Indonesian debate over new capital Nusantara reflects Southeast Asia's obsession with the supernatural - and Kalimantan's spooky stories

When Edy Mulyadi, a journalist and small-time politician, hit the headlines in Indonesia last month for calling the location of its planned new capital city "a place where genies dump kids", he sparked a backlash from community groups in Kalimantan.

But the resulting debate also revealed the extent to which tales of the supernatural pervade modern-day thinking across the archipelago nation of 274 million people, and the rest of Southeast Asia.

Mulyadi's comments - made in a YouTube video shortly after Indonesia's House of Representatives passed a new law in January allowing for the country's capital to be relocated from Jakarta to "Nusantara" in East Kalimantan province - took aim at the proposed site on the island of Borneo, which he said was only suitable for "kuntilanak and genderuwo".

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

Vampiric spirits that are often said to take the form of vengeful pregnant women who are unable to give birth, kuntilanak can be found in the mythologies of not only Indonesia, but also Singapore and Malaysia, where they are known as pontianak. Genderuwo, meanwhile, are mythological yeti-like creatures that have long been rumoured to wander Indonesia's densely forested interior.

Mulyadi received a tongue-lashing on social media, while some groups held rallies calling for his arrest and prosecution for insulting the region. Others demanded that he submit to punishment under the customary law, or hukum adat, of Indonesia's indigenous peoples

Yet to others, Mulyadi's comments have spotlighted the assumptions that Indonesians from outside Kalimantan still make about an island that has for centuries been associated with myths and legends, where supernatural creatures like ghosts and jinn, or genies, are said to dwell - and where humans fear to tread.

Jamal Oge, a traditional dancer and member of the Paser indigenous group in East Kalimantan, said that these kinds of assumptions were commonplace.

We have been imprisoned by the idea that Kalimantan is just one big forest, that we eat people here"We have been imprisoned by the idea that Kalimantan is just one big forest, that we eat people here," he told This Week in Asia. "If Mulyadi had been talking about where he comes from, that would probably have been fine, but don't start pointing fingers at other regions."

Jamal said Kalimantan has a long and rich history of spooky phenomena, but outsiders often fail to understand the nuance in ghost stories that have been passed down among those living in the region for generations. In the indigenous Paser culture, for example, there is a belief in ghosts called uwoq which have their roots in animism.

"Uwoq are evil spirits or demons," Jamal said, adding that qualifiers are added to the term depending on the places they are thought to dwell. Uwoq botung, for example, are said to live in bamboo, uwoq danum in the water and uwoq tunden in the mountains.

An uwoq can be persuaded to stop haunting someone if engaged in "gentle ... meaningful dialogue", Jamal said, adding that all Kalimantan's ghosts need to be treated with respect.

All too often, however, the region's many myths and legends find themselves at the butt of the joke. In 2014, then-governor of Jakarta Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama courted controversy when he suggested the ghosts of Kalimantan were responsible for the disappearance of AirAsia Flight 8501, which was later found to have crashed into the sea - killing all 162 people on board. Ahok backtracked on his comments soon afterwards, claiming he was only joking.

References to jinn are not especially unusual in Indonesia as they have the distinction of being one of the few occult entities that Islam - which 80 per cent of the population follows - does not prohibit adherents from believing in. Jinn have long been accepted as an integral part of Islamic mythology and theology, and are mentioned multiple times in the Koran.

But Indonesia is rumoured to be home to a plethora of other ghosts and spirits besides jinn. As well as kuntilanak and the Bigfoot-like genderuwo, there are hopping zombies wrapped in funeral shrouds known as pocong, and babi ngepet - fearsome shape-shifting boar demons often blamed for stealing riches from unsuspecting villagers. Many of these ghostly phenomena have their roots in rural belief systems that date to pre-Islamic Indonesia.

Even the names of some parts of Kalimantan lend themselves to belief in the occult, in particular Pontianak in West Kalimantan, whose namesake ghost it was that Mulyadi claimed still haunts the island. Legend has it that Pontianak's founder, Syarif Abdurrahman Alkadrie, named the city after the Malay word for the vampiric spirits because he had to use cannon fire to drive away the ones that used to lurk there before he could establish it in 1777.

Supinah, a traditional ritual leader of the indigenous Benuaq Dayak community in East Kalimantan, told This Week in Asia that many of Kalimantan's ghost stories were regional twists on Indonesian cult favourites, such as the kuntilanak which are known locally as banzi.

"This kind of ghost lives in the forest and while some are friendly and mind their own business, some are known to disturb people," she said. "Banzi usually disturb mothers who are about to give birth causing them to lose excessive amounts of blood or making the baby become stuck in the birth canal."

According to Supinah, banzi can also seduce and then terrorise both men and women, sometimes taking on the form of a beautiful woman with long nails and long hair or appearing as the figure of a tall man. "Firstly, the banzi will usually come to people in a dream before appearing before them in real life," she said.

Villagers foraging in forests or working in fields far away from home are a favoured target, Supinah said, with the banzi appearing to them and capturing the objects of their desire, whisking them away into the trees never to return..

"If a person goes missing while looking for vegetables or goes into the forest and doesn't return, we say they have been taken by a banzi," she said. "If a boy is lost in the forest, a female ghost must have taken him."

Bakhrul Khair Amal, a sociologist at the State University of Medan, said that though ghost stories are contradictory to logic and religious norms, they serve a clear purpose in Indonesia.

"From an anthropological and a sociological point of view, ghost stories are all about the meaning behind the meaning," he told This Week in Asia.

"First of all, the labels we ascribe to ghosts are deeply subjective. There is no proof that these spirits exist, but all ghost stories have their own history and anthropology. But we have to look even deeper than that. What is the meaning behind this or that ghost?"

"When Mulyadi was talking about jinn in Kalimantan, for example, he was using it as shorthand for the issues he sees with relocation of the capital. That the site for the new capital is remote, that there are no people there, that it's primitive."

The same logic can also be applied to other phenomena like the banzi discussed by Supinah, which serve as a way of making sense of the unexplained, such as a sudden disappearance in a rural community where work in the forest is difficult and dangerous.

Ghostly apparitions can even serve as a way to protect the environment.

"Banzi usually dwell in the forest, so people say that if the forest area is damaged, the ghosts will move into trees in village areas instead or occupy empty houses," Supinah said.

A sudden death or unexplained health issue are also often ascribed to the work of ghosts, she added.

For his part, Mulyadi, who is a member of the nationalist Islamist Prosperous Justice Party, has apologised for his ghoulish comments, saying that he had not meant to offend the people of Kalimantan. He further clarified that he had indeed only meant to say that the location of the new capital is too remote.

"Has Mulyadi ever seen jinn in Kalimantan? Can he take us to the location where we can find them?" Bakhrul, the sociologist, said. "Of course not. But ghost stories have become a way of talking about our deeper fears without having to confront them directly."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Copyright (c) 2022. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.