Shadows and chills at Kellie’s Castle

With Halloween just around the corner, pays a visit to the creepiest building in Batu Gajah, Perak

The room I’m in was meant for Helen, one of William Kellie Smith’s children. Over the years, visitors have reported seeing her ghost in this room. The apparition was said to resemble that of a 6-year-old child with curly hair and dressed in a white blouse. All the eyewitnesses tell the same tale about the ghost child emerging from the door, hovering for a few seconds before vanishing into thin air!

Scared out of my wits, I decide to leave the room and explore the other “safer” parts of this rambling mansion built by Smith, who hailed from Moray Firth in Scotland.

THE EARLY YEARS

Born on March 1, 1870, Smith was the third of five children in a family that subsisted primarily on farming. Life was tough and the family struggled to make ends meet.

Fortunately, Smith was born during the time when the British were rapidly expanding their influence in the Far East. To young men like him, this represented a golden opportunity to seek better fortunes in British colonies like India, Burma and Malaya.

Smith eventually arrived in Batu Gajah, Perak in 1890 and began working for Charles Alma Baker, a colonial pioneer from New Zealand. Already a trained civil engineer at that time, Smith became involved in survey work and road construction in southern Perak.

Several years later, he branched out on his own by setting up William Smith, Civil Engineers, Architects and Contractors. Things started looking up when his company was awarded

experience. I had my strange room where

Part of Helen’s a two-year contract to supply ballasts for the Perak Railway in 1896. Unfortunately, that project was halted soon after it was launched.

Despite this early setback, Smith remained steadfast. His partnership with Alma Baker had yielded handsome profits and he used that to acquire a 607-hectare concession in Batu Gajah which he subsequently christened Kellas Estate. He tried planting coffee but soon discovered that the boom was over and prices had started to spiral downwards due to stiff competition from Brazil.

Later, Smith learnt about the invention of the pneumatic tyre. The engineer in him knew that this new invention would soon lead to a huge demand for rubber. Acting on his hunch, Smith quickly set out to replace his ailing coffee plants with hundreds of rubber saplings. Within a short period of time, he started reaping handsome gains.

It was some time in 1903 when Smith received bad tidings and promptly left for Scotland to be with his mother who was on her death bed. After the funeral, he returned to Malaya. During the voyage, he met an heiress named Agnes who happened to be travelling to the Far East for the first time. Their friendship blossomed within the close confines of the ship and they were married soon after arriving in Penang.

The couple began their married life in Batu Gajah, living in a wooden bungalow in Smith’s estate. Smith had earlier named his home, Kellas House, in honour of his family home in Scotland, Easter Kellas.

GRADUAL DISINTEGRATION

A year later, in 1904, Agnes gave birth to their first child, Helen. Overjoyed, Smith began borrowing extensively against his wife’s inheritance which was due in the next five years.

With Helen’s arrival and the anticipation of more children to come in the near future, Smith spent $24,000 to build a new wing to his wooden bungalow. Conscious of his wife’s intolerance to the oppressive tropical heat, he decided to use heat-absorbing brickwork rather than timber.

Soon after construction began, Smith started experiencing a string of setbacks and financial problems.

Initially, he failed to secure the release of the second advance payment from his wife’s trust fund. That was quickly followed