Seven tales of horror

In my last hub, I published some stories of my friends to whom I asked "Do you believe in ghosts" and there were very few answers. So today as of June 24, 2009, I have received some more mails in my mailbox with the answers to this question. Below you can read these interesting tales of encounter with horror.

1. Vishwas said "I being a Brahman and a child born in very spiritual atmosphere believe in evil, spirits, and ghosts from my very childhood. I kind of had a liking for them. I had a face to face encounter three times in my life."

The first one was when I was barely 8 years old. In a village in Gujarat, we used to play this game of laying roof tiles on the road and have fun when a vehicle crushes it. It was my turn. Time was dusk. I laid my tile. A jeep rode over it but my tile didn't break so I got angry. I flung a piece of tile on the jeep and there was a man walking a little behind the jeep and to my surprise, the whole tile went through him. He was clad in white. My elder friends and cousins understood the thing and ran immediately asking me to run. I also ran not knowing why and then they all told me that it was a ghost.

2. Pooja's ghostly experience: Well, frankly when I will narrate this story, you all will think that these things are taken from horror films but it is a fact I know it. I am 19 now and this had happened when I was in my 10th class, I guess I was about 15 then, so it happened four years from now.

It was 2 in the afternoon and me and one of my friends Sandy were returning home from the school. I didn't know that no one was at home and I did not have the keys. We kept ringing bells and no one answered but I could hear people laughing inside. I swear (that it was not an illusion or something).

Well, I thought my brother and sister were playing pranks on me and purposely not opening the door, so we went to a friend's place in my building and I dialed my house phone number, the phone rang for quite a some time and just when I was about to hang up, something or someone answered! It didn't say anything but I was able to hear whispers and laughing. I just hung up!

Then I dialed my dad's cell number and he told me that no one is at home and that my parents and brother and sister all were at my grandma's place! I still didn't know what had happened that time in the house or who was laughing. Was I hearing or who answered my call at home when no one was at home, but till date, I think of me as a coward gal because from that day, I am not able to remain alone at home!

You might think that this is a made-up story but it is from my heart and I e-mailed this to you so that you should know that how much advanced the world maybe but ghosts and supernatural things do exist and I do believe in them.

3. Naresh said that I experienced it. I was going to Tirupati Balaji with my family and we stopped at a petrol pump. Me and my father and my uncle (Chachaji) went to the toilet, a room in front of us was locked in the toilet, we heard a strange scream of a lady from that room. We didn't knew that it was a spirit or someone was being brutally murdered in that locked room. We all were shocked and we went to the owner and asked about it. Interestingly, the owner said that "you are not the first one to hear these screams and it has happened with a lot of people who have been to the toilet but whenever our staff opens the door of that room, they do not find anything. It is a mystery for the last 5 years since I purchased this petrol pump from the previous owner. God knows what happened over here."

4. Ritu said here's something I experienced five years back. It was march and my 12th board exams were going on. It was around midnight and no body was at home. I was alone at my home. Mom, dad, brother, and sister all had gone out for the inner and even my servant was not at home.

I was studying in my room and suddenly the TV in the other room switched on I didn't know how? I went to that room and switched off the TV and got back reading my books. After 5 minutes or so, it happened again. TV went on on its own. I went there again and switched it off. This time, I got a bit scared, but I ignored the whole situation as I was busy studying but guess what. It happened again the third time and I got really scared this time. I didn't even go to that room this time to switch it off and just picked up my cell and rushed out of my house, terribly scared.

I sat outside my home for almost 20 minutes and didn't have the guts to go in there. Waited for my servant to return and went in to the house with him. I have never narrated this story to anyone before this, except one friend of mine who obviously didn't believe it.

I don't know what it was, but it was spooky. From that day onwards, I have not got the courage to stay alone in my home.

