That Kapok Tree

There are several eerie stories about that giant kapok (cotton) tree with a huge hollow in its trunk (like a door) barely a hundred feet from our Bedok kampong house but it is time to share one that our father experienced himself. In those days kampong areas were dimly lit by yellowish light lamp posts every hundred feet or so. He shared with us that once in the dark and early morning, around 5am when he drove off for his morning shift at Caldecott Hill, he looked out of his rear view mirror and it just so happens that the kapok tree was in his rear. Then he saw something chilling.. lit barely by his car’s rear lights was a lady in white bending over to pick up the fallen cotton seeds around the tree. He then looked back to the front but when he relooked into his rear mirror, that lady was gone. We don’t have a photo of this tree but this one was part of a larger photo he took where it shows some branches of the tree along with our neighbours house just across from our home. The left shadow was the corner of our lower house where the kitchen was.

1971