Midnight in a Old Funeral and Garden

This is the most frightening experience of mine. Every time I remember it, I feel so scared. It happened in 2004, when I was a Senior High School student in an Islamic Boarding School in Semarang, Central Java. We had a formal organization called AULITA. It’s all about love for nature and bravery. Another student (commonly younger one) who wanted to join with us should be tested first. We established the test for member candidates every single semester.

In the test, we would know the brave and the coward. AULITA accepted the brave ones only. We would ask them to go to places where a couple of us stood there. And they went all alone with no flashlight or anything like that in the dark mid-night. In that time, all student –included us- were not allowed to have hand phone or so.

We had four places for them to visit and we spread ourselves (senior members) there. So they would meet us in a dark full of trees garden near our school, in front of an old unused factory, in an empty house, and in an old funeral. The last one I mentioned was the farthest from the school. It’s almost 1 km. To arrive there, a candidate had to pass those three places. And between the places, there’s no house around the road. When they arrived in our places, they had to do whatever we asked.

I and my bravest friend, Wahid, had a turn in the funeral. Actually I refused to be placed there, but my friends called me ‘a coward’ then. That’s not funny at all!

What I knew was that we only had 8 candidates. It started at 11 pm and normally ended at about 2 am. I and Wahid had arrived in the funeral before 11. We have prepared ourselves with some questions, thermos bottle, cups, and coffee. Wahid was brave and funny but he disliked to be fooled around. His jokes always made me laugh so I was never afraid of anything.

Time was running out and it was 1 am when we have finished testing 8 candidates. I urged Wahid to go back to school because I thought everything was...