A young woman sits silently in a small room of a sprawling bungalow on a quiet suburban street. A white-bearded man approaches and gently lays his hands on her head. She begins to writhe and moan.

Two aides step forward to hold her down as the bearded man intones Quranic verses and orders the demon to leave her body. "No!" the woman shrieks, giving voice to the evil spirit within her. "I've been here a long time, I don't want to die."

After a minute or two she is led from the room, her face a mask of fear and anguish. The bearded man - Haron Din, Islamic scholar, healer, politician and ghostbuster - moves on to the next patient.

About 200 people, mostly women wearing the Malaysian Muslim headscarf and loose, colourful, flowing dresses, await his attention.

"They have problems, not only physical problems but also spiritual problems, including black magic," Haron tells AFP over a cup of tea during a break in his schedule.

A belief in the supernatural is widespread in Malaysia, as it is in many parts of Asia.

Tourism officials in Thailand say that while Western tourists are returning to the resort beaches of Phuket after last year's devastating tsunami, Asians are staying away because they fear the victims' ghosts.

"Our big market has been Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea but we believe that many of them are afraid of ghosts," Phuket Tourism Association spokesman Somchai Silapanont told a group of Malaysia-based journalists on a promotional trip recently.

A bizarre tale

Most of Malaysia's 25 million people are Muslim Malays, but there are large ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities with their own superstitions, as well as indigenous tribespeople steeped in ancient traditions embracing the supernatural.

People of all walks of life consult traditional healers known as 'bomohs' (witchdoctors), seeking relief from curses they believe their enemies have placed on them, or better luck in business or gambling, or the healing of physical and spiritual afflictions.

In a famous case which held the nation spellbound just two years ago, a bizarre tale of a bewitched palace, sexual jealousy and the murder of a beautiful royal bride unfolded in a sombre, modern courtroom.

The cast of the story, which dominated newspaper front pages, included Raja Jaafar Raja Muda Musa, 62, second in line to the Perak state throne and his first wife Raja Nor Mahani Raja Shahar Shah, 61.

The raja's second wife was the murder victim, 26-year-old former model and actress, Hasleza Ishak.

Five men, including two bomohs, were convicted in the High Court of killing Hasleza. One of the bomohs told the court that the first wife, Princess Mahani, masterminded the killing.

The princess, who was not charged, said she simply asked the bomohs to lift a black magic spell which she believed Hasleza had put on her and which caused things to get weird in the palace. The Raja took to sitting cross-legged in the dark and shunning her company, she said. Headless birds were found in the palace grounds. She developed a rash and vomited crystals, and babies cried although there were no babies in the palace.

She did not order Hasleza killed, she told the court, "because it would jepardise my high position and mar the good name of my family and the state".

A belief in witchcraft, obviously, would not.

Not a bomoh

Haron, 65, is a retired university professor with a doctorate in Islamic syariah law. He is also deputy spiritual leader of the fundamentalist opposition PAS. He is also regarded by many as Malaysia's most famous bomoh.

But he rejects the term, saying he is an Islamic healer who follows a long tradition of treatment through Quranic verses. While he battles against what he calls wild spirits, he accuses bomohs of using them for their black magic.

"The term bomoh in the Malay community is different to the Islamic healer. The bomoh uses inhuman words, perhaps words of the wild spirit. This is prohibited in Islam," he says.

"Bomohs have some association with black spirits, black magic. In the Malay community, or Indian and Chinese communities in Malaysia, they have many very strange things, maybe associated with the wild spirit, or ghost, which they use to do some spiritual exercise to disturb others.

"Like in America they have voodoo, or black magic in Africa, everywhere. This black magic goes back to Moses's time, the Prophet Mohammed's time."

Haron, an intense, compact man in a blue tunic and white Islamic cap, finds no conflict between his deeply held religious convictions and his dealings with the world of "wild spirits", which he says are addressed in the Quran.

Haron discusses the world of ghosts and ghouls in matter-of-fact, staccato sentences, but gives a modest, self-deprecating chuckle when he says: "Most of the spirits in Malaysia know me".

