This is Benedict Sandin—the Iban ethnologist, historian and later curator of the Sarawak Museum—and his piece titled "Ghost Story" published in The Sarawak Gazette, September 30, 1964.
It's one of the earliest written records of Iban ghost beliefs, and it's the source almost every later article on the Iban Pontianak cites.
What the 1964 article is about
Sandin focuses on the kok-lir / koklir — the Iban name for what most Malaysians call Pontianak / Kuntilanak.
"The indigenous people of Borneo believe that every unfortunate woman who dies in childbirth inevitably is converted into the kok-lir."
His key ethnographic details:
1. Origin: Any woman who dies in childbirth becomes a kok-lir.
2. Physical sign: At death, before any antidote can be applied, her nails rapidly grow "very sharp and long".
3. Prevention: The traditional way to stop the transformation is to prick the soles of the deceased's feet with thorns of a citrus tree.
"The traditional way to prevent this from happening is to prick the soles of the deceased's feet with thorns of a citrus tree." – Benedict Sandin, Ghost Story, The Sarawak Gazette, September 30, 1964
4. Why it matters geographically: Sandin notes it was alleged that many places around the Kapuas River delta and especially the Pontianak River took their names from the koklir — hence the city name Pontianak.
The two stories he recorded in that piece
Sandin didn't just describe the belief; he recorded two victims' tales:
a) The widower and his only son – A father and son sheltering from rain in a hut are hosted by two beautiful women. When the son sits naked, one woman shouts, "Hai wai wai!" It's the sweet stuff!" at the sight of his testicles, her nails growing long — revealing them as kok-lir. The father overturns their boat to hide under it in the river, because kok-lir cannot enter water. They claw through the hull until sunrise makes them disappear.
b) The koklir and the enturun – A newly married couple on their nyundang pinang visit hears a koklir. The husband climbs a tree. His wife distracts a strange woman who approaches by picking lice from her hair, allowing her husband to cut off the creature's head — revealing it was an enturun, a half-bear half-cat spirit.
Sandin was born Sandin Anak Attat in 1918 in Saratok, grandson of a Native Chief, and was among the first to systematically collect Iban oral history before it was lost. That 1964 "Ghost Story" is part of a run of Gazette articles he wrote in 1964 — including one on Iban customary law in May and one on Gawai in August — while working as a research assistant to the Sarawak Museum before becoming curator in 1966.
If you want the full text, the Sarawak Gazette 1964 volumes are archived at the Sarawak State Library / Pustaka Negeri, and the story is retold in full on CILISOS and KajoMag summaries that quote Sandin's original.
References:
- Cilisos: 3 Iban folk stories kept alive thanks to Benedict Sandin, Sarawak's greatest historian.
- Abdul Razak Mahmud: Koklir, Chindaku & Balan-Balan.
- Zulheimy Maamor: Koklir - Pontianak versi Borneo.
Hj Zulheimy Maamor
5 October 2026: 8:38 p.m.
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