This story is about a M’sian man’s encounter that left him questioning what was real and what lurked just beyond the veil of the ordinary.
Rizal was not a superstitious man. He drove a mid-range Perodua Myvi, nothing too expensive, just reliable enough for daily commutes. He used to work as a Grab driver, so picking up hitchhikers felt natural to him. He didn’t carry charms, didn’t bother with pantang-larang, and rolled his eyes every time his mother-in-law forwarded yet another “send this to ten people or suffer bad luck” WhatsApp message.
The Hitchhiker
The night it happened, he came home pale as a ghost himself. As soon as he stepped through the door, he announced, “I’m not driving to work tomorrow.”
His wife, Aisha, frowned. “Huh? What happened?”
His hands trembled as he set down his car keys. “I picked up a hitchhiker.”
Aisha sighed. “Abang, how many times I tell you don’t simply pick up strangers?”
“He was an old man, sayang! He introduced himself as pak cik Ibrahim, pakai baju Melayu, Songkok… looked like someone’s atuk. How to just leave him there by the roadside?”
She folded her arms. “And?”
“He said he needed a lift to the cemetery.”
She blinked. “The cemetery? The Islamic one near TTDI?”
“Ya. It was in the morning, and on my way to work so I thought, okay lah, he’s going to visit someone’s grave. So I drove him.”
Aisha sat down, her stomach twisting into knots. She didn’t like where this was going.
“When we were driving past the cemetery gates,” Rizal continued, his voice barely above a whisper, “He said, turun sini. Cukup dekat dah.”
Rizal swallowed. “I slowed down, turned around to tell him alright… and, sayang, he was gone.”
The Vanishing
Aisha stared at him. “Gone as in…?”
“GONE, Aisha! Hilang! No sound, no door opening, nothing! One second he was there, the next—poof!” He snapped his fingers for emphasis.
A chill ran down her spine. She wanted to be rational. There had to be a logical explanation. Maybe he was imagining things. Maybe he was too tired and hallucinated the whole encounter.
But the sheer fear in Rizal’s eyes… she had never seen him like this. He was a man who sat through horror movies without blinking, who laughed off ghost stories during teh tarik sessions with his friends. And yet, here he was, shaken to his core. “So now what?” she asked, keeping her voice steady.
“Call your mother,” Rizal, “She’ll know how or someone who knows how to cleanse my car.”
“Cleanse it?”
He nodded firmly. “We need a bomoh or ustaz or something. Otherwise, no way I’m getting into that car again.”
Aisha sighed. “Okay.”
The Cleansing
Her first call was to her mother. The woman loved this sort of thing, always forwarding tips on how to ward off spirits and bad luck. “Ya Allah, Aisha, why he so bodoh go and pick up random people?” she scolded. “Tell him next time just drive straight to work! No need to be hero!”
“Yes, Mak, noted. But now what? How to settle this?”
Her mother called back within the hour with detailed instructions from her Bomoh, “Limau nipis. Beli tujuh biji. Ustaz saya kenal kata, perah dalam air, campur garam, basuh kereta dengan itu – and jangan lupa baca ayat Kursi!”
Aisha passed on the instructions to Rizal, and together they set to work under the dim glow of their porch light, Rizal squeezed limes into a bucket, the sharp citrus scent filling the air. He muttered prayers under his breath, washing the car’s exterior, wiping down the seats, even splashing some on the dashboard for good measure.
Afterward, they sat on the porch, sipping tea, waiting. For what, Aisha wasn’t sure. Maybe for some kind of sign that the spirit was truly gone. “You think it worked?” she asked.
Rizal shrugged. “No idea. But I feel better.”
An Unexplained Urge
The few days following passed without incident, but Rizal felt… something… like an itch in the back of his brain that he couldn’t scratch. Perhaps a week later, as they were getting ready for bed, “Sayang, I think I need to visit the cemetery.”
She stared at him. “Why?”
“Just to… I don’t know. Pay respects? Maybe that old man needed something.”
Aisha hesitated. Every instinct told her to say no. But after some back and forth, they agreed to visit the next day.
The Visit
The cemetery was quiet, the air thick with the scent of earth. It was an older cemetery, and while generally well maintained, some of the older graves were falling into disrepair, overgrown with moss-covered headstones, and covered in fallen leaves. Some had weeds sprouting. They walked through the rows of graves, starting near the entrance.
Within minutes of his perusal, Rizal stopped. He didn’t know how or why… but here… this grave was the right grave. Something just felt correct. “Here,” he said, kneeling. It was an old, weathered grave, overgrown with grass, clearly one of the first graves.
Together, they removed fallen leaves, twigs, and branches, did some weeding, and brushed down the headstone until the inscription became clear once more. As he cleaned the headstone, he uncovered the first name—Ibrahim—barely visible. He had to trace it out with his finger, the letters worn down by time. The family name had been eroded away, lost to the years.
With Pakcik’s Ibrahim’s grave cleaned, he made a prayer to the spirit of the departed. Though Pakcik had scared him, he doubted that was Pakcik’s intent. For a moment, the air felt different—lighter, as if something unseen had shifted, and left. For a moment, Rizal thought he heard an azan and a sense of peace.
They drove home in silence and that night, Rizal slept soundly for the first time in days.
Don’t be a hero
He never saw the old man again. But from then on, he stopped picking up strangers. And Aisha never let him forget it. “Next time, just drive, ya? No need to be hero.”
Rizal gripped the steering wheel, his fingers tightening for a brief moment. He exhaled, letting the weight of the past few days settle before finally answering, “Yes, Sayang.”
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