Having a week or so to kick around Malaysia, I thought Penang Island would be the ideal place to spend a few days. Within the boundaries is Georgetown; an old British colonial UNESCO World Heritage port city chock full of fascinating history, buckets of old buildings, and decent yet inexpensive Indian food. Two things were for sure: I was going to come back from there with a lot of photos and a few more lbs around the waist.

The town is an architecture and history enthusiast’s dream. I visited six years ago but since even then has clearly had a lot of investment pumped into it, apparently most of it from Singapore. Strict zoning laws – within Georgetown at the very least – mean it’s almost impossible to walk along a street and not be blown away by some form of architectural wonder. Ornate carved decorations and arches. Long stretches of coving absolutely everywhere. Visible beams on high ceilings with old style fans hanging below. Colourful and intricate tiled floors. Painted wooden window shutters. You know I could go on.

While on a motorbike cum hiking trip to the national park in the north east corner of the island, a riduclous amount of wrong turns – and they are frequent around Georgetown’s ye olde one way road system – brought me to a couple of beautiful buildings, though seemingly abandoned they also gave me the impression of being rather secure. As a result, it didn’t take me long to get online and investigate the abandoned potential in the area, during which a couple of names came up but judging from the photos and comments online were either under redevelopment or completely locked up. Soon enough I came across the name “99 Door Mansion”. It doesn’t take a fully qualified mathemastician to tell you that this must be a pretty big house – and it is – although it got its name quite literally so there aren’t a particularly obscene number of rooms (10 still stand, I believe) but there are several doors per room. Maybe the owner just disliked walking around any further than absolutely necessary so it was an intentional design aspect. His keyring must have weighed a ton.

Known originally as Caledonia Estate, it was built in the 1840s by one of Britain’s weathiest families at the time – the Ramsdens – who had links with the British East India Company. Bringing their immensely fat wallets to Malaysia (then part of the British “Straights Settlements”) they set up a sugar cane plantation on the Malay peninsula, in Nibong Tebal, a stone’s throw from Penang island. However, the economy moved on and the demand for sugar cane waned substantially in the late 1800s, so the Ramsdens made the wise decision to make the shift to planting rubber trees and consequently did pretty well out of it. The winds of change blew again in the early 1960s towards the rapidly growing palm oil industry, so once again they totally changed their game and reaped huge profits. The mansion has remained throughout as a tremendous display of wealth, and serving a variety of purposes. Living quarters, dancehall, an administrative building for the plantation, and even the headquarters for the officers of the occupying Japanese army during World War 2.

But it’s not all palm oil and cream (ha). In June 1948, grandson of the family John Saint Maur Ramsden was shot twice in the back of the head as he walked up the mansion staircase. The murderer was never found, but the common rumour online is that a business competitor gone and done it, though I wager that this was one person’s conclusion that has since been regurgitated umpteen times, doing as the internet does. Various suspects were arrested, detained, and even put on trial – but no-one was found guilty, with the magistrate declaring that “there is no evidence against any particular person”. Another locally fuelled rumour is that John was a homosexual that employed only “young and handsome Malay houseboys” and that local residents “all remembered that no-one had been convicted of his murder, and they did not seem to care”*. In the period of his death there were a number of retributive attacks on British colonists, thus it would be foolish to ignore that as a potential motive, particularly when considering the local’s general apathy towards his lack of justice.

The case is still unsolved, and the grave of John S. M. Ramsden lies in Georgetown’s Western Road cemetery.

The research on this place is both interesting and hysterical. In addition to the above, it’s said that locals believe that the Japanese killed all of the Ramsden family present before taking over the property during the war; but this doesn’t really tie in with the fact that the grandson was shot in the head 3 years after the Japanese surrender in 1945. Another compelling factoid is that after the house itself (not plantation) was abandoned in the 1960s, a local Bomoh (kind of like a witch doctor in this neck of the woods) took residence and used the building as his little workshop, contacting spirits and whatnot. Supposedly the locals are more scared of the Bomoh’s spirit mates than they are of the entire Ramsden family. Visitors have reported hearing “growling noises”, the sound of drums inside the house (not sure why unless the ghost of Keith Moon is holed up in the loft), and some have even become possessed by a demon. I wouldn’t disagree that they are possessed by something but it’s probably not an evil spirit.

