Hideous Lawang Sewu

The name Lawang sewu means Thousand Doors, but among the local Javanese the name conotates an eerie haunted house with a tragic history. This Dutch colonial building was built in 1863 by C. Citroen. It was the branch office for the Dutch Indonesian train company. The Dutch architect were Prof. Jacob F. Klinkhamer and B.J Queendag. In 1920 it was used as the head office of Nederlandsch Indishe Spoorweg Naatschappij (NIS).


When you entered the main door, then climbing the stairs, you could see a big beautiful mozaic windows, at noon when the sun shines, the beautiful colour painting on the window glass were clearly seen. Most of the rooms were broken and unconserved, but the building was still strong. It took quite a huge area in the middle of Semarang city, you could see a beautiful round garden accross the building. I could imagine that there used to be many people working in the building a long time ago during Dutch colonial.

The building were divided into some parts, the bathroom were separated from the main building, until now the guard still uses it for taking a bath. The building consists of 3 levels up, and a level down. A long alley with some pillars were surrounded the building, it's good to take picture he..he.. Some small domes were build on top of the building. There was a wide yard with some old trees in the center of the building. I'm sure the building was very luxurious during 19 century.

When the Japanese invaded in 1942, they used it as a gruesome interrogation headquarter where they jailed and killed a lot of Indonesians. They used the basement as the squat jail and standing jail with no windows at all, just a small square ventilation hole for getting air (oxygen) and sunshine. You could see the basement ventilation in the picture at the bottom of the building. Sometimes the basement were flooded with water. At the squat jail you could not even stand, because it's too low. I could not imagine how they could keep alive in that kind of rooms. Poor them.

Long standing reports of multiple ghost sightings in this building has turned it into a local destination for tourists who would make their visit on weekend nights to experience this legendary haunted house. I don't dare to visit it at night, how about you? If you visit it, there were some guides who could accompany you to tell the story, unfortunately some old pictures, the building itself seem not taking care well. Anyway Semarang government has counted it as one of the historical assets that should be maintained.

Pictures were taken by Made Agus S, thanks for sharing it with us