Sabah banking on hauntings to boo-st tourism

KOTA KINABALU: The allegedly haunted Agnes Keith House in Sandakan, already a popular tourist attraction under the State Museum, is being further developed as part of a new concept of “Dark Tourism”.

This offers the adventurous the chance to stay in the former home of the American author Agnes Newton Keith, who lived there with her husband Harry Keith and their son George during the British colonial era.

The house became known as haunted due to mysterious incidents recorded in Keith’s own writings, particularly a female appearance.

The next owner and a housemaid also witnessed such sightings, it was said.

Sabah Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment Datuk Jafry Ariffin said on Sunday (June 27) that plans for this “e-seram” program are being drawn up within the State Museum. (“Seram” is Bahasa Malaysia for “scary” or “scary”.)

However, the start of the program depends on developments related to the Covid-19 pandemic, Jafry said after visiting the house.

He said there would be a lot of interesting anecdotes all over the house telling of various scary encounters.

“Aside from being the home of a famous writer who wrote three autobiographical reports during her stay in North Borneo, the house itself is surrounded by secrets that make it alluring to visitors, and we should tap into that,” he said in a statement issued after his visit.

(Keith’s writings include the famous Land Below the Wind, published in 1939, and Three Came Home, about her time in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, which was filmed.)

He added that there are other promising places in Sabah with a history of war, destruction and tragedy that warrant promotion as products of “dark tourism”.

On another matter, Jafry is said to be on Saturday (Jan.

“The government needs to take proactive measures to help industry representatives, so I hope they will give the tourism sector a quota of 20,000 to 30,000 people.

“We can have a direct channel, maybe an appointed agent, to vaccinate tourism actors.

“If we can do that, I am confident that everyone (tourism actors) will be vaccinated by October or November and that we can reopen the sector,” he said.