Kellie's Castle — the Scottish laird's unfinished Moorish castle in Perak

Kellie's Castle near Batu Gajah in Perak is one of Malaysia's most famous haunted landmarks. The Moorish-inspired castle was built by Scottish plantation owner William Kellie Smith beginning in 1915. Smith brought Tamil Indian workers from Madras to construct the building, and many died during a Spanish flu epidemic that swept through the construction site. Smith himself died during a trip to Lisbon in 1926, leaving the castle unfinished. Since then, the partially completed building — with its mixture of Scottish baronial and Moorish architectural elements — has been associated with supernatural phenomena. Visitors report seeing Indian workers in colonial-era clothing on the building's scaffolding and in its corridors, hearing voices speaking in Tamil, and encountering the ghost of Kellie Smith himself, described as a European man in a white suit and solar topi. The castle's rooftop, which offers panoramic views of the Perak countryside, is said to be the most active area. A Hindu temple on the grounds, built for the Tamil workers, contains statues that are said to come alive at night. Kellie's Castle's combination of colonial ambition, multicultural construction, untimely death, and architectural incompleteness gives it a haunted character that is quintessentially Malaysian.