[1] Trade links with southern India and China were established several centuries BCE,[2] in large part shaping the local culture and folklore.
[4] The ritual has long been declared officially banned by Singaporean and Malayan clerics on the grounds that it contravenes the teaching of Islam,[5] but continues to be practised in some scale Malaysia and Indonesia.
[6] According to traditional Malay lore, the human soul (semangat or essence) is about the size of a thumb and appears as a miniature form of the body (sarung or casing) in which it resides.
To cure them, the shaman (dukun or bomoh) in a village would burn incense, recite incantations, and in some cases sacrifice an animal and wash its blood into a river to appease the ghost.
A kind of familiar spirit acquired by a male who says the proper incantations over the newly buried body of a stillborn child.
Also spelled langsuir or lang suyar, it is said to be the ghost of a woman who died while giving birth to a stillborn child which turns into a pontianak, or during pregnancy before the forty days of uncleanness have expired.
It is possible to tame a lang suir by cutting off her long nails and stuffing the hair into the hole at the back of her neck.
[12] A pontianak can be made into a good wife, by placing a nail into the hole at the nape of its neck (called Sundel Bolong).
The penanggal is another type of female vampire attracted to the blood of newborn infants, which appears as the head of a woman from which her entrails trail, used to grasp her victim.
One is that she was a woman who was sitting meditating in a large wooden vat used for making vinegar when she was so startled that her head jumped up from her body, pulling her entrails with it.
If a baby is expected, branches from a type of thistle are placed around the doors or windows to protect the house, since her entrails will be caught by the thorns.
[13] The penanggalan is known in Thai as krasue[14] and a similar Philippine ghost called the manananggal which preys on pregnant women with an elongated proboscis-like tongue.
[15] Often translated into English as "goblin", the toyol is actually a small child spirit invoked from a dead human fetus.
Traditionally described as looking more or less like a naked or near-naked baby, modern depictions often give them green or brownish skin, large fangs, and sharp ears.
Because they are childlike in their thinking, valuables can be protected by scattering buttons on the floor, or leaving sweets or toys next to them, all of which will distract the toyol.
[18] A person who has been afflicted by the polong will cry out and wildly strike at people nearby, all the while blind and deaf to their surroundings, and unconscious of what they are doing.
[20] In both Malaysia and Indonesia, ghosts and the supernatural have long been the popular subject of stories in television, documentaries, film, and magazines like Mastika and Tok Ngah.
With the rise of the Islamisation movement, the Malaysian government suppressed production of local films involving ghosts out of concern that they would encourage superstition.
However, access to foreign horror movies made such a ban futile, and these restrictions were eventually lifted with the release of the 2004 film Pontianak Harum Sundal Malam.
[28] 2007's Jangan Pandang Belakang ("Don't Look Back"), which used to be Malaysia's highest-grossing film, centres around a malicious spirit which the protagonist had unknowingly brought to his fiancé's home after picking up a small jar found washed up at the beach.