A Malaysian Spirit Guide

A Malaysian Spirit Guide is a compendium of some of the ghosts, spirits, sacred beings and supernatural creatures that have long inhabited the imaginations of Malaysians.

Drawing on folklore, historical accounts, media representations and academic explorations of the supernatural beliefs of Malaysians, it introduces sixty creatures ranging from familiar terrors such as the pontianak, the hantu raya and the toyol to  ancestral guardians, nature spirits, deified humans, shamanic helpers and beings associated with particular indigenous communities.

Arranged as an accessible guide, each entry explores a spirit’s origins, appearance, behaviour and cultural significance, while tracing the ways in which older animist traditions have mingled with other cultural and religious beliefs. Together, these accounts reveal a supernatural landscape shaped by migration, faith, history, violence, memory and humanity’s uneasy relationship with the natural world.

More than a catalogue of things that haunt the night, A Malaysian Spirit Guide offers a portrait of Malaysia through the beings its people have feared, revered, appeased and lived alongside for centuries.

Dark Portraits

Do you believe in ghosts? Or do you think they are metaphors for human emotions like grief, guilt, shame, and others that we refuse to name? Some of these ten stories summon the familiar creatures of Malaysian folklore and ask what they reveal about the people who fear them, invoke them, or live alongside them. Others retell folktales and legends, finding in their old bones new ways to speak about desire, violence, and the burdens women carry. These are stories about family secrets and the weight of the unspoken, about what we inherit and what we refuse. The supernatural here is rarely the most frightening thing in the room.

Bright Landscapes

Gods grow tired. Spirits have opinions. The creatures of myth and legend, it turns out, have their own needs, frustrations and longings—and in these ten stories, they are as recognisable as anyone you might know. Some of these stories are retellings of Asian myths and folktales; others grow from indigenous belief and local legend. All of them ask what happens when old stories are reimagined—and what becomes possible when the figures inside them are finally allowed to want something for themselves.

The collections Dark Landscapes and Bright Landscapes, published in November 2026 by Langsuyar Press, contain stories from the first edition of Bright Landscapes that was published in 2019 by Laras99. Dark Portraits has five of the original stories, and Bright Landscapes (2026) has four. There is one story, ‘The Dead’, that didn’t make it into either collection, but is the seed of an idea that I hope will become a fantasy novel set in an imaginary world called Tasar & Five Flags.

Bright Landscapes (2019)

This was the collection’s first incarnation, published by Laras99.