Cuti Cuti Malaysia 109 - Kellie's Castle @ Batu Gajah • Sassy Urbanite's Diary

The Most Haunted Place in Malaysia – Kellie’s Castle

We decided to take a detour on the way back to KL and stopped by the famously known haunted building in Malaysia, Kellie’s Castle. It is situated on the way to Batu Gajah town at the Kinta Kellas Rubber Estate, about 30-minute drive and 14 km south of Ipoh City. Given this year is the Visit Malaysia Year, the place was nicely done up with proper signage guiding tourists like us.

There’s a lot of fascinating haunted stories surrounding this castle. I’m not a big fan of paranormal stories so I’m just going to share about the known facts about this castle… This unfinished ruined mansion, was built by a Scottish planter named William Kellie Smith in 1915. which he planned to build a 6 storey tower with Malaya’s first elevator, an indoor tennis court and a rooftop courtyard for entertaining. However, unfortunately, a virulent strain of Spanish Flu struck his 70 workmen he brought from India and many had died from the disease. The bad luck didn’t end there… Before his mansion was completed, William Kellie Smith also died at the age of 56 due to pneumonia during a short trip to Lisbon, Portugal in 1926. His family was too distraught to continue to stay in Malaysia so they went back to Europe after his death without completing the mansion.

Because the place is unfinished and abandoned for a while, some parts of the house did feel a little eery for me, like the dimly lit laundry room and wine cellar. But hey it was afternoon and extremely hot when we were there so we didn’t spend much time lingering around. At least now we’d been to one of the supposedly most haunted places in Malaysia… in bright daylight…