I studied at Chinese High from 1980-1983. My son is now at Chinese High (known as Hua Chong Institute now) but his age group does not know this story. I heard from my seniors in 1980 when we had our NPCC camp in school. We were told not to go to the clock tower in case we run into the spirit.
Long long ago there was a bell on the clock tower. The monitor would go and ring the bell when it was time for assembly in the morning. One night, a student in the school hung himself at the clock tower because he had some BGR problem. Students those days were older than students today.
One morning, the monitor went up to the clock tower but after a long time, he did not ring the bell. The principal and the staff went up and found him hang dead at the same place where the student hung himself previously. Many of us Chinese believe in the 替死鬼 theory - the monitor was taken in place for the student who hung himself so that the student can now reincarnate.
After that the principal locked up the way to the clock tower and hung the clock on a tree outside the secondary two block.
So after the monitor hanged himself the principal hanged the bell on a tree at the sec 2 block. When I was in sec 2, a guy from the next class didn't believe that the bell is cursed and went to ring it during recess time. After that he proudly declared that there was no ghost at all and we were all superstitious.
The strange thing was that after the boy became very sick and the constant high fever damaged his brain. So he became a little "retarded". Although he no longer had the intelligence of a normal person my principal still allowed him to attend school. What he did everyday was this: when school started at about 8am he would walk out of the classroom and sat at the stone stool under the tree where the bell was hung. Just before school ended at 1.20pm he would automatically walk back to his seat in the classroom. All these times when he was out we could see his lips moving as if he was speaking with somebody.
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