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I love stories like this, ghost stories.
- Yeah, they'd done a lot of torture at the place, lots of people die there.
- We heard a voice.
...about places we're not supposed to go.
We are warned not to go.
But I'm not a ghost hunter.
The fear, the superstition,..
always hides a bigger story.
A true story.
What really happened here?
And if you knew, would you still go there?
I WOULDN'T GO IN THERE transcript by chochancuuDuc (subscene.com)
Hong Kong. This is where it began.
A good number of people here
believe they've had some kind of paranormal encounters.
One story in particular caught my attention.
Ricky. School teacher by day,
but war gamer by night.
I work as a high-school teacher.
War games taught me to manage my emotions
and my temper.
Whenever I face an obstacle at school
or at work, I consider it a challenge.
We usually look for old and abandoned schools or factories.
That's why I organized the game in Tat Tak school.
We split into two teams, A team and B team.
The enemy found me and shot me.
I went to the dead zone.
My friend pointed into the room and asked,
"Do you see a man squatting there?"
I looked closer and it seemed as if he was squatting down to pick something up.
He was wearing white.
So I decided to walk towards him.
But when I reached the room, I saw nothing.
That's when we began to feel something was strange.
Until now, I still can't explain what we saw.
Tat Tak School in Ping Shan village,
rated as one of Hong Kong's most haunted places.
My theory is:
where there's a concentration of ghost stories,
there's usually a darker true story.
Something forgotten, or something someone doesn't want you to know.
This city was a dizzily financial juggernaut.
With one foot in the future,
and one foot planted in ancient traditions.
A city where the dead, they're right alongside the living.
And according to some, the dead didn't just live there.
- Hey, nice to find and meet you!
My contact here, Tammie, a local fixer.
She hooked me up with someone who could tell me about local beliefs
in the spiritual world.
Madam Ling Tse is a believer, a ghost whisperer,
who said she helped people connect with dead relatives.
Apparently, she had a constant flow of customers.
Madam Ling Tse explained that belief in the afterlife is common place here,
based on a notion that the souls of their ancestors seeking peace.
According to her, when a soul is lost,
they bring their torment from the other realm into this one.
- So I'm going to the Tat Tak School later,
are there ghosts there?
I wasn't convinced by the ghost photos,
but even though I'm not a believer,
the madam did shed some lights on why so many people here are.
- So, uncle, I'm trying to get to the Tat Tak School,
have you heard of it?
- M goi. ("thanks" in Cantonese)
This place wasn't just closed, it looked completely abandoned,
like it was left in the middle of a war zone.
My question was why.
Alright, this place looked definitely creepy.
Very very creepy.
Oh, there are dogs.
Dogs did not look familiar to me. Oh man.
With an abandoned school, it seems they've gone to a lot of trouble to keep people out.
A lot of barbed wire, barking dogs.
This looks like the best place to get in.
So this is it. This is the Tat Tak school.
This is where Ricky's story happened.
And that, right there, where Ricky said he had his first sighting.
Let's take a look.
You can see some sort of an auditorium.
Maybe a gymnasium used way back in the days.
Kids running around, playing games,
getting beaten by bullies, picked up for sports teams.
And you can see why this is a perfect place for war games.
And it's as creepy as ****.
So, as you can tell, I pretty much lost all light.
So I should switch to infrared mode.
This is where Ricky's story happened.
In fact, right now, I'm sitting inside what he called, probably enough, the dead zone.
And they thought they saw in the corner,
some old man hunched over cleaning.
But when they shine their lights on, they couldn't see anything.
So they both turned to each other, and I think they thought
"Is our mind playing tricks on us?".
But all that happened here.
Oh, what the ****?
Oh my God.
That looks like, it's some sort of a painting of a puppet master, something.
Or Steve Jobs?
Let's go down and check out the other side.
Look, there are brand new text books. But I couldn't make up these titles.
Fake, hollow. Completely empty.
Very very bizzare.
What kind of school contains hollow books?
Oh wowwwww...
These are the dark corners of the school.
I don't know how you describe this room.
That is just weird.
But these dimensions, metal gate windows and some metal gate doors,
and a concrete pot in the corner, as anything other than a cell.
So the real question is, why does a school need cells?
My first exploration into the infamous Tat Tak school tossed up a red hairing.
Strange markings on the walls, foreign language, bizzare graffiti.
It all seeemed completely out of place.
Why does a school need cells?
A movie set.
It turned out that after the school shutdown,
producers used it as a filming location.
That explained the prison cells.
They were fake.
But why had they been abandoned in the first place?
Tammie tracked down someone who could tell me why the school was abandoned.
Turned out, the last principle still lived in the neighbouring village.
- How old is this guy? - I don't know, retirement age.
- Do you happen to know the principle of the Tat Tak school?
- They didn't seem happy to see me.
