You guys are not helping!
Okay, I tell you guys what. In the spirit of Halloween, instead of trading campy ghost stories, let's exchange stories of the traditional ghosts. The legends. The lores. For example, like the Scottish Cutty Black Sow, the Chinese Hopping Ghost... I find these kind of ghost stories creepier, more enthralling and more beautiful. Which legend did you grew up with hearing, and give us the description?
For me, I used to grow up hearing the legend of the Pontianak (see link which SJH posted in the first post). She's the Asian vampire, infamous with her own lore of how she began her bloodlust. The Pontianak was supposedly a woman who died at childbirth (or something like that). I remember her tales used to haunt me, because my mom once told me stories that a Pontianak used to haunt my late grandfather's estate. Every night my mother's family had this ritual which they perform faithfully - that every night, every door and shutter window must closed exactly at 10 p.m. Imagine that there are more than 20 shutter windows at my grandparents' house! It was the traditional wooden Malay home which usually has plenty of windows and doors. My mom said every night, exactly midnight, she could hear the Pontianak hovering about and scratching the roof, trying to find her way in... my mom used to tremble in her bed until she fell asleep.
Anyway, now the old house stood alone in a long legal family battle... my mom still loves the house and she still has fond memories of it...
The house looked a little like this:
