NOVEMBER is a chilling and potentially dangerous time to be driving along Scotts Road, one of Singapore's oldest thoroughfares, at night.
Lined along one side and stretching up on to Goodwood Hill remain a cluster of spectacular 'black and whites', grand throw-backs to the British colonial times when they were built as quarters for expatriate officers and so named after their distinctively painted exteriors.
While Singapore's colonial masters may be long gone, most of the homes are still inhabited by thick-skinned expatriates and spurned by superstitious Chinese. And perhaps rightly so.
The first home one encounters when turning off into Scotts Road from Orchard Road is a large house, occupied until recently by a former US Gulf War Marine, turned businessman, and his family.
He initially scoffed at talk of ghosts after hearing that previous tenants had not lasted long. But when away on business, his children would tell their mother they had seen Daddy on the lawn, claiming they had seen a Western man strolling by in khaki shorts.
With suspicions aroused and following a little investigation, they discovered the field behind the house had supposedly been used by the Japanese as a site for torturing the British during World War II and contained a mass grave.
Nearby stands the Goodwood Park Hotel, used as a command post by the occupying Japanese forces.