Ghost Map

EN PL

Haunted places · Prisons, hospitals and asylums

Lawang Sewu – the Thousand Doors of Semarang

When
since 1942 date from records made at the time
Where
Lawang Sewu, Tugu Muda square, Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia
Verdict
Legend

The colonial railway headquarters in Semarang, where Japan's military police jailed and tortured people in the basements, is said to be Indonesia's most haunted building.

Show on the timeline

-6.98°, 110.41° · dimmed: other phenomena within 1,500 km

What happened

Lawang Sewu – Javanese for ‘a thousand doors’ – was built in 1904–1907 (and completed in 1919) as the headquarters of the Nederlandsch-Indische Spoorweg Maatschappij, the first railway company in the Dutch East Indies. The monumental building with its stained glass, designed by the firm of J.F. Klinkhamer and B.J. Ouëndag, was meant to project imperial power. After the Japanese invasion in 1942 the army took it over, and the Kempeitai turned the basement of Building B into a detention centre; stories spread of torture and executions. In October 1945, during the fighting for Semarang, troops entering the city used a tunnel leading into the complex; in five days of fighting Indonesian fighters and railway workers were killed, and a monument now honours them. After years of neglect the building gained a reputation as the most haunted in the country: people speak of the ghosts of tortured prisoners, a headless Dutchwoman, a Dutchwoman who took her own life and a kuntilanak, the spirit of a woman who died in childbirth. The horror film Lawang Sewu: Dendam Kuntilanak (2007) cemented the image. After restoration the complex was opened in 2011 by First Lady Ani Yudhoyono; it is now a railway museum.

Witnesses

Visitors, including young people who spend nights there to test their nerve; paranormal TV shows; residents of Semarang.

Explanations and hypotheses

The historian Michael G. Vann argues that Lawang Sewu's ghost stories reflect unresolved layers of Indonesian history – colonialism, the Japanese occupation and the revolution – as well as the Javanese belief that a violent death binds the soul to a place. The ghost reports have no independent confirmation. Paradoxically, it was the building's fame as a ‘haunted house’ and the public's appetite for the macabre that helped save it, while after the restoration the authorities tried rather to soften its dark image.

Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.

Sources

  1. Inside Indonesia – Michael G. Vann, Haunted house, haunted history (2013)
  2. The Jakarta Post – Simon Marcus Gower, Lawang Sewu: A haunted, sad place (2009)
  3. Antara – First Lady inaugurates renovated Lawang Sewu building (2011)

More: Wikipedia (en)