hot, binding the house to a dark blessing. A wave of nausea and relief hit him in equal measure – relief that the victim was not Ayu or any of his kin, and nausea at the grotesque price just paid. He wanted to pull the head from its pit and give the poor man a proper burial, but fear rooted him to the spot. What if disturbing it angered whatever spirits had been invoked?

Above him, the new beams of the half-finished roof seemed to loom closer, as if the house were a living thing now awakened. The lantern light threw warped shadows; in them Rahim fancied he saw Pak Ariffin’s face contorted in pain. The night felt alive with unseen eyes. In the distance, an owl cried once – a bad omen.

Rahim backed away, trembling. At the edge of his vision, something flickered; he spun around and saw the Penebok perched atop a tall stilt post, watching him. The figure’s form was hazy, shimmering between solid and mist; blood dripped from the parang in his hand, pattering softly on the earth. For a heartbeat, man and spirit locked eyes, and Rahim felt a cold unlike any other flood through his veins, freezing him to the spot. The figure’s lips curled into what might have been a grin – or a snarl – then a gust of wind swept between them and the lantern went out, plunging him into darkness. Rahim heard a whisper right by his ear, a voice like dry leaves: “Beres…” It meant “Done.”

When dawn broke, the villagers found Rahim collapsed beside the construction site, the lantern’s glass shattered at his feet. He was shivering and incoherent, but the grim evidence spoke for him. At the base of the central pillar, they uncovered Pak Ariffin’s head, now cold and lifeless. Shock and fear rippled through the kampung; some refused to go near the cursed structure, while others murmured that at least the Penebok had been appeased and the new house would surely stand strong for generations. Rahim listened in mute horror as a few pragmatic elders even patted his shoulder and congratulated him in hushed tones, as if he had intended this all along. Revulsion knotted in his gut; he had wanted no part of such black magic.

As the sun climbed, life went on – uneasily. Pak Ariffin’s remains were reunited and buried that afternoon in the island’s little cemetery, amid hushed prayers and trembling hands. Yet the stain of the deed could not be so neatly laid to rest. That evening, Rahim sat by his half-built home, staring at the bloodstained pillar that no scrubbing could cleanse. Guilt and dread gnawed at him, yet the sacrifice was “done” – as the Penebok had whispered – and now he was expected to finish the house and live in it with his family. But how could he? The thought of sleeping above that grisly secret made his skin crawl.

Night fell once more, bringing a sickly sliver of moon and a heavy stillness. Rahim’s wife tried to comfort him inside their old hut, but he found himself drawn to the window, his eyes fixed on the dark silhouette of the unfinished house. A faint light flickered there – perhaps swamp fire or a trick of his weary mind. Then he heard it: the soft laughter of a child echoing from within the bare frame of the house. His heart lurched, and in a trembling voice he whispered, “Ayu?” The laughter came again, lilting and distorted – then abruptly turned into a plaintive wail.

Rahim bolted from the hut, pulse pounding in his ears. He sprinted across the yard to the new house and stopped at the threshold, unwilling to step into the darkness beneath its roof. The wailing had ceased, leaving a dead hush – until a faint sobbing drifted from the shadows inside. Summoning every ounce of courage, Rahim took a shaky step forward onto the unfinished floor; the interior was pitch-black and stifling, smelling of damp wood and something sour. In the gloom, he could just make out a small shape hunched in the far corner where the head was buried, quaking with quiet sobs; it looked like a little girl, her long hair drape over her face as she wept.

Rahim’s mouth went dry. He knew his daughter was still safely asleep in the hut – he had checked on her not an hour ago – so what was this? The weeping figure in the corner slowly raised its head, and in a stray beam of moonlight Rahim saw not Ayu at all but Pak Ariffin’s severed head crudely attached atop a small, childlike body. The eyes fixed on Rahim were full of sorrow and fury. The jaw fell open, and a wet, gurgling whisper emerged, each word heavy with malice: “Why… bury… me…?”

Rahim staggered back in horror as the abomination in the corner lurched toward him with unnatural jerks, its head lolling grotesquely. Behind it, other shadows flickered into being along the walls – phantom figures with gaping necks and severed heads, each one drawn by the blood sacrifice that had stained this house. A dozen voices now filled the air in an unbearable chorus of anguish. The wooden pillars trembled with the force of their collective wails. Rahim realized that the veil between the living and the dead had been torn open by the Penebok’s foul ritual, and now the restless dead were spilling through.

With a strangled cry, Rahim turned and fled, crashing blindly out of the house as phantom wails followed at his heels. He did not stop running until he collapsed on the steps of the village surau, where he huddled and prayed until the first light of dawn. When morning came, the apparitions were gone, leaving only silence and the dismal memory of that night. But the curse of the Penebok’s sacrifice remained.

Rahim never completed that house on Pulau Brani. It stood abandoned – a skeleton of wood and sorrow slowly reclaimed by creeping vines and salt air. Villagers avoided the place, but the legend of that night lived on. Sometimes, under a waning moon, people swore they saw pale shapes moving beneath the rotting stilts, or heard faint sobbing and hollow laughter echoing across the water. The Penebok was never seen again, but his dark handiwork remained – a warning etched into local memory.