Listen—I’m going to tell you about a place where the dead
don’t stay buried, and I’m not talking metaphorically here. I’m talking about a
hill in Singapore that the locals used to call Bukit Larangan—the
Forbidden Hill—and brother, there was a damn good reason they called it that.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s go back. Way
back.
Singapore used to be called Tumasik, which sounds like
something out of a fever dream, doesn’t it? The kind of name that sticks in
your throat when you try to say it out loud. You can find it mentioned in those
old Javanese manuscripts—the Nagarakrtagama and the Pararaton—books
so ancient they practically crumble when you breathe on them. According to a
scholar named Agus Aris Munandar (and he’d spent 2020 writing about this stuff,
probably hunched over his desk at three in the morning like all good obsessives
do), Tumasik was just another piece in Majapahit’s empire, a vassal state in
the Malay world. Nothing special. Nothing to write home about.
Except it was.
Around 1397—and we’re talking about a time when most of
Europe was still figuring out that bathing occasionally might be a good
idea—Majapahit came knocking on Tumasik’s door. And by knocking, I mean they
brought an army. The place was ruled by a guy named Parameswara, a nobleman who’d
already been chased out of Palembang when Majapahit had come calling there too.
Poor bastard thought he could make a stand in this place he called Singapura.
He was wrong. He got his ass handed to him and fled to the Bertam River, where
he founded the Kingdom of Melaka.
(History’s funny that way—sometimes losing is the best thing
that can happen to you.)
But here’s where it gets interesting. Here’s where the story
starts to feel like one of mine.
The hill itself—Fort Canning Hill, though it wouldn’t get
that name for another four hundred years or so—stands only 156 feet tall. That’s
nothing, right? You could climb it in fifteen minutes if you weren’t out of
shape. It sits in the southeastern part of Singapore Island, close enough to
the Singapore Strait that on a clear day you can see Batam Island squatting
there in the distance like a sleeping giant.
Back in 1330, a Chinese traveler named Wang Dayuan stumbled
through and wrote about a place called Ban Zu—probably a mangled
translation of pancur, meaning “spring” or “fountain.” There was
freshwater bubbling up from that hill, see, and in the tropics, that’s worth
more than gold. Wang described the people there as sea-folk, living under some
tribal elder, making their living from whatever the ocean decided to give them
that day.
The Malays knew the truth, though. They knew that hill was
sacred. They knew it was forbidden.
And they were right to be scared.
The British Arrive (And Nothing Good Ever Follows the British)
February 6, 1819. Remember that date. That’s when Sultan
Hussein Shah and Temenggung Abdul Rahman put their signatures on a piece of
paper and handed Singapore over to the British Empire. Thomas Stamford
Raffles—and doesn’t that sound like a name out of Dickens—had orchestrated the
whole thing from behind the scenes like the puppet master he was.
The British needed to plant their flag somewhere. Needed to
mark their territory like dogs pissing on a tree. And where did they choose?
Where do you think?
That’s right. The Forbidden Hill.
William Farquhar was the poor sap who got the job. Acting
administrator of Singapore, which meant he got to do all the dirty work while
Raffles took the credit. He gathered up some Malays from Melaka—probably had to
threaten them, maybe promise them money, because no local was going to set foot
on that hill willingly—and up they went.
Can you picture it? The heat pressing down like a wool
blanket soaked in warm water. The jungle breathing around them, insects
screaming their endless song. And Farquhar, sweating through his British wool
uniform, hauling that Union Jack up the hill while the Malays with him kept
glancing over their shoulders, waiting for something to reach out from between
the trees and drag them all into the darkness.
They planted the flag. The Malays started calling it Bukit
Bendera—Flag Hill. But you know what? They still called it the Forbidden
Hill too. Because a piece of cloth doesn’t change what a place is.
Raffles—good old Thomas Stamford Raffles—he liked the view
so much he decided to build his house there. Had a fellow named G.D. Coleman
design it, all wood and thatch, like he was some kind of gentleman farmer
playing at civilization. Raffles lived there from 1819 to 1822, and I
wonder—did he hear things at night? Did he wake up at three in the morning with
his heart hammering, convinced he’d heard footsteps outside his door? Did he
see shadows moving in the corners of rooms, shadows that shouldn’t have been
there?
