The Hunchbacked Demon of the Palm Plantation

Dear listeners, this incident didn't happen in Bangladesh. Although most of his stories are from Bangladesh, this one takes place outside of Bangladesh, in Malaysia. The specific location is Tikam Batu in the state of Kedah, Malaysia. Rabi heard this story from his older brother, Salim. Salim went to Malaysia around 2007 to work in a palm plantation. Malaysia has many palm plantations, and the palm oil is exported worldwide. Palm trees also exist in Bangladesh; many of you have probably seen them. The palm tree produces clusters similar to dates. We see dates growing on date trees in a similar way, a bunch like that comes out.

Different people call it different things. These clusters contain palm fruits, from which oil is extracted. Malaysia has no shortage of palm plantations; there are plenty. People from many countries, including Bangladesh and India, work in these palm plantations. In 2007, a man named Sukanta, who was Indian, worked in that palm plantation. He went there in '07. He didn't primarily harvest the palm fruits; he mainly worked as a guard for the palm plantation. The palm plantation where they worked was owned by several people, and it was quite large. The guards work in shifts, six or eight-hour shifts, providing 24-hour security. Sukanta always had the night shift from the beginning. Different people are responsible for different areas of the palm plantation. The area he was assigned to was right in the middle of the palm plantation. There was a designated seating area there for guarding.

There was a guard post, and it wasn't like the place was pitch black. There was adequate lighting in places, and there were paths for walking around the mountain area. It's not like you have to walk through a huge jungle to get to the mountains; there's plenty of light and walking paths. So, this Sukanta went on guard duty for the first time. On his very first day, he encountered an incident. It was very late at night, and you couldn't really tell if it was a moonlit night or a new moon because there were lights everywhere. They could see everything in the light, so the moonlight didn't really matter much. So, Sukanta was walking back and forth on guard duty when he suddenly saw a hunchbacked man looking up at a palm tree, as if he was looking at something up there. He saw this from a distance. After seeing this, he wondered what was going on, where this man came from, if he was crazy or something. Since it was his first day on guard duty, he thought maybe he was from the area, but he shouldn't be here at night. But he didn't really dwell on it because he could see from a distance that the man was very old. He couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, but he could see that he was quite old and hunchbacked. And it didn't seem likely to him that a hunchbacked man would climb a palm tree to pick palm fruit or steal something. He thought maybe he was a staff member or something, since he was new and didn't really know anyone. It could also be that he was a very old resident. He thought about it this way on his first day. The next day, he asked some people if there was anyone like that around, but the people around said no.

So, there weren't any elderly people here. The next day, when he went on duty at night, very late at night, he saw that hunchbacked person again that night. He saw from a distance that the hunchbacked person was looking up at a palm tree, watching something. He called out again from a distance, in their language, the Malay language spoken there. Even though he was Indian, he knew Malay. He called out in that language, "Hey brother, who are you? What are you doing here?" Saying this, he moved closer. After going quite a bit closer, he saw that it was actually a woman, an old woman who had become hunchbacked with age. From the side, she looked like a normal person in terms of appearance and physical build, but she was quite tall, that much was clear. She was as tall as a normal tall person would be. He kept repeatedly asking in Malay, "What are you doing here? Where is your home? Why have you come here?" He kept asking like this, but she didn't answer. And everyone who was guarding there had a long stick. This Sukanta, what he did was, after repeatedly calling out and the woman not looking at him, since she was just looking straight up at the palm fruit, he poked her with the stick. He poked her, poked her, and then said, "Hey, why don't you listen? Why don't you look at me?" That's when the woman finally looked at him. But before looking, the woman did something. She straightened up from her hunchbacked position and stood tall. When she stood tall, it seemed like this woman was very tall. While she was hunched over, it was apparent that she was tall, but Sukanta hadn't realized she was *this* tall. She stood up so tall and then looked at Sukanta. When she turned her head to look, Sukanta saw that the woman's face looked like eight or ten old people's faces combined, but her eyes were big, like tennis balls. And the eyes weren't red, or white, or black, or anything like that. Not even the white part was pitch black. But the eyes were round and big like tennis balls, and yellowish. After seeing this scene, Sukanta ran away from there.

After moving away, he wondered if that woman was still there or not. While running, he looked back and saw another terrifying sight. The scene was that the woman, hunched over, was climbing the palm tree under which she had been standing. She was walking up the palm tree hunched over, the way people walk down the street. After seeing this, he got extremely scared and quickly left the place. After leaving, he sent another person on duty there. The next day, one of his acquaintances, also Indian, asked him if there was anything to be afraid of there, because he had seen something like this and told him everything in detail. After he told him, the person he told said, "Are you doing drugs while on duty? There's nothing like that, and nothing to be afraid of. And who told you to go talk to anything like that if you see it? Just stay quiet, let whoever wants to wander around, what's it to you?" That's how he said it. So, he was actually thinking about whether he had dreamt it, or if he had seen something, or if his eyes had deceived him. It wasn't any kind of nonsense because Sukanta was completely in his senses. And even though he smoked bidis and cigarettes, he didn't do drugs, and even if he did, he wasn't intoxicated at that time. So, the matter caused a lot of fear in his mind. After that, another incident happened. That same day, the owner of the palm garden said that some goods would be arriving at night and needed to be stored in the warehouse. Now, there were two routes to get to the warehouse. One was the main road, and going to the warehouse via the main road was a bit of a detour. The other was a tunnel, and you could get to the warehouse very quickly through the tunnel. However, the owner told him that there was no need for him to go through the tunnel. During the day, the workers and other people here always use the tunnel to come and go. There was no need for him to go through the tunnel at night, he should just go via the main road.