Let's go down the alley and see if there's anyone
- 'cause that's probably the one that he goes to. - Sure.
- Hello. - Hello uncle.
We're trying to find the principle of the Tat Tak School. Do you know if he's around?
Ah, that would be why he didn't answer.
We're trying to find the principle of the Tat Tak school but we're unable to reach him.
Do you know anything about him?
He is your brother? I have no idea he's your brother.
So why did the school close?
Really? Just how?
Another dead end.
According to Uncle Fat, the school wasn't shutdown
because of any mysterious or tragic circumstances.
I hadn't yet found a connection
between Tat Tak school's paranormal sightings
and any true verifiable story.
So I brought in my investigation.
Replaying Ricky's testimony,
I found another clue worth a closer look.
After a few games, it was my team's turn to hide.
I decided to hide in the ladies' toilet.
Then, I had a feeling of something very close to me.
I turned and saw nothing.
I felt something wasn't right.
So I decided to leave the toilet.
I wasn't thrilled about heading back inside,
but Ricky's experience in a room where he had said there had been rumors of a suicide
had given me sufficient reason.
I've been like avoiding it, but that,
right through these bushes and up the stairs is the woman's bathroom.
Let's take a look.
So I'm exploring the second floor here.
A weird smell in here.
That's starting to rain.
I know it's just the natural acoustic of having entered a house space
but this room sounds completely different.
Like the area just closes as soon as you enter.
Aw, it's eeriely quiet in here too.
So this is about where Ricky would have been,
crouching here in a stall in the ladies' bathroom,
hiding from his friends, thinking that no one would have been able to find him.
And you got to imagine yourself, sitting here quietly
and it's, suddenly you feel someone touching you in this small room from your back.
This is definitely the creepiest place in this building.
And I think... I think I will leave.
The list of Tat Tak's hauntings was mounting.
There was Ricky's testimony,
and then there was an incident that seemed to have physical consequences
on one member of a so-called spiritual exploration team.
There's another story here on the Web about a group of 12 kids
who actually heard about the stories here.
And they decided to sneak in, bravely, at night time.
And while they are wandering, all of their squad... they saw
a figure of a lady in red through the windows.
On the way out, one of the girls just started freaking out,
acting really strange,
screaming, choking herself and attacking her friends.
And they had to take her away on a gurney.
And later when she came to an interview,
she said that she had visions of people killing themselves, committing suicides.
And it turns out that there were rumors of a teacher at this school
who'd killed herself in one of the bathrooms.
The place gives me the creeps.
I knew it was the power of suggestion,
but I could see how those derelict schoolrooms
could conjure up imagine ghosts and weird sensations.
The girl said they saw an apparition,
a woman in red standing next to a grave.
Behind the building, believe it or not, a cemetery.
Why was it there, right next to a school?
I began to wonder if the lady in red had something to do with the people buried here.
If a school teacher did commit suicide, was this where she was buried?
Could a real tragedy have been the inspiration for this lady in red?
I sent an inquiry to the Hong Kong Police Department.
And then, I got my answer.
There was no record of a suicide at Tat Tak.
That suggested that the lady in red wasn't based on a real person.
It is possible she was based on a fictional one,
born out of ancient Chinese myths and legends,
maybe she was more than a product of some genious girls' imagination.
Joseph Bosco.
A professor of anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
His published work offers a possible explanation
to the lady in red
and Ricky's stories.
But I needed more details.
- So, specifically with the Tat Tak School,
I want to go see what there was about these stories involving 12 junior high school kids.
Now a group of them went and they were wandering out,
and they swear they saw a woman dressed in red
near some gravestones somewhere near the bathroom.
And what, what would that mean to you?
- That's very easily understood in the Chinese context.
The women in red really represent women who are violent ghosts.
They died a violent death and they are hungry ghosts.
It was not uncommon for women who are being by their mother-in-law
and in an untenable position, would kill and kind of revenge on their family.
And if they were wearing red, that would make them a specially-powerful ghost.
- There is a legend that there was a teacher,
who, uh, after she was ***, committed suicide in that bathroom.
Now, does that lead to that conclusion?
Does that make sense in the cultural context?
- It does, but any... it doesn't really have to have actually happened.
That is also a way of explaining why that place seemed so creepy.
Those stories are not necessarily true,
in the sense that you can look up in the newspaper and find out that that actually happened.
They can be true in that sense
of that's they're cultural way of explaning why those places make people feel uncomfortable.
The way I see it is you'v got an abandoned school with wild grass growing,
with sounds of dogs and graves within sight.
And then a lot of these stories are added on, because they make sense.
And it fills in the story in the Chinese context.
So it seemed like a perfect story,
but what we really have is a perfect setting
to elaborate ghost stories from.
Doctor Bosco provided a cultural explanation
of the suicide legend and the lady in red.