5. Aaamya says my friend is from Kerala and her house is that typical Keralite's house. They have a big house and with many rooms upstairs, but since only her granny stays there, all the rooms in the first floor are locked and never cared of so you can imagine how haunting it might be, at least for my friend who is damn scared of these paranormal beings. She went there after a long time and had to stay there for about a week. Added to that, they have a big well without the sidewall at the backyard, which has a story in itself. Neighbors of her house say that there was a desperate girl who attempted suicide by jumping in the well and she is supposed to haunt around and inside the house, especially upstairs and also people staring at the well for long can really sense a difference within themselves and are hypnotized and can see that girl calling them into the well. There are even other stories of people who really jumped in without their sense and later had been rescued for good! Since it is haunting upstairs, everyone sleeps on the hallway down. One night after all of them had slept, my friend suddenly got up and became restless. She could just see the dark staircase going upstairs and since she was restless and was not able to sleep was staring at the dark stairway when suddenly a strange sense filled her and she was kind of blurred in her thought. She got up and started to walk towards the stairs! She heard a bad vibrant voice calling her name and she went following the voice!

Suddenly near the turn of the stairs, she hit the wall and opened her eyes that is when she really realized that she had walked to the spot where she was scared the hell to go. She got her worst scare when she saw something moving across the hallway like a white smoke or more of a girl in a white dress, up above in the first floor where she was able to just see the floor from where she was standing. She with the worst fear of her life got back to her sense and ran down the hallway screaming! She would swear the whole earth to say this whole incident so true since she felt it badly! She still has that worst fear of that incident when she says about it to us.

6. Salman said I will share one and last experience of ghosts till date. One night I was sleeping and I was just about to go in my dreams when suddenly I heard someone's feet tapping and I thought that it was mom, so I slept again. After sometime, I felt that someone has come closer to me and is lying beside me and again I thought that it was mom and in this thought, I turned over and suddenly opened my eyes and I saw one white transparent figure of a young lady lying beside me who just stood up suddenly and dissapeared! Oh that was some of adventurous nights I have ever experienced, but unfortunately no one believes me. People say that I was dreaming but I was not

7. Farhad Dastoor says that I was studying at Barnes Boarding School which was made on a British Battle ground in India itself in Devlali, Maharashtra.

There have been bloodsheds and killings on that same ground which is a tableland. There was a Sir in our school, Mr. Amle who expired one fine day and I happened to go to the water room to have water after the sports and i saw the staff room open and I peeped into it and I was able to see Mr. Amle sitting and having a fag, silent and steady and I could hear him saying Dastoor come here and I happened to hear this and see him clearly the same place in the staff room where he used to sit.

No one believes this when I tell them, but may be no one else saw him as I was into a good contact with Sir Amle and had a heart built-in relation with him, so it is like how you take relations. What is your psychological thinking and what has affected your mind in what way.

But at last, I would say "sometimes people say they have seen and spoken to dead people but psychologists would say that these are only illusions and we end up seeing what our mind wants us to see that is why tantriks or black magicians do a roaring business in India. For example have you ever wondered why it so happens that every time we watch a scary movie, our hair stands on end? We feel a kind of vibration, prickly feeling on our neck as if someone exists behind us. I suffered from the same fate as a child. I can still remember that image of a ghost I saw as a child, but come to think of this as a psychological problem because our mind is playing tricks with us. We are yet to fully understand our minds because there is no way we can test our brains by dismembering them and analyzing them. Probably, the reason why therapy is used to treat mental patients and less chemical drugs are used, although there might be a million explanations to this. Right from Erik Von Daniken's alien theory to the parallel dimension funda, we see a practical example of this phenomenon in the Iran air-downing incident. The American warship thought it to be an Iranian F-14 stationed at Bandar Abbas Air Base and when the aircraft was moving in towards the American warship, the US navy report stated that the Iranian airliner carrying 289 passengers did not respond on the 121.5 mhz frequency for airline radio communication and was moving towards it at a low altitude as if to bomb it. The Americans shot down the airliner as a defensive measure killing all 289 passengers onboard; however, reconstructed data later revealed that the radar operator on the American warship misread the planes altitude which was in effect increasing away from the warship instead of towards it and reported to the warship's captain who commanded that the airliner be shot down. The story's connection is to ghosts existence. The radar operator's mind played a trick on him, sensory illusion, pretty much why we believe in ghosts because as a defensive measure, our mind wants it so."

"It is totally a matter of thinking or what we believe. I don't really know whether ghost exists or not but it totally depends on what you think. It is actually what you think in your subconsciousness state, but one thing that you have to agree is that if you believe in GOD, then you have to believe in EVIL as well. If you agree that God is a source of positive energy, then Evil has to be a negative energy and I do believe in this because if there is light, then there must be dark. If there is matter, then there is antimatter, so at least I think we should respect these energies. That's all I want to say."