So Lo Pun (Traditional Chinese: 鎖羅盆) is a derelict village in the northeastern New Terrirotires of Hong Kong. Today, It is within the Plover Cove Country Park and a popular hiking destination. The village was once the home of generations of Hakka family with the surname of Wong and is purportedly haunted.
Hikers reported that compasses tend to stop working when they enter the village area. In Chinese, So Lo Pun 鎖羅盆 literally means the compass is locked. However, this is not the original name. The original name of So Lo Pun is 鎖腦盆, which means a lowland surrounded by high grounds. According to popular myths, when the British took over the village from China in 1898, the surveyors confused the two similar sounding characters, Lo 腦 with Lo 羅 in their land registry. Since then, the village took on a new name.
Most urban legends relating So Lo Pun focuses on how the village was abandoned. The most well-known ones all involved every inhabitant in the village disappeared overnight. There are three versions of this myth, all set around the 1970s.
One version involved a villager leaving So Lo Pun for better opportunities in the city, however, when he returned to the village to visit family. He wasn't able to find anyone. Another version tells that police officer entered the village as part of their routine patrol and found everyone disappeared. In both of these versions, the protagonists have no ideas what happened to the villagers.
The last version involved having a plague struck the village. As a result, villagers fled the village. Some extreme variants of this version had the plague killing off everyone. It is said that in July during the Chinese Ghost festival every year, the villagers would return the village at night and lived as they were in the 1970s.
However, others claimed those legends have no basis. Instead, the village was gradually abandoned as villagers immigrated aboard or moved to the city for better opportunities. Some even added that the whole village moved as the government make public housing available to the whole village in the 1970s. Other say the villager accidentally destroy the Feng Shui of the village during one of their landscaping projects. Consequently, the inhabitants decided to move away, gradually.
So which story do you believe? Do you know of any similar places? Comment below!
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