But then I happened on something I wasn't expecting.
I need to know more about the graves beside Tat Tak School.
But then Tammie told me all the graves belong to one ancient clan.
And that's when I realized the school,
the village, their history,... were all connected by one name.
Who were these Tangs?
My investigation into the Tat Tak School ghost stories and the nearby cemetery
have led me to question the history of the village and its people.
I had a hunch that all was not as it seemed in this sleepy town.
The entire village was part of a clan system.
And still remained a stronghold of traditional ways.
- What is this place?
- Are these family members as well? Are they all? All Tangs?
- About thousand. - Wow!
That this was clan territory put a new spin on the investigation.
The Tang, one of the oldest of the Five Great Clans of Hồng Kông.
Tang family members alive today
could trace their lineage back some 900 years.
Their ancestors were protective of their own,
proud, autonomous, not to be pushed around.
Was there a dark and hidden chapter in these people's long past?
I figured one of them could answer that question.
One historical monument had caught my eye.
I sought out Uncle Fat again, who, of course, was himself a Tang.
- I saw some cannons, over, in front.
When was the last time they were fired.
- Tell me about the British war, what, what British war?
- Wow.
- And then you just had them and they just came in handed for this war against the British?
You mind if I scan this?
Now this was a twist. A small clan taking on the British army
in an unknown war.
This was the lead I've been hoping for.
A true mystery.
This village held secrets.
Interesting thing was he mentioned a war with the British.
It seemed logical that a museum documenting more than 800 years of Tang Clan history
would have details about a local war with the British Empire.
But in every picture and every exhibit,
there was no record of a conflict with the British to be found.
- Hi. - Hello.
- May I ask you a question?
I came here because I was trying to find information about a war that happened right here
around maybe 1890s with the British.
- Sorry, but we have no information about that war.
How could there be no trace?
A tiny clan war battling the British should have been front-page news.
I was beginning to question, did this war actually happen?
Or was this, just another tall-tale?
I went to search the British government Hong Kong Archives.
If the Tang Clan did fight the British,
what was their motive?
Enclosure number 135, copy of proclamation. Translation.
"We hate English Barbarians,"
"who are about to enter our boundaries and take our land,"
"and will cause us endless evil."
"Day and night, be feared of the approaching danger,"
"suddenly people are dissatisfied at this,"
"and have determined to resist the Barbarians."
So there was a war. A forgotten war.
A direct confrontation with the British Empire
ignited, it appeared, due to British expansion.
Hong Kong Island.
Ceded by the Chinese to the British in 1842.
The Chinese had little choice,
having lost the First *** War.
The first treaty really didn't affect the villagers in the New Territories.
But more than 50 years later, the British demanded more.
The Chinese eventually signed a controversial 99-year lease,
giving the British more lands.
The New Territories were formed.
There was a British expansion right into the heart of Tang land.
Even in the 19th century,
taking on the British was not a good idea.
A military mismatch if there ever was one.
Ok, so this is the Museum of Coastal Defense.
This, which is the torpedo room, gives you a great example
of the firepower that the British had at the turn of the 19th century.
Now keep in mind, this is the firepower that the Tangs were facing
against their 300-year-old cannons right around the same time.
Antiquated gunpowder cannons up against the most powerful weaponry of the era.
With that kind of military imbalance, there must have been casualties.
I was convinced a war did happen.
But why was there so much historical footnote in the local Tang museum?
Was there something the villagers were trying to hide?
I was meeting another Tang, who claimed to have received first-hand information about the war.
Tang Kwong Yin's father first learned of the war as a child.
Intrigued, he wrote a history.
- How old is this place? - It's about 180 years old.
- 180 years, wow!
Primary school called Tat Tak School.
- The... this is the Tat Tak School? - Yeah, yeah.
- So your great-grandfather was the founder of the Tat Tak School?
- Yeah, one of the founders.
- They were all Tangs? - Yeah.
Beautiful food to serve our guest.
- And here is a good food, very happily to welcome... Ok... - Uhm, good.
The Tangs may once repel foreign invaders,
but I was made to feel very welcome.
Finally the elder Tang arrived,
and I got my chance.
I asked him if he could share the details of the book he'd written.
- Thank you.
Grandpa Tang's research provided some key information.
He called it The Six Day War.
More than 2500 people from nearby villages took part.
And it was funded primarily by the Tang clan.
They were the wealthiest, they had the most to lose.
And lose they did.
Grandpa Tang said the British killed more than 170 men from Ping Shan village alone.
But something wasn't right.
Enclosure number 135, copy of proclamation.
Translation.
"We hate the English Barbarians, who are about to enter our boundaries and take our land,
and will cause us endless evil."
The official records stated "No reported casualties".
Why had a discrepancy between Grandpa Tang's account: 176 deaths
and the official British record?
Was there a cover-up?