To say that I’m saving the best one for last is an understatement. The legend is that at midnight every day, the 99 door mansion’s 100th door appears as an entry point to and from the spirit world, allowing all of the naughty rascals that the witch doctor summoned to come and cause mischief in the human world. Unfortunately I wasn’t there at that time so can’t possibly comment. Ahem. Well, that’s the history out of the way, time for my story.

The fence gate wasn’t as impregnable as it looked from the outside so I was soon making careful crunching footsteps along the gravel path, consisting of two narrow strips originally created by vehicle tyres. The palm oil trees, as always, are laid out in rows which satisfied the symmetry junkie within me, but displeases my inner tree-hugger. My senses are always extremely heightened whenever poking around places I’m unsure of how I will be welcomed, so even the sound of a falling leaf is startling. Seemingly out of nowhere the soft yellow stone mansion pops into view between several bushy oil palms on the plantation. To my right, or the front side of the mansion, there appears to be a small outbuilding being used as a shrine that may have once been used as a toolshed. Otherwise, there is no sign of life beyond the millions of bugs and insects that reside in this vast palm oil plantation. The front has a intricately decorated carved stone balcony above and an archway below, which I spend several minutes taking pictures of. Soon enough it seemed wise to go and have a look around inside lest any of the plantation workers spot me and react negatively, so I made my way into the building. The heightened senses I mentioned before came into action again as I heard a scraping noise outside, and then followed by rapid footsteps, though not human ones.

Looking outside to face my paranoia brought me within about ten metres of an angry snarling dog. Contrary to previous encounters with wild dogs, I decided to change my tactics and try to act friendly while encouraging it to come over for a head scratch – rather than just shitting myself and going all Steve Irwin by looking for the nearest distraction stick. The dog didn’t fall for my charm, and ran around the outside of the building with the look of Satan in his eyes, still growling, presumably heading for a set of stairs to enter the mansion.

“Oh well, I’ve had a nice life” I thought to myself, resigning my final moments to being eaten alive by angry dog and his mansion pals. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why I decided to walk back the way I came and face them out of the front door, but from the shroud of shade inside the entrance hall of the house I only saw angry dog and what I assume was his Mrs both frantically looking around and sniffing the air. In retrospect, I managed to get the drop on them by coming from the darkness of the mansion interior and whistling, beckoning them to come over for cuddles and belly rubs. It caught them off guard, causing them to jump out of their skins and run off into the depths of the plantation, but not before one of them stopped a safe distance away to drop their trousers and continue with their retreat. Initially my concern was that they were heading towards the plantation workers to raise the alarm, but I heard nothing more from anyone (dead or alive) for the hour or so that I was there.

Walking up the main staircase was something that required a lot of courage. Looking at the upper floorboards from below showed that they had suffered typically as floorboards do after decades in the middle of a humid, boggy, termite filled oil palm swamp plantation. Even though treading extremely carefully with a slow and wide stance like someone walking around the house looking for a new roll of toilet paper, it was stronger than I gave it credit for, but it seemed at first glance that a higher level of caution was needed at the top around the arguably less structurally sound floorboards. Bar a few creaks and obvious areas that would have been suicide to attempt to tread on, there was nothing to be too worried about. If you do go there, please choose your walking path carefully and be respectful of this majestic building!

Another reliable rumour I heard is that the spirits will take the names of everyone that has written graffiti on the walls and will stalk them in their sleep until they pass away, which will be 99 days exactly. No more, no less. Creepy eh? DON’T WRITE ON THE WALLS YOU TACKY SCUMBAGS, OR GHOSTS WILL KILL YOU.

*Source: Lynn Hollen Lee’s “Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects”, 2017