Previously: Yeongdeok Haunted House, South Korea.
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In the exclusive Hong Kong enclave known as The Peak, there are many houses — opulent homes, expensive, the sorts of places that play host to the lifestyles of the rich and famous. But along one street in the neighborhood — Lugard Road — there is one house which is… not like the others: No. 32 Lugard Road, also known as Dragon Lodge.
Dragon Lodge is roped off by barbed wire, for one thing. And for another, if you look past the barbed wire, you’ll see not a grand house occupied by the fabulously wealthy, but a decaying ruin. No. 32 Lugard Road is not a home — not anymore. And it hasn’t been for a long time.
Dragon Lodge, you see, is abandoned. And — if the stories are to be believed — Dragon Lodge is also haunted.
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As it turns out, the stories… may not be entirely true. It’s more likely that Dragon Lodge is simply abandoned, rather than full-on haunted. And yet, those stories persist, with Dragon Lodge frequently making its way onto various “Most Haunted Places In Hong Kong” lists and roundups for the curious and the brave to seek out.
Here’s what we know about Dragon Lodge — and what we don’t know about it. Here is its history, and here are its ghost stories.
Here is the story of Dragon Lodge.
A Brief History Of The Peak, Hong Kong’s Most Exclusive Neighborhood
“The Peak” isn’t the area’s true name; that’s just branding. It’s actually called Victoria Peak. It’s also not a mountain, but a hill — one which has a large radio telecommunications facility at its summit, yes, but a hill nonetheless.
That facility isn’t accessible to the public, but the area branded as The Peak is — and it’s quite a well-to-do area. It has, in fact, always been considered exclusive, although what “exclusive” has meant has changed a few times over the course of its history. (And, spoiler alert: Not all of these meanings are good. All together, now: Say no to colonization!)
In its original incarnation, it was known as the Hill District. Established during the British colonial era, the Hill District was open only to European colonizers, which goes a long way towards explaining why many of the roads up there have European names. More temperate in climate than the rest of Hong Kong, it became a place for the wealthy to escape from the heat and humidity, ensconced in elaborate homes with whimsical names to which they had to be carried via sedan chair.
Eventually, a funicular was constructed, allowing easier access to the area. The Peak Tram remains popular today, both as a mode of transportation and as a tourist attraction.
The Peak, as it later became known, remained solely for Europeans until 1947. Through all that time, it continued to be a place full of expensive homes — a trend which has carried through today. It does, however, also have apartments and hospitals and schools; it’s been built up over the years into a desirable residential area, not just a place for second homes or summer escapes. It’s also a major tourism area, with its stunning views, excellent hiking, high-end shopping, and restaurants.
One of the roads wending its way through The Peak is Lugard Road, named for British colonizer Sir Frederick Lugard, who was governor of Hong Kong between 1907 and 1912. A picturesque road, it’s part of the Hong Kong Trail and features excellent views of Victoria Harbour.
But although there are many houses on Lugard Road, one of them is special: No. 32.
Which brings us to Dragon Lodge.
Building The Dragon Lodge: Construction And Plans
It’s not entirely clear precisely when Dragon Lodge was built; we do know for certain that it’s pre-war, but the precise date of construction doesn’t appear to have been preserved (or at least, not in a form that’s generally accessible).
The lot it stands on was apparently parceled out in 1921, per the Financial Times, and as the South China Morning Post reported in 2021, there’s record within a Buildings Department database noting that plans were approved for structural alterations and the construction of a garden in 1949; as such, the house was presumable built sometime in the 28-year stretch between those two dates.
But the house’s actual date of construction? That remains unknown, or at the very least, not easily verifiable.
Further information does exist, but it’s conflicting. The Home Affairs Department Database of Private Buildings in Hong Kong, for instance, has a listing for Dragon Lodge, where it’s described as having been built in 1945; however, as the community at Hong Kong history community and database Gwulo points out, “1945” in this context often just means “before the Second World War” — not actually that the building was constructed in 1945.