So, when the goods arrive, you should stay here at the warehouse and arrange for the goods to be stored in the warehouse. What happens is, when the goods arrive for unloading into the warehouse, Sukanta is informed that the goods have arrived, and you quickly go to the warehouse. Then Sukanta thinks that a truck is standing in front of the warehouse, and the goods will be unloaded now. If he walks along the main road, it will take 10 minutes longer. It's better if he goes through the tunnel quickly, then he can reach there in a few minutes. The length of the tunnel was at most about 200 meters, at most. So, walking through it shouldn't take too long, just a short time. Where it would take 15 minutes to walk that way, it would take five minutes to go through the tunnel. Since it should have been said beforehand, Sukanta should have been there at the warehouse beforehand. Since the goods have arrived now, he has to go quickly. That's why Sukanta mainly decided to go through the tunnel. He took the owner's prohibition or restriction as advice, thinking that there was no need to go through the tunnel at night. But now that he has to go quickly, he starts going through the tunnel. He has come roughly halfway through the tunnel. The tunnel was dark, there was no light inside. But Sukanta had a light in his hand, and he was moving forward with the light inside the tunnel. There was light water in the tunnel, light water meaning not even up to the ankles, just the sole of the shoe getting wet, or up to the sole, a little bit of water, like an inch or so. There was water in the tunnel. So, when he had come roughly halfway through the tunnel, Sukanta felt that he was not alone in the tunnel, there was someone else there, or there might be multiple people. But at this time, no one else is supposed to be in this tunnel. Sukanta says, "Is anyone here?" No sound comes, rather his own words echo back to him. Sukanta then thinks that he should light a cigarette now. So, what does Sukanta do? He turns off the torchlight in his hand, takes out the lighter from his pocket, puts the cigarette in his mouth, and just as he lights his lighter, just as he is about to bring it to the cigarette, suddenly he feels like someone is in front of him. As soon as he looks ahead in the light of the lighter...

Then he sees a huge head, and this head is that of the hunchbacked old woman he saw in the palm grove. After seeing this, he gets extremely scared, and in that state, what happens is he sees that hunchbacked old woman climb up, climb up meaning onto the tunnel's ceiling. After climbing up there, he wonders if he's seeing things or what. Sukanta, gathering his courage, shines his torchlight upwards. After shining the torchlight upwards, we usually hear in stories that after shining the torchlight, there's nothing there anymore. But here, the opposite happens. He shines the torchlight and sees that this hunchbacked woman is almost seven to eight feet tall. She's stuck to the tunnel ceiling like a gecko sticks to a wall, but her neck is rotated 180 degrees, meaning her face is towards her back, and she's staring at Sukanta with wide eyes. And staring, she makes a hissing sound, like a snake, and bares her teeth. It seems like she's smiling, but even though she's smiling, there's no sound of laughter. And she has countless teeth in her mouth. We have 32 teeth, with each tooth in its proper place, but she has countless teeth in her mouth. The teeth aren't big, but many small teeth, so many teeth in her mouth that there's no counting them. The teeth aren't sharp, just small teeth. When Sukanta sees this, he gets extremely scared and screams loudly and becomes senseless there. After he regains consciousness, he finds himself in his room.

There are other people there. When he regains consciousness, a man, someone he knows, asks him, "You've been unconscious for three days. You were supposed to go to the warehouse at night, but you weren't found there afterwards. Other people went and did the work. Everyone thought you might have gone somewhere else. The next day, you weren't found in the morning, not in the afternoon, and not at night."That's when the search for you began. We tried calling your mobile phone, but the calls weren't going through. After searching everywhere, we eventually found you in this tunnel. When you were rescued, you were unconscious. When we tried to revive you, and you regained consciousness, you were constantly talking nonsense. That's when it became clear that something unusual had happened to you. Some people from the garden called a local priest because there was a Hindu temple there. After bringing a priest from there, he started performing rituals in his own way. At one point, a female demon possessed your body, and the things that demon said were quite terrifying. She said that she had been in this garden for a long time, but she never harmed anyone, even though demons like her usually harm people. But she had never harmed anyone in this garden until now. Apparently, you poked that demon with a stick. Not only that, she sometimes comes and goes inside this tunnel, and you shone a torch at her. She fell in front of you and then went upwards. You annoyed her by shining a torch at her. That's mainly why she was angry with you and said she would leave you. However, she asked for some strange things, like a cluster of palm fruits with 112 palm fruits from a palm tree. Then some sparrow birds, and various other strange things she asked for. And those conditions were fulfilled within these three days of this incident. After that, she left you, and then you regained your senses completely normally. After hearing this, Sukanta was shocked that so much had happened in three days. And Sukanta thought, "Indeed, that's right. I intentionally poked her and then shone a torch at her. She went upwards. She could have done much greater harm to me if she wanted to."

But it doesn't really harm anyone, though I was annoying her. So, Sukanta actually realizes his mistake, and after that, Sukanta didn't work in that garden anymore. He quit his job and left. Basically, after he left, this Selim Bhai got a job in that garden. So, after he came there, he heard about this incident. It's not known if he met Sukanta directly in that way, but after he came to that garden, he learned about this incident in detail. And apparently, many people in the garden have seen that witch, but that witch doesn't really harm anyone in a significant way.