People come to him when they believe that black magic has blighted their lives in business or in love or - like the young woman - they have been possessed by a demon, he says.

Holy water

The staple treatment at his clinic, in Bangi near the capital Kuala Lumpur, is the reading of Islamic verses.

"We use verses from the Holy Quran. There are verses that can cure physically and spiritually - for different illnesses there are different readings.

"We read these verses into water, plain water, and also directly to the patient. If they have migraine, chest, knee problems, we touch the particular part and read.

"Afterwards we ask them to drink the water and apply it to the place where they have the problem."

Tengku Shahnaaz, 21, who is now a volunteer at the clinic, says Haron cured her of possession by an evil spirit.

"It was 1997, I was a student then. I started feeling uneasy. I was shouting and screaming around my school, I felt like I wanted to strangle everyone. My dad took me to see Haron Din."

Eventually, after regular treatment, the demon left her, she says.

"I lived with it for three years. I had two different personalities during that time. It liked to eat a lot, so I did too. I became fat," says Tengku, who is now slim.

While Haron does not charge for the sessions, patients usually make voluntary contributions. But his reputation extends far beyond the sleepy suburb in Bangi and the treatment of physical and spiritual aches and pains.

Busload of ghosts

Haron, whose father and uncle were healers, says that from a very young age he wanted to help people. Having become a public figure as a politician and Islamic scholar, word of his healing powers quickly spread.

One story of his exploits combines the mix of modern and ancient which reflects Malaysia's rapid development from a humid, superstitious, rubber-producing backwater into a modern manufacturing powerhouse.

Legend has it that Haron cajoled a herd of ghostly horses which was bothering the workers constructing the Petronas Twin Towers - until recently the world's highest buildings - into a bus and drove them to new pastures.

The towers were built in the mid-1990s on the site of a former horse racetrack in the centre of Kuala Lumpur, and Haron tells the story this way:

"They had some spiritual problems during the building. A group of people were working on the 82nd storey when all of a sudden a herd of horses rushed at them - on the 82nd floor.

"All wanted to escape. They ran away, some of them jumped. Two fell and died.

"Then the workers refused to work. The builders came to see me. I went there. I spoke to the spirits - I can communicate with them, they speak back. I said please don't disturb us, go somewhere else.

"These particular spirits - we call them wild spirits - they can take any image they want, they can appear in the image of horses, or a snake or an elephant or anything.

"They said the place belonged to them. They had stayed there for a long time. They had received so many offers from the Chinese gamblers, through the bomohs, to help the horses win."

Haron says he succeeded in driving the horses away. "I showed them the place, they agreed on that. Normally they obey," he says, but is evasive about the new location of the ghostly herd, which is reputed to be an hour from Kuala Lumpur in the Genting Highlands, the site of Malaysia's only casino and a favourite haunt of local and Singaporean Chinese gamblers.

Describing how he was once annoyed to find a ghost sitting in the back seat of his car, Haron says spirits can fly and don't need vehicles. Eyewitnesses, however, say he used a bus to remove "spirits" from a school where several girls had become hysterical.

Haunted highway

Haron believes humans share the world with spirits and come into conflict with them when they do not take enough care to avoid causing offence.

"This world does not belong to human beings only, this world belongs to the creatures, animals, plants, trees and the spirits. When we want to build our houses or projects we don't care about them, we just go ahead and clear areas. When that happens there is a reaction on humans."

Haron says he was called in by Malaysia's roads authority two weeks earlier after people had complained of seeing strange sights in the middle of a new highway at midnight.

"They saw a group of people praying on the road, or an old woman with small children crossing the road, sometimes they saw a big elephant on the road."

Drivers would brake, swerve, and there were accidents.

"So they called me. I communicated with the spirits, who said a hill that belonged to them had been blasted. Some spirits were killed, their houses were destroyed, they were very angry. So they started to disturb humans.

"I told them we were very sorry but they need to find a new place. The people being killed while driving on the road are innocent, not responsible for the blasting. They agreed to leave within one week."

Tea-break over, Haron hops to his feet and heads cheerfully back to his consulting rooms and the long lines of waiting men and women, to wrestle once more with their demons.