Horror From the Past: What to Expect From Night at the Library 2019
Come and experience Night at the Library, where macabre highlights from our collections come alive before your very eyes. Over 600 young and young-at-heart horror-fans plumbed the literary depths of the National Library building in the first hair-raising Night at The Library last year. This year promises a whole new experience for you: Expect a dark web of stories weaved into existence through film screenings, readings and talks in the dark as we go even deeper to explore the horror around us.
Here is a glimpse of what’s in store for the Hantu and Hauntings tour:
Vanishing Tradesmen of Mystical Arts
The vanishing trades of Malay traditional healers (bomohs), Chinese fortune-tellers and the Indian ‘parrot’ astrologers (killijosiyam) have long captured the imagination of many generations of Singaporeans.
Dive into the far side of history with these colourful characters from the pages of arcane titles in our collection such as Malay Magic: Being an Introduction to the Folklore and Popular Religion of the Malay Peninsula, penned by Englishman William Walter Skeat in 1900. The documenting of traditional beliefs and practices of the indigenous Malays when cultural changes brought about by western colonialism had not yet penetrated the region will show you that there is more than meets the eye with these tradesmen and their practices.
Murder Most Foul
Rites and rituals abound in our lives, but what happens when seemingly innocuous practices take a sinister turn? Take an edgy tour through the gritty annals of true crime history gleaned from our newspaper archives, including a ritual killing by a former pop singer-turned-medium whose ‘cleansing’ ritual for a hapless client turned out to be a terrifying plot for plunder and murder. Definitely not for the fainthearted!
The Horror Fiction Gallery
From ghostwriters in True Singapore Ghost Stories, to politicians like our former Minister of Social Affairs, Othman Wok (whose book Malayan Horror: Macabre Tales of Singapore and Malaysia in the 50s’ is a primer for home-grown spooky stories), many master horror storytellers walk among us.
Asian Ghost Stories — Nicky Moey | Physical Copy
A fright fest will not be complete without a dose of horror tales read aloud in the dead of the night. From the National Library’s horror collection comes tales of a mysterious old woman in your backyard and a real-life investigation into a half-constructed old house on a hill. You may or may not be a believer, but one thing’s for sure, the sense of terror they conjure is all too real.
Come join us at the witching hour and feel the goose bumps when you walk with the unseen occupants in the National Library building.
Night at the Library 2019
25 Oct 2019 (Fri), 26 Oct 2019 (Sat)
After-hours tour: 9:30 pm (First entry), 12:30 am (Last entry)
Film screenings: 8:30 pm, 10:30 pm
Talks and readings by authors and librarians: 7:30 pm, 10:00 pm, 11:00 pm
National Library Building, Level 1, 100 Victoria Street
For free admission, simply borrow four NLB books or eBooks in October to gain individual entry.
For more details, visit go.gov.sg/nlb-natloct-cm.
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Text by
Michelle Heng and Jacqueline Lee
National Library Board
