Short Ghost Stories

65) The Orphanage

Location: Batam, Indonesia

Sender: Miss Anonymous

This experience happened to me 8 years ago. Back in 2014, i saw this Facebook post where a few of my friends have gone to this orphanage in Batam to do some charity. They needed help with their daily necessities like clothes, mattresses etc. Then, me being soft-hearted decided to help them out too. I reached out to one of my close friends and she agreed to accompany me to Batam to visit this orphanage. 

We are staying in Singapore so the easiest way to reach Batam was by a ferry. We booked a two days, one night stay at the hotel and did everything on our off days which were on the weekends. There have been many occasions where people send money overseas but the proof of where the money was going were made via pictures, videos and even post cards. I then decided to see it for myself because seeing it happening live is a very different thing than the soft copies. 

When we arrived at the orphanage, the matron of the of the place welcomed us. She was a small built lady, wearing a hijab, and was very 'nice'. 

"We plan to expand the orphanage that's why we need more donors, Madam" she explained. 

"Ohh okay. We are so pleased because in a way, we are helping to build this orphanage." i replied with a warm smile. 

Each of us gave them $500 which is about 10,000,000 Rupiah and it's a lot of money to help them survive for a couple of months there. I am sure we're not the only donors. Sure, the money was big but not big enough to expand another wing at the orphanage. 

"Thank you so much Madam, we are so grateful to you! You can also mingle around as long as you like with the children." the matron was very pleased with the donation. 

Everything started going a little weird during break time. They served us desserts. It's called Kue Kochi; the outer part was sticky and the filling was made of caramelized coconut. My friend refused to eat the food because she was very particular about sweets. 

"I am not eating that. You can go on with that." my friend said.

I took 3 serving of the Kue because it was very nice. The matron upon seeing that my friend refused to eat, kept on pestering her to eat forcefully.

"Madam, please eat.. please eat. This is delicious and we bought this especially for you." the matron told them. 

"It is okay, i am not hungry." my friend replied.

Judging from the face of the matron, we could see that she was offended by the whole situation because my friend had refused to eat. We didn't think much about it anyway and it was already quite late because we spent a lot of time getting to know more about the orphanage and children. They didn't offer us any proper meal besides the desserts. We then ended the meeting and proceeded to our hotel as we were getting tired. The next morning we went back home to Singapore. 

That's the beginning of it. The first thing that happened when i came back to Singapore was,  almost every night, i will dream of the same children from the orphanage. In my dream, they kept on repeating the same thing,

"We miss you sister, when are you coming back? We miss you sister, when are you coming to visit us again?" the children said to me in my dreams.

I would wake up in the middle of the night and cry because i missed them. I genuinely thought that it was because of my empathy for those kids... and not because of something sinister. I never thought there was anything sinister happening to me. For the next 2 weeks, i dreamt of the same thing every night; the same children repeating the same words to me.