Those crafty guys at HK URBEX (which stands for Hong Kong Urban Exploration, if you’re not down-with-the-kids enough to know) have released a super spooky video of their latest conquest, just in time for Halloween.
Set to the ridiculous music that backs every self-respecting horror film, their covert creep around Hong Kong’s so-called “White House” becomes all the more scary when you know the history behind the building. Hold on to your socks guys!
Built in the 1950s as a mess for the Royal Engineers Regiment during the British colonisation of Hong Kong, this unassuming complex of row-rise buildings on the intersection of Victoria Road and Mount Davis Road was taken over by the Special Branch of Hong Kong police just a few years later.
It is rumoured that the building was first used to detain Taiwanese spies who were found smuggling explosives into the mainland. What is known fo sho, however, is that during the 1967 riots sparked by the Cultural Revolution in mainland China, many high-profile prisoners with connections to the Communist Party were incarcerated and interrogated here. These included actors She Wei and Fu Qi, and the Chinese Reform Association president Cho Wei-hung.
Residents of the now-renamed Mount Davis Concentration Camp were kept in tiny cells known as “tin cans” and, according to reports, were subjected to mentally torturous interrogation methods such as drugs, hypnosis and prolonged solitary confinement.
The last people to be housed here are thought to be political refugees fleeing the mainland following the Tiananmen Square crackdown on June 4, 1989. They were apparently smuggled over the border before receiving a political debriefing at the complex. They were maybe told not to wee in the streets, too. Who knows?
The White House went to ruin, however, when the Special Branch was disbanded shortly before the 1997 handover. Since then, it has only been entered by the odd film crew (Wong Kar-wei’s “2046” and Ang Lee’s “Lust, Caution” were both partly filmed on the premises) and, now, the HK URBEX lot.
While the video is perhaps a bit self-indulgent with five solid minutes of spooky music and corridors, we’re very pleased that this real life Hong Kong haunted house has been resurrected once again.
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