Meanwhile, there’s some evidence floating around out there that indicates Dragon Lodge was complete by the early-mid-1920s: A map of The Peak circa 1924; what look like family photos of residents of the neighborhood circa 1924-1925, which may or may not include images of Dragon Lodge; and the like. But from where I’m sitting, I don’t have a reliable way to verify the source of the photos or any information about them — so, although they do seem on the up-and-up, I can’t quite pinpoint them as definitive evidence of a date of construction.
It may even be a combination of these two things — that is, it could be that an original version of the house was built in the 1920s, but then had to be either restored or entirely reconstructed in the 1940s following the war. This strikes me as likely, but again, there’s not a lot of documentation, so I can’t say for sure.
Regardless, the house in its current form — as broken down as it is — is sizeable. Real estate records indicate that the saleable floor area measures 4,612 square feet, while the gross floor area measures 7,500 square feet.
According to floor plans hosted at Hong Kong real estate database and resource Centanet, the ground floor holds a main hall, a living room, a study, a dining room, a kitchen, a pantry, a laundry room, and a porch; meanwhile, outside lies the garden terrace, complete with a pool. The next level consists of three bedrooms, another study, and two bathrooms, along with servants’ quarters above and a “gardener’s store” below.
Finally, a garden-level apartment lies below the terrace; covering two compact floors, it consists of a living room, kitchen, and bathroom on the lower level — along with a space curiously labeled “void” — and a single bedroom on the upper level.
As for who occupied all those bedrooms at any given time?
Alas, Dragon Lodge’s ownership history, too, remains somewhat obscured — although we do know a little bit about it, particularly later on in its lifetime.
Ownership: Who Did Dragon Lodge Belong To, And When?
Not much has been documented about the house’s owner or owners prior to the Second World War.
It’s possible that, circa 1924, it was occupied by a Dutch family, the Marks and Marks-Groots; the family photos I mentioned earlier are of this family. However, the poster of the images, Jan Schultheiss — a grandchild of the Marks/Marks-Groot family — notes in the descriptions of several of the images that, although they know their grandparents lived on Lugard Road at this time, they are not sure precisely which house they occupied. No. 32 is noted as merely a possibility.
Regardless, the occupants of the house had changed at least twice by the early 1960s. For a piece on Dragon Lodge published at the Financial Times in 2021, Thomas Hale spoke to a Gerard Blitz, who was born in 1951 and had lived in the house as a child. Blitz, whose recollections of surviving Typhoon Wanda place his time in the house in or around 1962, told Hale that his father had rented Dragon Lodge from a person he remembered as “Uncle Tom”; Hale further noted that the 1948 Hong Kong phone book listed someone by the name of Tom ML at Dragon Lodge’s address.
Who was Tom ML, though? Hong Kong Living noted in 2021 that Dragon Lodge had at some point belonged to Tom Mun-Long, a building contractor; this is likely Tom Mun-Long (譚文龍) of Tom Construction Co., which specialized in building the opulent residences in the Peak and Southern districts of Hong Kong during the post-war era. Per the online resource Industrial History Of Hong Kong Group, Tom’s home address in the late ‘40s was listed as 32 Lugard Road — that is, Dragon Lodge — while the offices of Tom Construction Co. were listed as being at 5 Leighton Hill Road, about 10 kilometers away.
A person who seems to be a great-grandchild of Tom Mun-Long wrote in a comment on the Gwulo entry for Dragon Lodge that the house seems to have existed prior to 1945. After speaking to “distant family members,” they wrote that the property had apparently been left “in shambles” after the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during the Second World War; their great-grandfather — Tom Mun-Long — had seemingly purchased it and rebuilt it in the aftermath, and subsequently lived in it from 1945 to 1952. After that, he rented the house out, which is likely when the Blitz family moved in.
