4 NS Ghost Stories That NSFs Would Have Heard of Before Enlisting

Last Updated on 2023-03-19 , 8:53 am

Typically, before a young man entered the army, he will be told horror stories about the NS experience.

One topic that never fails to come up will be ghost stories. I have trawled the internet as well as my own brain for four of the scariest NS ghost stories (in my own opinion) that will guarantee to make you shiver in fear.

The story of Charlie Company

This story spoke about the ghost at Charlie Company at the old Basic Military Camp 1. It was during the March to June period 1993 batch and the whole story started at the 16km route march.

According to the story, one of the recruits, REC W.K Tham was down with flu, but did not sound out when the Officer Commanding of the company asked if anyone is feeling unwell. He fell out and took cover in the forest during the route march and was not seen alive again. His disappearance was only discovered late in the evening after the route march during the sending of arms.

His body was only discovered the next day by his own platoon commander. A post-mortem showed that he had a ruptured stomach which could be explained by gulping down huge amount of water but there were puncture marks on his body which could not be satisfactorily explained.

Since then, there were weird occurrences that took place at Charlie Company. One instructor could smell a foul stench from inside his cupboard when he went to collect his personal effects.

Also, some recruits heard REC Tham shouting for the entire company to fall in the dead of the night. The scariest incident that happened was when two recruits saw the apparition of REC Tham standing in front of his cupboard. The bunk was subsequently converted into a store room and the doors fitted with padlocks.

In addition, the route for route march was diverted to avoid the area when Golf Company noticed a figure of a soldier in Full Battle Order standing in the forest.

Standby Organs

Most people will have known about this. My boss told me about this story which apparently everybody knew.

During BMT in Pulau Tekong, he heard a story of this recruit who went missing at a popular field camp site back then; in fact, his field camp was held in the exact same area. When the missing recruit was found, his body was found hanging high up and his internal organs were arranged neatly on a ground sheet in a gruesome parody of Standby weapon.

Till date, no one can explain how he died or how his organs were organized so neatly. We are not able to verify when the incident happened nor do we know where the field camp site is.

However, we do want recruits to take the buddy-system seriously. After all, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

The grandmother and her grandson

This is a very popular story that is guaranteed to make you shiver. As the legend goes, a grandmother and grandson will be walking around in the middle of the night.

If any of the recruits are not asleep, they will be asked if they want to join the two of them for a game. What is scary about this is, if you pretend to sleep, they will know and hover beside you and say I know you’re not sleeping.

We do not know what consequences there is if you are caught. Some say that anyone caught not sleeping will be found hanging dead in a forest, while another version says that they will go away after some time. They were known to haunt Charlie company and Delta company.

Whichever the reason, I don’t think I could keep up the charade of sleeping if the ghostly grandmother calls me out. Sometimes, I wonder if this story was passed down to make recruits obey the lights out timing and go to bed.

Thursday Night Training

This was a story I heard even before I entered into BMT. Apparently, there was a directive that states that no night training can be held on Thursday nights due to too many strange happenings. There was a story of recruits going missing on route march and found dead with a tree trunk through their stomach.

Another story was of two commanders who scoffed at the idea of no night training on Thursday and intentionally stayed in the forest on a Thursday night. They were found dead the next day, one crumpled at the bottom of the tree and one hanging from a tree branch high up in the air. Both commanders have looks of fear etched on their faces, almost as if they were frightened to their deaths.

Whether it was true or not, night training were not held on Thursday nights anymore.