The first time I saw ghost when I was still a kid and I wasn’t yet an elementary schooler. I still remember that night in my aunt’s house at village, I looked out through a small window without any serious purpose. Suddenly, I saw only a face of man in the dark. His face was totally red like blood. He looked at me up in the house behind the window. I felt so limp and shocked! I can never forget his red face glowing in the dark. So scary! Then, I told people in the house that I had seen a ghost. A red ghost! I told them everything. My aunt’s sister then returned to the kitchen to give me a cup of water to calm me down.
Later, I finally knew that ghost was called parakang. Parakang is Buginese ghost that can change their form into anything they want like cat, chicken, snake, nest of chicken, and others. Elder people at my village ever told me that parakang is actually half human and half ghost. People who become parakang want to be rich instantly by making deal with devils. Besides, parakang is also a black magic which inherited from generation to generation in a certain family.
When I came home, I saw a ghost again, but it was also only a head and of course with a face! It happened around 4.30 AM at down when my grandmother woke up to take wudhu at water well for sholat fajr. I torched her. I started to see that ghost when I torched around. That ghost was next to the water well, right above flowers. He looked at me either. I daren’t say to my grandmother that there was a ghost close to her. I thought she should have been able to see him either, but surprisingly she wasn’t. My legs were shaking, I recited any ayah in Al Qur’an I memorized. Damn, he still looked at me. He didn’t want to disappear. And how stupid I was, I kept torching that ghost.
The ghost I saw at down, didn’t have human-face look at all. His black eyes were totally round without eyebrows. His face skin was purple, (I am not sure because it was rather dark). His upper and lower teeth very sharp. Every tooth looked like reversed trilateral. In the morning I cut off the flowers hoping that I would never see him again.