(I should note here that I’m not quite sure how to reconcile the 1945 date with the fact that The Peak was entirely reserved for European colonizers until 1947; do with that what you will.)
At some point, it seems Dragon Lodge belonged to famed Hong Kong photographer Jian Qingfu (簡慶福), although it’s not clear to me when he acquired it. Real estate records indicate that Jian Qingdu sold it in 1996, however; the purchaser was businessman Fung Ka-pun, who reportedly paid HK$118 million for it. Fung Ka-pun then sold the property in 2004, at which point it was purchased by ASEAN International Development Co. Ltd. for HK$76.28 million — quite a loss from its 1996 purchase price.
ASEAN maintains the title today, although the property remains derelict and unoccupied.
But what of the (alleged) ghosts? What of the (supposed) haunting? Did anything actually happen in the house that might have led to a haunting, or even to stories of a haunting?
This is where things get even messier than they already are. Buckle up.
The Ghosts Of Dragon Lodge
The stories about Dragon Lodge are many.
It’s said, for instance, that the first owner of the house went bankrupt, thereby casting an unlucky or inauspicious air over the property for generations to come.
It’s said that the second owner died within the house.
It’s said that someone — perhaps a son of Tom Mun-Long — not only died in the house, but died by suicide in it.
It’s said that, at the time of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, the house was used as a base by Japanese forces — and that, during this time, several nuns were executed in the house’s yard.
It’s said that, on some nights, a child might appear in or around the house — a girl with long, black hair, wearing a long nightgown with lace around the collar. She seems sad, the stories say. She might appear in the living room, or she might appear just inside the gates, visible to those passing by on Lugard Road. She might, it’s said, be holding out her hands, as if she is pleading for help.
It’s said that it’s so severely haunted that construction crews refuse to work on the house or its grounds — hence why the property has been in a state of decay for so long.
Interestingly, though, the ghost stories seem to be a relatively recent development: The Gwulo thread is full of comments from people who said they or their family members lived in the neighborhood during the 1950s, ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, and even ‘90s and had never heard of any alleged haunting occurring in the house, nor any incidents that might have spurred on rumors of a haunting.
Gerard Blitz told Thomas Hale for the Financial Times in 2021 that he and his siblings had no recollection of any ghost stories being attached to the house when they lived in it.
Even one of Dragon Lodge’s more recent owners — Fung Ka-pun, the businessman who purchased the property in 1996 and sold it in 2004 — said that he wasn’t aware of any aspect of the house’s past, true or imagined. Said the businessman to the South China Morning Post in 2021, “I bought it because it enjoyed panoramic views of Victoria Harbor, and the trees surrounding it were beautiful. But it turned out to be quite inconvenient because our visitors had to get police permits for driving up, so we sold it.”
But although most of the stories don’t check out on their own — that is, although this may in some ways be a simple case of a house looking eerie enough to be haunted, thereby causing people to think it must be haunted — there may yet be a kernel of truth in some of them.
Stories don’t grow out of vacuums, after all — especially ghost stories.
True And False: The Reality Of Dragon Lodge’s Haunted History
There are two stories in particular associated with Dragon Lodge that may have their roots in something real. The first is the nun incident; the second, the suicide.
Regarding the nuns, one Gwulo commenter who had lived in the neighborhood during the 1950s recalled this gruesome tale as having been told to them by their amahs (akin to nannies or governesses) when they were young in order to keep them away from a nearby derelict house. This house, however, was not No. 32; per this commenter, the story was attached to the house at 29 Lugard Road instead.
For what it’s worth, there doesn’t appear to be any solid evidence of the nun incident occurring at either house. It does, however, seem to be true that 32 Lugard Road was utilized by Japanese soldiers during the occupation of Hong Kong, per the Gwulo commenter who looks to be Tom Mun-Long’s great-grandchild. And it is definitely true that numerous war crimes were carried out by Japan against China during the occupation.
