The Ghost and the Darkness

‘The Conjuring’ tells the nightmarish ordeal of the Perron Family who are haunted by an evil witch. My three friends and I decided to watch an evening show of the movie after couple of friends claimed to have had nightmares after watching it. The opening scene with the creepy doll named ‘Annabelle’ and the hauntingly awesome background score told me that I was in for a scary ride.

The movie ended 2 hours later (and I was glad about it). My very good friend Maddy who has a particularly good gift of storytelling, for no welcome reason, started narrating creepy stories he had heard or experienced.

“I was coming home after a late night dinner at a dhaba. I was on the highway and there wasn’t much traffic. And I swear to God. I had the distinct feeling of someone sitting behind me. I looked into the rear view mirror. And saw nothing. Yet there it was again. The unmistakable feeling of some presence behind me.”

We looked at him unimpressed. We mocked and made fun of him and had a good laugh about it. But as I rode my bike back home, Maddy’s story replayed itself in my head. And I felt like kicking myself for living on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. Not to mention owning a dog who had a particular proclivity towards staring at vacant spaces as if watching someone invisible.

Living in a hostel during graduation introduced me to all kinds of ghost stories. Almost everyone had a ghostly experience to share. And strangely when it comes to narrating ghost stories everyone becomes a master story teller. And all the ghost clichés like the ‘chudail’ on the peepal ka tree, the guy with twisted feet hiring a rick, the faceless chudail who’d flag down vehicles for a lift and vanish in to thin air, the many spirits who dwell near railway crossings, etc., stood tall. Over the years Vikram Bhatt has covered most of the ghost stereotypes in his atrocious movies.

But what if ghosts do exist? An incident in the first year of my graduation had me asking that very question.

University exams were only a few weeks away when a rumour started doing the rounds. Apparently some guy on the top floor of the hostel had heard the moans of a woman late one night. And the news spread like wildfire. Initially we assumed that some hostel guy (who had to be a great lover) had invited a female friend over for some late night hanky panky. However, as the days passed, the rumours took a ghostly turn. And it was only a matter of time for some smart ass to come with a haunted story about the spirit of a girl who had died near BVM - an engineering college near our hostel. Some said that the girl had committed suicide, for some she was murdered. Yet everyone was certain that the ghost was a ‘she’. Some people even claimed that they had seen an apparition in a white sari near our hostel.

But we just couldn’t digest the fact that the hostel and its surrounding which had been so peaceful till then had all of a sudden became a hotbed for paranormal activity. What added fuel to the fire was the fact that our hostel security guard too had heard such noises and he acknowledged that there was a spirit haunting the premises of BVM. He claimed to have heard the wailing of a woman and that lights flickered ominously at midnight. The rumours had started taking its effect. Our late night adventures ceased almost completely. What was more irritating, was the irresistible urge to answer the nature’s call in the middle of the night. The bathroom itself was a scary site. There was a lone tube light that flickered every now and then. The silence of the bathroom was broken only by the water dripping from the taps. There were two windows looking out of which, we could only see the strange shapes of the trees in the moonlight. Other than that, it would be pitch dark.

Despite the fact that everyone was shit scared of the situation, almost everyone seemed to have the perfect weapon to ward the evil spirit off.

“Always keep a piece of iron with you. The iron keeps ghosts away” advised a guy named Chandresh who lived on the 3^rd floor.

“Does the buckle of my belt qualify as iron?” asked his skinny roommate.

“Recite the Hanuman Chalisa whenever you feel fear and the evil spirit won’t touch you” advised another guy.

But the weirdest advice came from Satish Chaubey, the hostel pervert. For some weird reason he reminded me of the ‘Sherman’ character from American Pie.

“Whenever you come face to face with a spirit immediately mark a circle around you with your urine. It will keep the evil spirit away from you.”

Silence followed for the next few moments as I tried to decide if he was pulling a fast one on me. He wasn’t though. Till that moment I hadn’t realised the immense potential my urine possessed. And to think that I wasted it so blatantly each day. A shame really! The tricky part was to make a perfect circle because if I’d come face to face with a ghost my pee would make all shapes but a circle.

However, Chaubey’s last piece of advice actually took the cake.

“And if nothing works, simple remove your pants and stand in front of the ghost naked.”

Now I had heard everything. Eventually it was the tension of the exams that proved to be scarier. The haunting ceased almost abruptly. But till this day no one has been able to explain the haunting that scared the living daylights out of us.

So to sum it up, it is highly debatable if ghosts exist or not. And it sounds like a truckload of crap given in today’s times. But then science too has its limits. There are many things beyond explanation (like spontaneous human combustion. That shit really freaks me out.) And the fact that my dog has been staring at the wall behind me since the last hour and a half. Animals can sense paranormal presence, they say. Time to lose the track pant I guess!