Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

I am not sure what the exact translation of the word poltergeist is in Hindi language. But in one of the local languages there is a term called “bhanamati” which is almost the same but used in much wider perspective. The chain of events that I am going to narrate can be loosely related to the same term. Before I heard about the incidents and got involved, the situation had already become quite serious and was drawing a lot of attention.

The first incident took place in the bedroom of Mohan, age 28 in one of the Bombay suburbs. Mohan was standing in front of the mirror, applying face cream before retiring for the day. In the mirror, he saw a sudden and fast movement behind his head. He ducked instinctively only to find a small copper made pot crashing into the wall near the mirror. It had missed the back of Mohan’s head and the mirror by couple of inches. Even if it had hit the mirror it would have been quite a nasty accident.

Mohan was not afraid because he did not understand the significance of what had happened. At first he thought someone had thrown the pot at him. But there was no child in the house who possibly could have done this kind of mischief. His parents rushed to the room because of the noise. Mohan refrained from going into details because he thought his parents would worry unnecessarily. He was intentionally vague about what happened and when his parents left he placed the pot where it was. It was a heavy and richly decorated copper pot. Mohan had bought it from antic store in one of the exhibitions. It was quite costly and must have been poured around hundred and twenty years back. Exactly the same thing happened after four days. But this time the show piece flew when Mohan was coming towards his bed and the distance between the showcase and Mohan was less. The piece hit him squarely under the right ear and it opened up a cut which bled quite profusely. Two stitches were required. This pressed the panic button in the family and the word got around that something abnormal was happening in the house. The copper piece was kept under lock and key in the kitchen cabinet safely tucked under heavy utensils.

We came to know about the incidents in July 2001. By that time there were a few more scares out of which two were notable. First one took place late evening when Mohan had just come back from work. His mother had brought family jewelry from their bank locker because she wanted to wear it during a marriage ceremony next day. The ornaments were kept in a small but very compact wooden box of sandalwood, which was more of a family heirloom. This box was kept on a table in the hall. The moment Mohan entered the house this box flew from it’s place and hit Mohan in the stomach. It was a nasty blow and Mohan was lucky to escape with just a flesh wound and without any serious internal injury. On the other occasion when the family was having their dinner together in the kitchen instead of dinning table, the copper pot moved again. There was a great force behind the movement because of which the utensils on the top of the pot were dislodged and the wooden cabinet door almost came apart. The “evil” cube and pot were then moved to the neighbor’s house.

It was quite tough to get entry into the house and win confidence of the family. I had a friend in the forum who used to know Mohan’s cousin. With her acquaintance, we could meet Mohan and start understanding the problem. The news of these accidents had already spread in the nearby housing societies and there was good probability that it would have hit the media as well. Already one or two self proclaimed researchers had tried providing lame and incorrect scientific explanations.

One thing struck us straight way. Each incident had taken place when Mohan came back from work and every time he had reached home late. Also all the objects that were hurled towards Mohan by whatever power that was driving this, were very old. Since the family was not ready to let us bring these artifacts in the house we went to the neighbor’s place to take a look. Both the copper pots and the wooden cube must have easily more than hundred years old. There was a connection somewhere. My friend was of the opinion that the root cause of the problem was outside the house and not inside. I agreed to his hunch because there was no permanent “feeling” in the house which generally accompanies haunted places.

When I asked Mohan what he did for living he told me that he was a civil engineer with good aptitude for interior decoration. After doing a salaried job for a year or so, he had quit and started his own business. Right now he was working on four sites and his business was seen as one of the smaller but promising upcoming firms. He was not able to remember anything specific he had done on his sites when he was attacked but one very significant fact came out of our discussions.

One of his sites was almost on the outskirts on the city. Whenever he went there he came back home very late because the commuting itself took around two hours in one direction. He also mentioned that, the particular work was not going well and he was under pressure now to complete it. Quite surprisingly, Mohan himself seemed to have given some thought to the matter and admitted that he had once felt that the site work might be related to the recent strange events in his life. When we pushed a bit he admitted that he always felt depressed and less dynamic when working on that particular construction.

We decided to visit the site. It turned out to be a spacious three storey building which must have been constructed some time in early 1960s. Oddly enough the previous construction itself was not completely new, it was more of a renovation, an enhancement and damage repair work for the structure that already existed there. The entire area was used as a supply depot or stores rooms by the British Army in the pre-Independence days. So the original construction could have easily dated anywhere back to 1890. Even the work which Mohan was involved was not aimed at making any radical changes to the building.

I think they were mainly asked to redo Column and beam construction with properly sized beams to support the base structure which was quite heavy. Plan was to use the ground floor as the common club house for the housing complexes that were springing up in the nearby areas. The first floor was to be used as the gym. Nothing was planned for the top two. Initially we did not find anything wrong in this construction as well. But when we climbed the stairs of the second floor we sensed something wrong.

The feeling increased when we reached the third floor. The influence could be narrowed down towards a certain corner loft. It was very dusty and getting onto the loft itself was quite difficult. We paid one construction worker to throw down whatever was up there. There were few very old utensils and soiled home stitched clothes for an infant. The feeling of presence of unnatural influence had become so strong that at one point I felt we made a mistake of coming to this place in the twilight hours. We touched each and every utensil. They were rusty and wasted since have been lying unused for ages but they were “safe”. But when my friend touched the infant clothes he withdrew his hand immediately. When I tried touch one of the clothes I also felt a very cold shiver running down my spine. There was something nasty attached to the clothes. We still managed to put everything in one sack and pushed it to a corner… In my experience changing place of the possessed object can help at times because certain associations that are built are broken.

But we took no further steps. Burning the clothes would have been on option but that would have meant antagonizing the power attached to them. It could have possible resulted in its release from the clothes and may have created more damage. There was definitely some sad event that must have taken place with the infant for whom the clothes were stitched. But it was impossible to find out what it must have been because all this must have happened easily 90-100 years back.

Secondly apart from Mohan no one else had suffered. I have often observed that impact of occult rage varies a lot from person to person. There was something in Mohan that made him the easy prey to the attacks.

We recommend a cleansing ceremony in Mohan’s house and advised him to give up the work which was fetching him very little profit in the first place. The accidents stopped immediately after Mohan’s firm withdrew from the work.

Names changed.

Sent in by Mangesh Naik, Copyright 2009