Brilio.net/en - In Javanese tradition, there is a female demon called Wewe Gombel, or Nenek Gombel, known for its big and dangling breasts.
Nenek means grandmother or old woman, and gombel is the name of an area in Semarang, Central Java.Some people call it Kalong Wewe.Kalong means bat the demoncomes out at night like aghost.
The Wewe Gombelis an evil spirit who likes to kidnap children, but does no harm to them. The victims are kids who are abandoned by their parents or have problems. Wewe Gombel would hide the childto scare the parents, teachingthem a lesson to take bettercare of their children. After the parents realize their mistake, the Wewe Gombel would return the kids back to their home.
Wewe Gombel is the spirit of a dead woman who committed suicide after murdering her husband. When she was alive, Wewe Gombel couldnt get pregnant and her husband had an affair with another woman. She wentinsaneand her appearance fell apart until she started looking like a homeless person.
One day she killed her husband and as neighbors tried to capture her, she took her own life.
Haunting
The event happened in the Gombel area ofSemarang, between Jatingaleh and Banyumanik, a place people say is both Wewe Gombel's home and the kingdom of the ghosts!
Many locals believeWewe Gombel's hauntingmade a hotel onGombel Hill go bankrupt, but others say it is haunted by ghosts from a massacre that happened there underDutch colonization.
The demon supposedlyfeeds children human waste, by force if necessary. Sometimes she makes children hallucinate so they see excrementand think it is theirfavorite food. That way theycannot tell people about what happened.
Get my kids back!
To find kidnapped children, people walk around the neighborhood beating windowsand singing blek-blek ting, blek-blek ting (the name of the kid) get out!. This should be repeated seven times and the hidden child will appear.
Nowadays parents and teachers use the Wewe Gombel myth to scare children intostayiing indoors after dark. In years past, this served a very practical purpose as it kept children from becoming targets of wild animals hunting at night. Some say the myth was created for just that purposeandas the world has developedand more people live in urban center, the myth is slowly being forgotten.
Not many children know the name of Wewe Gombel anymore. But they do so at their own risk!
If you are ever near Semarang, why not pay Gombel Hill a visit?
(brl/red)
