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Jakarta urban legend: The sweet maiden ghost of Ancol Bridge
There is more to Ancol Bridge than meets the eye, some insist, giving birth to an urban legend that has earned the ordinary-looking bridge a sinister reputation in Jakarta and beyond.
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Vehicles pass beneath the infamous Ancol Bridge in North Jakarta on Oct. 23. Legend has it that the ghost of a maiden murdered here more than a century ago haunts the area to this very day. (JP/Nina A. Loasana)
T
o unaware passersby, a bridge of Jl. RE Martadinata in North Jakarta may seem like an ordinary piece of infrastructure to get across Ancol River or to take shelter beneath from sun or rain. The highway bridge is busy with a never-ending stream of cars and container trucks emitting fumes mixed with dust into the air, while several people stand in the middle attempting to ease the traffic flow.
But there’s more to it than meets the eye, some insist, giving birth to an urban legend that has earned the ordinary-looking bridge a sinister reputation in Jakarta and beyond.
It is said that, one fateful night several decades ago, a beautiful maiden was kidnapped and killed by a bandit and her body was thrown into the Ancol River.
Legend has it that, after the rumored crime, her ghost lurks around the bridge at night, lamenting her untimely death.
Betawi culture and history expert Ridwan Saidi describes in his book Ketoprak Betawi (2001) that the urban legend emerged sometime around the 1950s. At the time, news outlets reported a high rate of traffic accidents in the area. Several survivors claimed that, just before the accidents befell them, they had seen a beautiful woman suddenly cross the road in front of them.
Even though some newspapers sought to explain the claimed experiences, saying the drivers most likely had been hallucinating because of exhaustion, the story of a beautiful but dangerous ghost around Ancol Bridge quickly spread among locals and was believed by many.
Ridwan said some people later connected the ghost story with the disappearance of a teenage girl named Aria in the area in 1870 or 1871. Locals speculated that Aria had, in fact, been murdered and that her body had been thrown into the river, leaving behind a restless soul.
