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The Rating and Valuation Department at Murray House in Central, employees of which reported ghostly activity in the 1960s. Photo: SCMP

Haunted Hong Kong: Murray House and its ghostly goings-on in the 1960s

From shadows cast by invisible subjects to strange noises, the occupants of Murray House and HMS Tamar reported unexplained occurrences in 1963, which stopped after a Buddhist exorcism was performed to appease the spirits

“The former Officers’ Mess at the junction of Garden Road and Queen’s Road East is haunted. So is the former HMS Tamar building a short distance to the east,” read the opening lines of a report in the South China Morning Post on May 5, 1963.

So convinced were some government employ­ees that ghosts prowled the premises that they sought permission to exorcise the spirits through Taoist rituals.

Members of the Rating and Valuation Department, which had recently moved into Murray House – the renamed former Murray Barracks Officers’ Mess building – told the Post: “On a number of occasions recently, drawings and blueprints laid out to dry were later found to have been smeared or modified by additional marks and signs […]

“Also, equipment in rooms in the western part of the building broke down or refused to function without any visible reason […] At times some of the staff heard unaccountable noises from the section of the building and also soft weird sounds which could not be explained. They also noticed shadows cast by invisible subjects.

Buddhist monks perform an exorcism at Murray House on May 19, 1963. Photo: SCMP

The building had been occupied by the Japanese during the second world war and the western part used as a detention centre, the Post reported. Several people had been tortured and died there, others had committed suicide.

At the former HMS Tamar building, then occupied by the administrative office of Radio Hongkong, one staff member claimed to have been in the bathroom when he felt a tugging at his sleeve and the air suddenly become uncomfortably warm.

On May 19, exorcism ceremonies were carried out at Murray House by 90 Buddhist monks in a 10-hour ritual designed to pacify the spirits. Before midnight “tablets [bearing] the names of those known to have died through calamity or atrocities on this site” were taken outside and burned in a furnace.

On June 7, the Post reported that the building’s employees no longer complained of ghostly goings-on.

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