Hantu for Hire: Johor Durian Farmer Recruits Two ‘Pocong’ to Fend off Thieves

By Ammar Haziq  •  19 Jun 2020 in News

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Scare tactics by instilling fear of otherworldly forces have become a norm, like the patrolling ‘pocong’ or detaining lockdown violaters in a rumah hantu.

Now, a durian farmer has decided to use the same method by “employing” spirit entities to safeguard his durian orchard at Kampung Tengah, Segamat in Johor, as reported by New Straits Times.

61-year old Rosman Budiman had enough of thieves, so he bought several metres of white cloth and turned them into ghastly looking ‘pocong’.

“The two adult size ‘pocong’ are 1.5m in height and shaped using cardboard boxes, wrapped in white cloth, and weigh about 450g. They have succeeded in reducing the disappearance of my durians from 10 trees this season,” he told NST.

Before this, if he was late in picking up the fallen durians, thieves would take them away. He said the figures were placed in some bushes at an empty hut around the farm.

Rosman also uses burning incense to increase the scare effect before returning home every evening. He said it has been proven to ward off intruders, especially at night.

It only cost him RM68 to get the “security system”.

“Sometimes I even scare myself when I return alone to pick the durians, thanks to the smell of the burning incense,” he said.

Prior to using the pocong, Rosman had placed two tiger dolls to scare off thieves but they weren’t effective. He spent RM350 each for the dolls but durian thieves stole them anyway. He added that he had to think of various methods each durian season.

“If the thieves wanted to eat the durian, I don’t mind, but the fact that I lost so many shows that they are stealing it to sell it,” he said.

This got us thinking, how many durians have we eaten that were actually stolen?

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