Finding the unwanted

MEETING people and site visits at odd hours are part and parcel of selling real estate. There are, however, times when agents and negotiators get more than what they bargained for while trying to close a deal.

Here are two unwanted encounters – one with spirits, the other with a body.

A haunting tale

In the early 1990s, I was a management trainee at an established real estate agency in Paramount Garden, Petaling Jaya. It was my first job upon my graduation from a university in New Zealand.

I still remember vividly that it was on a Saturday morning and my branch manager and I were manning the office. A Chinese gentleman in his 40s walked into our office and asked if we could help him to sell his 2-storey link end-lot house in SS12, Subang Jaya.

The house was vacant at the time as his family had moved to another part of Subang Jaya. He dangled the prospect of making us the property’s exclusive agent, which thrilled us.

The following week, the owner and I inspected the house together. It was a fairly old house with quite a bit of space to offer and a relatively large built-up area.

As the owner handed over the house keys to me, he reminded me to always turn off the electrical switchboard in the centre of the house, just below the staircase. This was because in the past, the agents forgot to do so and left the lights on, and he ended up paying extra for electricity.

I marketed the house by putting up my banner on the gate and fence, and advertising in the newspaper. The property market at the time was good and calls just kept coming in.

Most of my appointments with clients were in the evenings. Some were set as late as 8:30pm!

In order to prepare myself and the house for viewing I would go early. The first time I entered the house on my own, an uneasy feeling came upon me and I had goose bumps. There was an unshakable feeling that I was not alone in the house.

When I waited for clients on the elevated floor in the living room, I always sensed that someone or something was watching me from behind. I would stare ahead, afraid of what I would find if I turn around.

The funny thing was I had to always close the windows and turn off the switchboard when my clients were still in the house because I was afraid to do this all on my own as everything would be so dark and eerie.

After three viewings, the fourth client fell in love with the house and bought it. They were an Indian family who loved the house the minute they set foot inside.

A few months after the new owners moved in, I heard that they had experienced poltergeist activity in the kitchen area and they were regularly disturbed by spirits in the middle of the night.

It still sends chills up my spine sharing this story with you now. – Hartamas Real Estate (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd associate director Christopher Chan (pictured, right).

A gruesome find

One fine day, two of our female agents were showing a client a bungalow that was rumoured to be haunted at Bukit Tunku, Kuala Lumpur.

They paid no heed to the rumour. However, things went wrong the moment they arrived at the house. The first thing they saw was that the door was ajar.

With a mixture of slight dread and curiosity, they made their way into the house. The first thing they saw was the blood, then the woman lying dead on the ground.

The agents panicked and made a police report about the murder. [The client asked the agents to handle the case without quoting him at the scene.]

However, the first to arrive at the scene were reporters instead of the police!

Later, we came to know that the dead woman was one of the maids who worked in the neighbourhood. She was murdered not too far away from the house and her body was subsequently dumped in the abandoned bungalow.

The house has since been demolished and there is no new building in its place yet. – Metro Homes Sdn Bhd director See Kok Loong (pictured, right)