Amaterasu: The Old Changi Hospital (OCH)

The Torture Chamber

Perhaps this is the 2nd most scariest place in OCH after the mortuary. Out of so many wards and rooms, we found one that is remarkably different. Even for today it has a kind of emergency red-and-white plastic tape barring it off from access. It didn't seems to safe guard people from any physical danger inside the room, but may be from something else... This particular room (rather we call it a chamber) unlike the others with open wall ends on top is completely self-contained. The walls are made of thick solid concrete and unpainted.

Further inside you will see some concrete built-up structure as if it was used for securing something tight on the floor. One of the horrible signs is the metal chains with one end set loose and the other end securely fixed on the wall. It seemed strong enough to tie up a tiger. And, you can see maroon colored blood stains are still left on the floor. Absolutely horrible. One would expect to see such a chamber in a prison but never in a hospital! But don't forget, this is a military hospital used by the Japanese. There are many undocumented stories saying that during the war many "important" citizens and POWs were detained at OCH. Most had never been seen again, and they were believed to be tortured to death over here.


The Torture Chamber

A Mystery Of Underground Bunker

There are rumors saying that OCH has an underground bunker under the hill that connects to the barracks nearby. We found some suspicious spots that very few people know about. The first spot is the main lift at OCH inside has a button for going underground. But the lift now is immobilized. The second and third spots are the hastily sealed up mound by simply dumping plenty of concrete at the ground floor staircase, and the exit door at the other end of the building got tightly nailed shut respectively. This clue suggested us to believe firmer that such an underground bunker exists.

Throughout the 70 years of history from pre-war British occupation to post-war Japanese occupation, it would be beyond our imagination on what secret treasures may have hidden down there. Having those main entrances to the underground bunker completely sealed up on the ground floor and the fact that we were not able to break in (and we never wanted to do that), we had to look for a secret passage if there is any. A bold idea though it turned out as a failure is to try search for the secret passage from top-down. Right on the top of the building there is a small open look-out space. From there we found a chimney which we suspected is connected to the underground bunker.

People who were in underground did need some air vent for breathing. Ok, true enough, this was what supported our believed. However, like a long tunnel, the chimney was so narrow that can barely allow one person climbing in and out. By using some special equipment we descended our camera deep down to the tunnel and captured some photos. We were counting the depth as the camera went down: 1 meter, 2 meter, 3, 4, 5 ... The tunnel was long and deep even our strongest halogen light could not reach the bottom. It looked as if it were leading to hell.

After 20 meters or so, we had found bats resting on the wall of the tunnel for one moment, but they were gone for the next. What does this suggest? The tunnel was not dead-ended and down there may live a kingdom of bats! A thought of it made us shivered. So for our safety, we called off this exploration, and we do strongly advise people PLEASE DON'T TRY IT. If you can ever get in, there will be more likely to have another police report of man missing in OCH than you can safely walk out in one whole piece.

The tunnel that is speculated leading to the underground bunker

An Eerie Scene at The West

Most people who went to OCH would have asked this FAQ: where is mortuary? Although they looked up and down, level by level and corner by corner in the OCH compound, they would never find it. The mortuary is not located in the main buildings but in a small timber house at the most west side of the OCH territory. There is a small road that connects to it from behind the hill. Most people wouldn't notice about it. And that is the idea. Just like we don't prominently see vehicles that deliver corpses running around the roads. With the kind permission of the security guard and our privileges from NHB, we were allowed to walk near the mortuary to take a picture. "There is nothing special there, my friends. All the fridges are now empty ones", the security guard exclaimed.

"The compound was or rather is really haunted. The spirits are especially active on Monday, Wednesday and Friday,” according to the security guard with a definite voice tone. "Usually we can only see them with their back facing us, they seldom show their front," he added. Door slamming, lady screaming in the middle of the night is already a norm thing for him.

On one particular incident at around 1:45 AM, a strong gust of wind blew suddenly when he was reading the paper, making his hair stood on ends. As he raised his head to take a peek at the surrounding, he saw two ladies, a Malay and the other Chinese, standing just 1 meter beside him. When asked about how he feels about his job as a night guard, he said that it was scary in the beginning but he is used to it now. Up to now, the mortuary was still well maintained. It allows accommodation up to a maximum of four corpses.