Lights! Camera! Action!

Horror movie directors, take note. The Bokor Hill Station is the best location you will ever find for a shoot. As far as I can tell, it’s virgin territory. You reach the Hill Station, a casino, hotel, and supporting buildings built for French colonial pleasure seekers in the 1920s, by means of a godawful pothole ridden road, 34km from Kampot. I travelled the road on the back of a ute, clinging on for dear life all the way. In company of a smattering of Mitteleuropa’s most charming, I discovered that the jungles of Mount Bokor are home to a feline urban legend, Tripod, the three-legged tiger. The stories vary as to whether Tripod lost his leg to a landmine or is in fact a member of that ultra-rare species mutation, the Cambodian three-legged tiger. Our Cambodian guides were adamant that Tripod exists and urged us to take photographs if we were lucky enough to spy him. I didn’t, but not for want of looking. Anyway, following are the reasons why I believe the Bokor Hill Station might be the Best Haunted House Location in the World. 1. It’s Remote 34km from a very small town, along a dirt road that you need rally driving experience to navigate. It’s going to take a while for the authorities to come to the aid of any hapless heroines. In between civilisation and the Hill Station lies thick jungle and Tripod. Anyone seen Predator? 2. Location location Phnom Bokor is 1080m above sea-level and hence strangely chilly, given that it is hot, humid, and hot down at sea-level. The ruins, and there are many, are shrouded with spooky, churning fog and mist such that visibility is, at best, partial. No expensive smoke machines needed here. There’s also a cliff nearby, a useful hazard to prevent any easy flight. 3. Pre-existing ghosts The Hill Station was built by the French who abandoned it in the face of the Free Khmer movement in the 1940s. Because of its altitude, on the rare occasions that the mist clears, it is possibly to see from Kep to Kampot, giving the site strategic significance. It was occupied by both Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge troops during the civil war and the dereliction of the buildings is primarily due to the fighting that took place here. Plenty of graffiti in Khmer to reinforce the point. Everyone I’ve met has a story to tell about the Khmer Rouge, is angry that its leaders haven’t been brought to justice under either Cambodian or international law. There’s no need to manufacture evil spirits, they’re already here.

4. A derelict Catholic church
What horror movie would be complete without the desecration of some Catholic iconography? At Bokor, the gusty ruins of a Catholic Church stand already travestied by gunfire, graffiti, and decay.

5. Rust which looks like blood

The buildings of the Hill Station were all once painted white. The white paint has oxidised and so, in the right light, many of the surfaces look like they are dripping with blood. Perfect for a hallucinatory breakdown like the one in The Shining.

6. Handy architectural decay

I turned a corner, I spied a spiral staircase, I started to walk down it, and lo, the staircase crumbled to nothing! Most of the walls of the Bokor Palace are intact, but the staircases, windows, and balustrades are another matter. Imagine a chase scene in which no cgi is needed for the ground to fall away from your heroine’s feet! And the possibilities for weird, panic-stricken surveillance through holes in the wall!

7. Looming towers The Bokor Palace isn’t enormous but at three storeys, it has height. What has height, has gravitas, and what has gravitas, can loom in a shady, scary fashion.

8. Sinister vegetation Lantana grows wild up here, believe it or not. Vegetation is the dominant occupying force these days, overwhelming even the tourists. There is a wild pomelo tree edging through a wall of one wing whose blossoms carry perhaps the most divine scent I have ever encountered. Or perhaps I was in danger of being drugged by enchanted blooms?

9. An alien pod

If the plot has gone to buggery, you can bring in a host of aliens. Adjacent to the Bokor Palace stands this strange edifice, clearly ready to communicate with our sisters and brothers across the galaxies. Perhaps it has already done so, and a flock of aliens, cruel or munificent as befits your purposes, can leap out, deus ex machina style, and resolve all narrative convolutions!

In sum, a strange and eerie set of buildings, in which the ghosts of the colonial administration and Khmer Rouge already reside, no doubt in company with the various spirits of pre-Angkorian Kambuja, the exiled Hindu demons of early Angkor and the malignant horrors of the many lesser worlds of Buddhist cosmology. I will expect some acknowledgement for this hot tip, although preferably not via the naming of a demon.

And a slightly off-topic post-scriptum. The weirdest graffiti I have ever seen: