Felicia Chin spent a lot of time thinking inside a coffin for her new ghost drama

Is starring in a ghost-themed drama an open invitation to spooks and spirits to come visit you? We’re not sure, but for Felicia Chin, acting in the supernatural-themed series Leave No Soul Behind might have heightened her sensitivity to strange encounters.

In the show, she plays a TV host who’s being haunted by three friendly undead souls played by Shaun Chen, Chantalle Ng and Brandon Wong. The series is available on demand for free on meWATCH from Dec 20 and on Channel 8 from Dec 21, weekdays at 9pm.

Although she believes in the spiritual realm, she’d never personally had any brushes with potential spooks, she told CNA Lifestyle – until she started filming for the show.

“I think it was at the start of filming, around July or August,” she recalled, when “one morning, I was leaving my house at about 6.30am”. Outside her house, she saw what looked to her like “a little child hunching over, with a white blanket or cloth over the whole person. But I couldn’t see anybody – it was all covered. I was quite terrified”, she said.

Instead of investigating, she decided it was better to run away. “Normally, I would go over and ask, ‘How are you?’ but at that moment, I wasn’t sure if it was human or something else,” she recounted with a chuckle. “So, I just closed my door and tiptoed my way to the lift. I didn’t even dare to peek from the lift!

“That was the first time I’ve met something like that, that made me wonder if it was human or not.”  

Still, “I felt a bit bad” after, she said. “What if it had been a child? It bothered me the whole day! I should have gone back and asked how he or she was.”

It was a useful encounter, though, because, not having experienced anything spooky before, she was able to channel that emotion into her acting, she said.

A couple of weird things did happen on set, she told us, like “at times, the light would malfunction at strange timings”. But, she added as a caveat, “I’m not sure if we were just a little bit more sensitive because of the nature of the show!”

Chin isn’t a fan of the horror genre – “I’m the type who will close my eyes all the way” – and apart from spooky stuff, there are two things that scare her the most.

The first is heights, although she’s tried to conquer that a little.

A few years ago, “There was a hot air balloon at City Hall,” she recalled. “It went up quite high and then came down. The whole time, I was just squatting and holding on to the side, all the way up and down! My legs were shaking.” She laughed. “At least I went in it! That’s the little comfort I can give myself.”

She added: “If you put me on a bungee jump, my heart might fall out.”

The other thing is a somewhat irrational fear of “lizards falling from the ceiling”. It has never happened to her personally, but “when you walk past and see lizards above, you kind of get a bit scared!”

Are reptiles scarier than the macabre? It’s debatable – but one thing is sure: Thinking about death makes people especially reflective.

For the opening scene of the show, Chin had to spend a few hours in a coffin, marking her “first time at my own funeral”, she quipped. “Lying in the coffin all day, there’s a lot of time to think.”

The thoughts that occurred to her were, “Would anyone come to my funeral? Was I a good person in this life?”

And so we have a psychological explanation for our fascination with speculating on the undead – it leads us to examine our own life, to see if we’re living it to the fullest.

Leave No Soul Behind is available on demand for free on meWATCH from Dec 20 and on Channel 8 from Dec 21, weekdays at 9pm.