The OLd Man Squatting by the Roadside

In February 1962 I was transfered to Gunong Inas Estate,This plantation is situated far into the intirior of Perak,in fact at the edge.Going into that plantation was a problem because no taxi services wet in there,nearly fifteen miles from the main road.The laterite road passed through many other plantations.

Before the emergency it was a communist infested area,despite of the numerous plantations those bandits had been hiding within and the nearby jungle.In short all the plantations had been the fighting ground between the armed forces and the communists.

The emergency was over when I went there.The nearest town was Selama,a one road cowboy town.A quiet town actually but with the surrender of the bandits the town changed drastically after midnight with them drinking hard liqueur.These lot had only a small allowance then but it really surprising how they could drink like a fish.Any way that was solely my opinion.

That plantation being a lonely place I often ventured out to Taiping during week end.usually returning the next early morning.Very often a private car from the planation will out there waiting my return.Normally that would be around 5.30 a.m.

On rainy days the trip back can be very slipery which made the car skidded many a time along that muddy road.At times the car skidded into nearbt ditch and we had to push the car up,ending ourselves covered with mud.All these seemingly nothing.

The driver told me on the way that, that stretch of road was haunted.At times an old man can be seen squatting by the roadside,beckoning people to offer him some help.
No one dared stopped on that lonely.lonely road,for that could be a ghost.Some one did tried to offer some sort of aid but when he went down to help.The old man turned out to be an old tree stump.Terrified at this,the driver fleed as fast as he could from that place.

Thereafter time and again many others had met with that old man squatting by the road side,but not a single soul dared looked at it or render it any aid.The stories continued to spread like wild fire.

So each time I traveled back in the early morning I was always on the lookout for anything weird and spooky.I saw nothing but some old tree stumps here and there along the way.These do appeared to look like an old man squatting but lifeless - tree stumps.