Inscribing place in Singapore: Instagram depictions of hauntedness

Abstract

In this article we examine the construction and circulation of images of a purportedly haunted house in Singapore’s folklore, Istana Woodneuk, through Instagram. Analyzing a corpus of 960 Instagram images, we first identify 14 tropes and then two overarching themes – haunted-place making and subversive imaging. We make three main points in this article. Firstly, we argue that the creation of Istana Woodneuk Instagram posts can be understood only against the backdrop of national anxieties about the constraint and control of land and history. Secondly, and relatedly, we posit that the bottom-up creation and collective sharing of these posts is an assertion of young Singaporean identity against a larger state narrative. Istana Woodneuk, in its ambiguity and hauntedness, along with Instagram’s affordances, gives young Singaporeans a unique unregulated space for escape from “reality” and control. Thirdly, we argue that these Instagram posts blend frivolity and thoughtlessness with resistance and self-expression, where personal stories weave into a larger communal narrative that offers bottom-up alternatives to the state sponsored “Singapore Story.” This intersection between Istana Woodneuk as a space, in contrast to other state-defined delineated places of death, and the infrastructural properties of Instagram are crucial to the construction of this larger narrative.

Keywords:

• Digital mortality
• haunted place
• Instagram
• Internet ambivalence
• remediation
• Singapore
• social media platforms

Acknowledgments

We thank all the Instagrammers who kindly agreed to screenshots of their posts and photographs to be used without being identified in this paper.

Notes

Notes

1 https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2021-singapore (accessed February 18, 2022)

2 https://www.imda.gov.sg/infocomm-media-landscape/research-and-statistics/telecommunications/statistics-on-telecom-services/statistics-on-telecom-services-for-2021-jan (accessed February 18, 2022)

3 Numerous local lifestyle blogs and websites have documented Istana Woodneuk as a haunted spot. See https://www.timeout.com/singapore/things-to-do/the-most-creepiest-and-haunted-places-in-singapore (accessed February 18, 20221) and https://expatliving.sg/scary-t

hings-to-see-or-avoid-at-halloween-in-singapore/ (accessed February 18, 20221). A popular alternative news site TheSmartLocal has even published a guide and photojournal for Istana Woodneuk. See https://thesmartlocal.com/read/istana-woodneuk-guide/ (accessed 18 February 20221) for more details.

4 Singapore’s “hypermodernity” is significant because it entails at once a detachment and departure from the past and an acceleration of technological change into the future (Brian, Jaisson, and Mukherjee 2011).

5 As of January 2021, Instagram was ranked the fifth most used social media platform globally with a user base of about 1.2 billion users (DataReportal 2021), with India, the United States, Brazil and Indonesia collectively accounting for an audience of nearly 609 million: 230 million, 160 million, 119 million and 99 million respectively (Statista Research Department 2022).

6 https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2021-singapore (accessed February 18, 2022)

7 https://www.timeout.com/singapore/things-to-do/the-most-creepiest-and-haunted-places-in-singapore (Accessed February 18, 2022), https://expatliving.sg/scary-things-to-see-or-avoid-at-halloween-in-singapore/. (accessed February 18, 2022)

8 https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/oldchangihospital/ (accessed May 16, 2020)

9 https://remembersingapore.org/istana-woodneuk/ (accessed February 18, 2022)

10 Personal email communication with the writer of remembersingapore.org, who operates under the pseudonym RemSG.

11 https://www.asiaone.com/travel/explore-singapore-series-4-abandoned-places-you-wont-last-night (accessed February 18, 2022)

12 Writing about Haw Par Villa, a theme park centered on Chinese mythology and culture, Hong and Huang (2008) observe that in Catherine Lim’s novel Following the Wrong God Home Haw Par Villa is portrayed as a space that transcends ethnocentric discourse, as an “accommodating and flexible space” – “both carnal and spiritual; the repository of tradition and a refuge from conventions” (Hong and Huang 2008, 227).

13 Other Instagram research shows that Instagram use is culturally specific (Abidin 2016; Sheldon et al. 2017).

14 According to Instagram, its functions “help you express yourself and connect with the people you love”. Instagram “stories” allow users to “post moments from … everyday life”. These images or short videos are meant to be “fun, casual, and only last 24 hours”. The “Stories” feature allows users to use text, music, stickers, GIFs to edit and caption the image, with poll functions to get friends and followers to interact with the “story” as well. There is even a shopping feature embedded in Instagram, where users can purchase items without even leaving the application. See Instagram’s Features page for more details: https://about.instagram.com/features.

15 https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-illuminati (accessed February 18, 2022)

16 This is a 1994 song from the band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It references John Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost” – in which the “red right hand” refers to an ambiguous threat: the hand of Satan or the vengeful hand of God. It has been sampled by popular Indie rock band Artic Monkeys, potentially explaining its contemporary appearance here.

17 The #SG50 hashtag was used during Singapore’s Golden Jubilee in 2015 across various online platforms, as part of the national celebrations.