Story from My Mother IX: Orang Bunian

Story from My Mother IX: Orang Bunian

I heard Orang Bunian stories a few times; the first time was when I was a kid. Pak Harun, a bank worker bought a land in our village. Apparently there was an Orang Bunian family living at the back of his land. One day the Orang Bunian man met Pak Harun, and welcomed him. The Orang Bunian appeared just like a normal person, wearing songkok, shirt and kain pelikat. He enquired about Pak Harun’s family, and wished each other happiness and well being. Apparently the Orang Bunian didn’t like the previous owner of the land, because he was panas baran type and beat up his wife and children.

What surprise me was that I do not know that I have Orang Bunian as a neighbour all these years. (see picture) The place is overgrown with nipah, bananas trees and coconut trees, cool and ummh, scary. Sometimes you would see ayam hutan, (jungle fowl) fly into the undergrowth to hide. The other day I saw monkeys there.
Azman is my mother’s new neighbour, he had just moved in a few months ago. After he settled down, the story was that an old couple, about sixties came over and introduced themselves as Azman’s neighbour one night. When asked where did they live, because Azman hasn’t seen them before, they just casually said, “Situ ha, seberang jalan tu” (Just over there, across the road). Azman told my parent and Tahiron about it.
Tahiron said, “Orang Bunian tu tunjukkan diri dia pada selected type of people only, jenis orang yang baik atau orang yang jahat. Jenis orang yang tahap nafsu dia tinggi, bukan macam jenis kita, jenis nafsu amarah ni.”

The other picture, of a piece of land, cleared and abandoned. I was told that the plan was to build a football stadium (a small one) at the site. When the land was cleared to this stage by the contractor, a delegation of Orang Bunian meet Tok Sidang of my village and complained that their village is being destroyed by the contractor. The Orang Bunian went further by issuing threat that if the contractor doesn’t stop, someone will be killed there. Tok Sidang had no choice but to stop the project.

One time, a villager close to that site had a kenduri kahwin. Towards the evening, when there were fewer guests, a van came. The people were wearing green, ie green shirt, green trousers and green songkok. Some of them speak Javanese fluently, while some of them speak Malay. Then even give money gifts just like what people normally do in these parts of Selangor. Like normal guests to a wedding, they were served with rice and beef rendang and traditional kuih. But then the host went inside to got something, when he came out again, they all disappeared, gone. Sure the house owner knew that they were Orang Bunian.