- So, how many people about took part?
- So if so many died, where are they buried?
Continued doubt about actual numbers.
But possible mass grave site.
Location: Kam Tin.
Chinese culture calls for respect and worship of one's ancestors.
This tomb was a mass grave.
A way of remembering ancestors with unknown names.
- So this is it.
This is the mass grave that the villagers were talking about.
It's a grave that doesn't have a name, doesn't have a family name.
It literally is a tomb for unknown soldiers,
those who died for loyalty and bravery.
If this is truly the final resting place of those Tang family clan members,
or whoever else joined them fighting against the British back in 1899,
you got to ask, what was it all for?
If there was a British cover-up
that led the identity of these men to remain hidden,
the question was why?
It had been 6 days in Hong Kong.
I started with a simple theory.
All these ghost stories were merely a smoke screen.
Behind the hauntings was a more horrifying true story.
The haunted school, the rumor of teacher committing suicide,...
proved to be impossible to confirm.
But when I brought my investigation into the school's village, Ping Shan,
I made a shocking discovery.
A war had taken place here.
A war between an ancient Chinese clan and the British Empire.
I had one more loose end.
Was this war intentionally kept a secret?
And if so, why?
British historian Patrick Hase authored the only English account
of the Six-Day War in 1899.
- So Doctor Hase, I'm trying to get a sense of what happened in Ping Shan in the war.
I'm trying to figure out why there's a discrepancy between the British version of events
and the Tang Clan version of events.
- The governor, Sir Henry Blake, didn't want any fighting at all.
He wanted to bring people together, not to divide them apart.
But they didn't tell the villagers this.
And so the villagers got very scared,
they though that there was going to be an oppressive difficult government.
Doctor Hase painted a revealing picture of the secret war.
A war that started over a misunderstanding and was quickly shrugged off.
Within a month of the end of the fighting,
he is, as he said, taking cigars with the leaders of the rebellion,
talking to them with his wishes of the New Territories
and asking them what their wishes were.
So the governor went out of his way, to be friendly.
But it appeared the British didn't just agreed to forgive,
they also took measures to forget.
He said that he was going to pass a sponge to wipe out all reference to the war.
He was never going to mention it again.
- Why did the Tang agree to that?
- The villagers, when they had realized
that they had a good relationship with the new administration,
that the new administration was willing to
forget the past, they weren't going to dwell on this war,
it was clearly interested to the leaders of the villages to do the same.
Also, the Chinese people do have a tend to... not to mention disasters
and not to dwell on them, and to forget them as quickly as they can.
And this was clearly a disaster.
So according to Doctor Hase, the both sides agreed to forget
and in doing so, suppress the story.
Local village cemeteries bore out the truth.
And not all of the Tang rebels remained nameless.
One of their descendants agreed to talk to me.
- Could you tell me about your grandfather?
- So which one is your grandfather?
- Ok, I'll take a look at them.
- One of these, right?
Not this one.
- That should be the name here. - The name is here.
It's kind of amazing.
Certainly I feel like nervous or something.
- I definitely had a good feeling about this one.
- So this is the final resting place of the leaders of the Tang insurgency?
So some of the Tang's insurgeons were remembered.
But not everyone was.
I knew that in Chinese beliefs, not caring for the souls of ancestors
could have unpleasant consequences.
- This is... is it a Daoist temple or Buddist temple?
It is a Daoist temple, but Chinese religion combine Daoism and Buddhism,
so we usually call it folk religion, because it combines all these different philosophies.
The Temple of One Hundred Names was no-ordinary place of worship.
- It's a home for people who don't have family to make offerings for them.
So they don't become hungry ghosts.
This, it's like an old-day home for the dead.
Chinese have two views of ghosts.
And in one hand, they sometimes are afraid of them
that they can attack them and cause them problems.
But then at the same time, they think of it as really-pathetic, pitiable creatures.
And they do this also as a kind of charity, or... or the goodness of their heart,
to help these souls going to the underworld.
- What are these pictures.
- So these are all the tablets of... of people who died,
who don't have family to take care of their ancestral tablets.
So each picture represents a tablet for that person.
They weren't able to send the bodies back to their homeland,
and so they keep the tablets here, so that somebody would be giving them incense and offerings
to keep them at peace.
- So this place is really all about the importance of family, improper burial?
- Yes.
The Ping Shan story had so many elements:
Mystery, Political cover-ups, Ancient beliefs.
The abandoned primary school had gained infamy
with tall tales of hauntings and ghosts.
But the real story for me, the real mystery,
was a century-old war expunged from the official records.
Now on the unmarked graves of those forgotten soldiers,
the souls of the villagers who fought this secret war
could be paid the reverence they deserved.
English subtitle by Eschede Enschede (YouTube): http://www.youtube.com/user/pinkpantherandpink Thanks for watching.