The Penunggu on My Balcony

An Anthropologist’s Personal Encounter with the Spirit World in Bali

The Event

"What! A penunggu! I see a penunggu. It’s real, it’s there. It was there. Where the hell did it go?" Those words ricocheted inside my head, unspoken. I was frozen, unable to move or speak, only to stare—desperately trying to grasp what had just stood before me.

This was my reaction to something I had heard about for decades but had never personally encountered. As an anthropologist, I’ve always maintained a cautious, often skeptical, relationship with the occult, the supernatural, spirits, and magic. But what happened that night on my balcony changed something in me. Let's begin with what I now think of as simply "The Event."

I was sitting on the balcony of my home in Singaraja, smoking a cigarette and gazing at the shimmering lights of fishing boats scattered across the Bali Sea. The night was serene. A gentle sea breeze blew in, the sky was cloudless, and my mind drifted lazily through pleasant, disconnected thoughts. This was my version of meditation—a peaceful evening ritual.

Then something shifted. A sudden chill wrapped itself around me, the hairs on my neck stood up, and my calm breathing turned into quick, shallow pants. I turned to my right—toward the stairs that lead up to the rooftop garden. And there she was.

A woman in white. Long dress, faintly glowing. Her black hair hung loose and thick. She stood completely still, staring out toward the south, not acknowledging me at all. She seemed absorbed in a reverie of her own. I was struck by the shock of it, not fear, but a profound bewilderment—something known yet entirely alien.

I should have said something. Asked who she was, why she was here. But before I could move, she vanished. One blink, and she was gone.

I jumped up and raced to the stairs, looking up toward the roof, into the garden among the sugarcane and dragon fruit trees. Nothing. I dashed downstairs to check if my wife or granddaughter had played a prank. Both are notorious tricksters. But my granddaughter was watching TikTok in her room, and my wife was asleep on the sofa. When I woke her to tell her what I’d seen, she simply said, "So you saw a penunggu? What was she wearing? Did she say anything?"

She wasn’t surprised. In fact, she was quietly amused. After decades of me gently teasing her and our children about their spirit sightings, the American social scientist had finally joined the club.

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Family and the Everyday Supernatural

To my family, the spirit world isn’t abstract or metaphorical. It’s real, present, tangible. Spirits are as much a part of their lived environment as neighbors or animals. Their worldview is shaped by a cosmology where multiple realities overlap and coexist.

My wife and children have long accepted the presence of penunggu, leyak, and other spiritual entities as ordinary. Their bemusement at my shaken state was not mockery but a reflection of this cultural contrast. I had studied the supernatural academically, but now I had experienced it. And that made all the difference.

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What Is a Penunggu?

In Indonesian culture—especially within Javanese, Balinese, Sundanese, and Dayak traditions—the penunggu is a spirit or supernatural guardian that inhabits and protects a specific place, object, or person. The word derives from tunggu, meaning "to wait" or "to guard."

Penunggu are often linked to locations such as banyan trees, wells, old buildings, sacred sites, and graveyards. These spirits may be ancestral, nature-based, or similar to the Islamic concept of jinn.

Their demeanor varies. A penunggu may be benevolent, neutral, or even malevolent, depending on how it has been treated or the nature of its being. In Bali, people make daily offerings (canang sari) not just to gods, but to these guardian spirits as well.

If disrespected, a penunggu might bring misfortune or illness. If honored, it may protect the home or land. Rituals performed by a dukun (spiritual healer) are common to either appease or communicate with the spirit. This tradition of negotiation with the unseen is especially strong among the Dayak, where spirits are treated as members of the social and ecological community.

My wife later told me the penunggu I saw didn’t belong to our house, but to the house across the street. She said it plainly, as though identifying a neighbor.

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Anthropology and the Supernatural

Here’s the problem: up until this point, I had approached spirits and mystical beliefs through the lens of cultural relativism. My professional stance was that such entities were real for those who believed in them, but I did not need to assert or explore their ontological reality.

This is a common position in anthropology. As E.E. Evans-Pritchard wrote, there is no way to know whether spiritual beings truly exist or not, and so the discipline typically "brackets" that question.

But what happens when the anthropologist has a direct encounter? How do I now place this experience within my own framework of understanding? Is it still enough to say, "It was real for them," when I myself was there, saw it, felt it, and was changed by it?

This is not just a methodological issue. It's an existential one.

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Reconsidering Reality

The Event forced me to re-evaluate not just the supernatural, but the very nature of reality. What counts as real? And who gets to decide?

Many contemporary anthropologists now argue for ontological openness: to take seriously the idea that spirits may have some form of being, regardless of our ability to prove them scientifically. Maybe, as some have proposed, spirit beliefs are not just misperceptions but rational interpretations of genuinely strange phenomena.

In this light, my encounter with the penunggu becomes not merely a curious story, but a data point in a larger, still-unfolding dialogue between experience, belief, and scholarly practice.

How has it affected me? I’m still working that out. The academic in me wants to write another piece—a formal analysis of how anthropology grapples with the occult. And I will. But this piece is something else: a confession, a reckoning, and maybe a small act of humility before the unknown.

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Coming soon: a follow-up essay exploring anthropological approaches to the supernatural, from colonial reductionism to ontological pluralism.