Mystery Of Falling Marbles...Ghosts Again?

When I was in primary school, playing marbles was quite an in-thing. We do it in school all the time - before and sometimes after. At times, we became so sharp, we can hit another marble from quite a distance. Some friends would recommend the 20 cents type that are supposed to be superior than the 5 or 10 cents type and you have to go to certain shops to get it. Of course the expensive ones can crack up the cheap ones. Then one day, a joker came with a ball bearing.....

 At home, children played with those colourful types that some folks used to decorate their flower vases or fish tanks and we all knew what it is like when some one drops marbles onto the floor as the marbles would scatter, bounce then roll all over the concrete floor and if you were living below an apartment, you will have irritating noises all over the ceiling.

I am sure that many of you have experienced such a phenomenon at one time or another and perhaps all the time, even now. Maybe you didn't notice or can't be bothered but all these times I have such experience of marbles falling on my ceiling from the units above - in the day or even at ungodly hours but most often it happened mostly at night and most frequently during the wee hours. What is all these about?

One Singaporean living in Lorong Ah Soo reported that he endured it for 15 years but he chose not to speak to the occupants upstairs. Later, he shifted to a new flat in Punggol but the sound of falling marbles in the wee hours continued. One day, he decided to go up to check what kind of neighbours were living there and he found an elderly couple with her weak husband who needed domestic help and so he reckoned that it was unlikely they were playing with marbles at those hours.

Another HDB dweller who experienced this for many years believe that this is created by creatures of another dimension because these disturbances continued even when the neighbours upstairs have moved out!

Imagine this, say it is 1 or 2am, you are watching EPL or World Cup soccer, then suddenly it comes, marbles dropping and scattering all over your ceiling from above. An expatriate was interviewed and he too has been affected while living in three different condominiums in 10 years here and even when he was living in Hong Kong! People get spooked as these noises seem to peak between 1 to 4am. May be you didn't know as you are a sound sleeper or never got up at this hours. Could it be an over-enthusiastic golfer who practises and over putt his putting mat?

Sometimes, it goes beyond marbles falling. You can get sound of furniture being dragged. Structural engineers pointed out two possible causes - concrete walls/floors and plumbing. They believed that they were caused by contraction at night and the creaking noise gets distorted when it passed through concrete walls and floors. Others believed it is due to plumbing as when water is shut the change in pressure caused the pipes to rattle and could be the cause. Or maybe, they are really children playing with marbles? Yet there are some who attributed this to your air-con compressors or the sound created by your refrigerator or even the type of tiles used on flooring.

There was a report made by the SPI or Singapore Paranormal Investigators that gave its conclusion. They flushed toilets, ran water, dropped marbles, etc.and recorded the different noises below and then studied the frequencies and they felt the sounds were almost identical. So what do you think? A spirit playing with marbles? It is more frightening if you hear someone shouting "Fore!" in the wee hours.

So hold on folks, do not loose your marbles. Don't let your spherical come up to your throat! When there is something strange in the neighbourhood. Who do you call? Ghostbusters! The Singapore we have today is different. Cosmopolitan Singapore means we will also have cosmopolitan ghosts. "Ang moh kwee", "Jepun kwee", all kinds of ghosts and also  the "keow kwee" whose debacle at the casino means they rather join the other world. If you burn them money they will gamble some more. Then how? Naturally, we will have more types of ghosts. We also say Chinese ghosts, Malay ghosts, Indian ghosts and Eurasian ghosts. Are ghosts racists?

We should start a new ministry to handle these new problems. Start a course on it. Create a new industry. Be the first ghost hub in the world where experts world wide will come for seminars and use up all our MICE space or host a Ghost World Cup to see which country has the fiercest ghosts.