As such, even if the nun incident isn’t in and of itself true, it’s understandable how a story like it might have arisen in the first place: Its content comes from history, while its location comes from the area in which it was initially told. It pulls together elements of truth into a horrifying ghost story that also serves as a cautionary tale intended to keep children away from a dangerous ruin. Over time, the ruin’s location has shifted — but the story remains the same.
Meanwhile, Thomas Hale’s 2021 piece for the Financial Times did include one anecdote from Gerard Blitz which might explain the story of the alleged suicide said to have occurred at Dragon Lodge — although again, the story has warped a bit with time, bending to fit the shape of a ghost story, rather than a factual truth.
According to Hale, Blitz had memories of a lawyer, then young and early in his career, living in Dragon Lodge’s garden-level apartment during the 1960s. This lawyer would later become a key player in the Carrian affair, as it’s known — a fraud case on a massive scale that eventually led to the complete collapse of the Carrian Group conglomerate, along with both a murder and a suicide.
The murder was of Jalil Ibrahim, an official with Bank Bumiputra — a Malayasian bank which had loaned hundreds of millions to Carrian during the course of the affair; a businessman, Mak Foon Than, was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
The suicide, meanwhile, was completed by John Wimbush in April of 1984. Wimbush was both a legal adviser to Carrian and a partner in a prestigious Hong Kong law firm; in the aftermath of Carrian chairman George Tan’s arrest for the fraud case, however, he died by suicide in his home in Hong Kong. Wimbush was the young lawyer who lived in Dragon Lodge’s garden apartment during the period when the Blitz family occupied the main house — and although Wimbush had long since moved out from that garden apartment, his home at the time of his death was still located within The Peak.
Did someone die by suicide at Dragon Lodge? No. Did someone who once lived at Dragon Lodge die by suicide? Yes.
Not unlike the nun incident, it’s… not hard to see how the truth of this part of the house’s history may have had its edges softened with time, becoming part of a larger legend as it went.
What Lies Ahead: Dragon Lodge’s Present And Future
The current status of Dragon Lodge is something akin to limbo, unfortunately.
The company that purchased it in 2004 has been sitting on it for more than 20 years; although folks who have dared to venture close enough to take pictures have reported that it looked as though some construction work was being carried out at various points over the years, the house has never been fully restored.
In 2021, the South China Morning Post reported that Hong Kong heritage officials were reviewing a list of many thousands of structures that had previously been compiled as possible buildings to slate for preservation, but which had not been acted upon at the time. Dragon Lodge was not on that initial list, although no one seems to know why it wasn’t included; the report suggested that it and numerous other structures which had seemingly failed to make the cut for unknown reasons might now be in consideration for future preservation.
It’s not clear whether any further movement has been made on that front in the meantime, however, and Dragon Lodge remains as it always has: Crumbling, overgrown, covered in graffiti, and filled with ghosts.
They may not be literal ghosts.
But then again, who’s to say that a house this old isn’t haunted by history, at the very least?
Goodness knows Dragon Lodge has seen an awful lot of history, after all.
Maybe it’s still etched into its walls, waiting for someone to unearth it.
That’s all a story wants, after all, isn’t it?
A story wants to be told.
And Dragon Lodge has plenty of stories.
***
Follow The Ghost In My Machine on Bluesky @GhostMachine13.bsky.social, Twitter @GhostMachine13, and Facebook @TheGhostInMyMachine. And for more games, don’t forget to check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available now from Chronicle Books!
[Photos via Google Maps; Roger W, Jirka Matousek, Nathan Hughes Hamilton, Maxim Sinelshchikov, Marc van der Chijs, Jo Schmaltz, Andy Mitchell/Flickr, available under CC BY 2.0, CC BY-SA 2.0, and CC BY-ND 2.0 Creative Commons licenses]
*Content warnings: Suicide, homicide, war crimes.
