The Ringing Bell

Hi, I am from an old missionary school in Singapore. In the old building of my school, which has a history of about 70-80 yrs, has a tall tower sticking out of its side like a church bell tower. I had studied in the building myself for 4 years before moving on to the new building nearby.

The tower, was entirely out of bounds for my generation of students, we did not know why, but we all had a uncanny feeling about the tower, which sometimes has its windows opened, although it was claimed by the school servants (janitors) that the tower can only be opened by the Cathedral officials in town.

We lived with it until quite recently, after we have moved out of the building for 5 years, we learnt the true story:
Many years ago (about the 1960s), our traditional school bell was hung in that tower, instead of the foyer, as it now lies. Before each school day, the head prefect of the school would make an official trip to the tower to ring the bell, to announce the beginning of each day.

One day, after the head prefect went up to the tower to ring the bell, the bell rung as usual, but, it didn't stop ringing. After about 2 minutes, the school principal was entirely fed-up with all that ringing, went up to the tower with a school janitor as aide, to confront the prefect, but to their surprise, the door was locked!!
They banged down the door, and what came to their eyes were a great shock!! The head prefect's head was wrapped by the thick long string used to ring the bell, and the head prefect's eyes were almost popped out, and his mouth was opened as if gasping for air. The sight was tremendously gruesome, as the head was still ringing the bell, although the poor boy was dead!
After that, the bell with 135 years of history was hauled to the foyer to be rang instead of the tower to prevent such an incident again.

This doesn't sound like a ghost story, but the real head-scratcher was ; how did the head prefect get the rope strung so tightly around his neck, and why was there no cries for help? How did the door got locked when the head prefect or anybody other than the principal had the keys? Till this day the mystery isn't solved, and according to some of my school seniors, they have official reported sightings of this prefect looking out of the tower at certain days.

Note to readers: If you happen to come to Singapore, you might one to drop by Woodsville Hill...or Francis Thomas Drive to check out the old building, and you will know immediately what I mean by that uncanny feeling!! We always had a way of warding off these evil spirits by holding peach branches to ward them off. By the way, in the building of the new school building beside the hill, a Thai worker fell off and died instantly.