Close Encounter with the Unusual Kind..

I once worked on contract with one government agency in Kuala Lumpur, under their Property Department. I was the officer in charge of the building maintenance, in other word, unofficially I was the Building Manager. I had a team of cleaning contractor, landscape contractor, security guards, maintenance contractor, besides the in-house security guards, lifts attendants, maintenance crew, technical crew, administration staffs and a list of suppliers and contractors under my wings.

Although my working hours were actually from 8.00 am to 4.00 pm, my routines normally started early in the morning and ended around 9.00 pm. I also had to come when there were emergencies at the building, sometimes I had to work during the weekend when major repairs needed to be done and when some events were held in the building. At that time, my life was my work and my work was my life. My pager was with me everywhere I go.
One night during a weekend, my pager was beeping, and the call was from my chargeman. He said it was raining heavily in town, and that our building was flooded. The crew were going to shut-down all the flood-gates at the basement parking and he wanted me to be around. So I dressed myself in jeans and sports jacket, and rushed myself to the building. My technical assistant, Mazlin was already there with the maintenance crew. We hurried to Basement 2, it was lighted dimly, the rain became heavier, and gushing in like a waterfall into the basement area. We started closing all the flood-gates.

Once the flood-gates were closed, the basement became dimmer, and quieter. I looked around to see if any of the cars there were damaged. There were only a few cars around. Suddenly my eyes caught a figure standing on the stairs watching us. I thought he was one of our crew, then I noticed he had a totally different uniform. He was wearing an oversized shorts and shirt, like those worn by the people from the Japanese invasion era, and he had a rifle in his hand and he was also wearing a hat. He looked like an army or police from those old days. I was so scared, I couldn’t move an inch. I whispered to Mazlin, she turned around and saw him too, she said, “Askar zaman Jepun mana pulak ni, biar betul! (Japanese army, you must be joking!)” Then we tried to get our chargeman who was standing a little bit further from us, to come nearer and have a look at the man standing around 80 meters away from us. He came nearer and when we told him and he turned around to look, the soldier just disappeared into thin air.

Our maintenance crew and security guards went to search for the man in every corner of the building, but he couldn’t be found. We were puzzled because, as the flood-gates were downed (closed), the whole building was in total locked-up position, and all the main doors and entrances to the building were closed and guarded by our security men. So where did he came from, and where did he disappeared?