ONE OF MY favourite streets to pass through in George Town is Kampung Malabar. I often imagine what it might have been like for its community members to gather at night for street storytelling.[1] I think of the kinds of people who would come together, the stories that filled their evenings, and how those makeshift performing spaces might have looked. This gives me a sense of rootedness in neighbourhood life, and of how the power of storytelling shapes a sense of place and belonging.
Creating a sense of place is never just about physical development or spatial configuration; it is equally built upon the layers of memory, imagination and folk knowledge, passed through generations. Every city has its whispered tales, restless spirits and forgotten figures that resist verification, and yet, refuse to disappear. Penang—for all its documented histories and colonial records—exists just as vividly in these half-remembered myths and community fables.
While the aim here is not to claim these memories as fact, they reveal the wealth of stories that shape the island’s past. In their retelling, these offer a different lens through which to view the becoming of Penang as we know it today—a place formed as much by belief and storytelling as by brick and boundary.