The historical record doesn’t say. But I bet he did.
Later administrations expanded the place. John Crawfurd
added more rooms in 1824. Raffles got it in his head to plant a botanical
garden—because nothing says “we’ve conquered this place” like forcing English
roses to grow in a tropical hellscape—and set aside part of the hill as a
European cemetery.
A cemetery. On the Forbidden Hill. Where God knows what was
already buried.
What Lies Beneath (And It Always Lies Beneath)
1859. The British decided the hill needed to be a fort.
Charles John Canning oversaw the construction, and from that day forward,
everyone started calling it Fort Canning Hill. The old name—Bukit
Larangan—started to fade from memory, the way old names always do. But the
locals still knew. They remembered.
And then they started digging.
You want to know what happens when you dig up sacred ground?
When you take jackhammers and shovels to a place where the dead have been
sleeping for centuries? Let me tell you about the Singapore Stone.
June 1819. Raffles was clearing land on the southern bank of
the Singapore River, right across from the hill, when his workers found it: a
three-meter-tall monolith covered in writing. Old Javanese, written in Kawi
script, maybe from the 13th century. Nobody could read it. Nobody knew what it
said. But looking at it must have felt like looking at a tombstone in a
language you don’t speak—you know it means something, you know it’s important,
you just don’t know what.
The British left it alone for a while. Twenty-four years, to
be exact. And then in 1843, they needed to build Fort Fullerton, and that stone
was in the way.
So they blew it up.
Just like that. Centuries of history, some message carved
into stone by hands that had been dust for six hundred years, and they blew
it up. Some scholars thought the writing might have been Pali. Others said
Tamil. Nobody knew for sure, and now nobody ever will, because the stone is in
pieces, scattered, lost.
(You want to know what happens when you destroy something
sacred? When you break something that was meant to stand forever? You wait.
That’s what happens. You wait and see what comes crawling out of the dark.)
1926. They were building a reservoir on the hill’s slope
when they found the jewelry. Necklaces. Armlets decorated with kala
motifs—demon heads, frozen in stone with their mouths open like they were
screaming. Six diamond rings. A jeweled clasp.
R.O. Winstedt studied that armlet in 1928 and declared it
Majapahit-style, 14th century. The decorative patterns matched the ones carved
into temple doorways back in Java. Someone important had been buried on that
hill. Someone who’d worn demon heads on their arms and diamonds on their
fingers.
And the British had torn it all apart.
The Dig (Because We Never Learn)
1984. A guy named John Miksic decided it was time to do a
proper excavation. He went digging near a tomb called “Iskandar Shah”—the
Malays believed it was connected to Parameswara, the guy who’d fled Majapahit
all those centuries ago. Miksic found roof tiles, ceramic vessels, earthenware.
The tiles matched designs from East Java, proving what everyone had suspected:
ancient Singapore—Tumasik—had been part of the Majapahit cultural sphere.
The hill had been a settlement. People had lived there,
loved there, died there. Built their homes and raised their children and buried
their dead. And all of it had been covered up, paved over, turned into a
British fort and a tourist attraction.
But here’s the thing about history—about the past, about the
dead: they don’t stay buried. Not really. You can build your forts and plant
your flags and pretend you’ve conquered something, but the ground remembers.
The stones remember.
And on nights when the moon is dark and the air is heavy
with the promise of rain, if you stand on Fort Canning Hill—on Bukit Larangan,
the Forbidden Hill—and listen very carefully, you can hear them.
The whispers of the dead.
The ones who were here first. The ones who will be here
last.
The ones who are still waiting.
---
Fort Canning Hill still stands today, 156 feet of
manicured parkland in the heart of modern Singapore. Tourists visit. Children
play. Nobody talks about the Forbidden Hill anymore.
But the locals—the ones whose families have been there
for generations—they know better. They know you don’t disturb what’s buried.
They know some places are forbidden for a reason.
They know.
They remember.
And late at night, when the city sleeps, the hill
remembers too.
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