Encounters of the surreal kind

I saw an apparition
I was eight-years-old, on vacation with my mother and two of her friends in Singapore. We were staying at the Imperial Hotel (which I heard shut down years ago).
I don't remember the room number or the floor we were on. I don't event want to. But that particular night had been a fun one, mostly because I was thrilled with the prospect of being allowed to stay up late. It was a welcome departure from boarding school norms, where kids staying up later than 9pm would have to face the wrath of the matron.
After a long day, I finally hit the sack a few minutes past midnight. I was a heavy sleeper — there were times I'd fallen from my bed and continued remaining asleep on the floor, blissfully oblivious to a bruised hand or a bump on the head. But what happened that night jolted me out of a slumber I wouldn't enjoy for days.
I was snug under the covers when my right leg was suddenly yanked — maybe a good few feet — and I was pulled all the way under the duvet. So forceful was the tug that my eyes flew open because of the pain. I cried out. The adults, who were in the midst of a late night conversation, ran over. I asked my mother why she'd woken me up like this. She said she hadn't, and neither had her friends. No one had reason to wake up a sleeping child in so violent a manner.
My mother, perplexed and a bit shaken at the turn of events, said we'd change rooms the following day. Until then, she added, she'd be here to make sure nothing happened to me.
But it did. I was just about drifting to sleep when my leg was yanked yet again. This time, it was the left one.
I shrieked again and started crying. My mother, who was sitting closer to me, saw what had happened. But the most terrifying moment of that night came when I sat up in bed seconds later.
When I glanced towards the foot of the bed, I saw a blackish apparition with what seemed like two orbs of red where the eyes usually are. I'd never screamed so much in my life, and I haven't since. My throat went hoarse. The worst part about it all was my pointing to the foot of the bed, telling everyone in the room that there was something there. But they just couldn't see it. Whatever that thing was, it just stood there and kept looking. It seemed to go on forever. It didn't look human, and it didn't look 'ghostly' either. I don't know what it was.
My mother and her friends had to eventually lift me from the bed and carry me across to another room, which was arranged for after fervent requests from my mom. I was so paralysed with fear that I refused to get out of it for fear of inching that much closer to the apparition.
The room didn't have a haunted reputation. But my mother's friend said she overheard two staff members talking about the hotel 'needing to be blessed by a priest'. What happened since, I don't know.

(Roshni Nair is a 26-year-old journalist in Mumbai)

A vicious poltergeist
I come from the upper Assam town of Tinsukia. When I was growing up, I had heard of many instances of people keeping poltergeists ('noisy' ghosts) as pets and letting them loose on others for vengeance. But I never saw or experienced one myself.
We once found my mother and other aunts speak in hushed tones about the family of a distant relative. A great calamity had befallen on the family and my mother was going to visit them. My sister, Leena, and I, excited by the prospect, insisted that we accompany the elders, and we were taken along.
Once there, we found many other relatives and friends hanging around solemnly. Inside the house, we found burn marks on the floor and charred calendar hangers hung on the walls. It was a little later, when we grew up, that our mom told us the entire story.
One fine morning, the family woke up to certain occurrences in the house. Pots would break on their own, the kitchen would become dirty moments after it had been cleaned, and while eating, food would suddenly disappear from plates to be replaced by mud and muck. This was disturbing, but the family patriarch, who disbelieved in the occult, would not have the wife go and visit the local bez (a witch-doctor of sorts).
Things worsened pretty soon. One day, one of the daughters was hanging something on the wall, and suddenly started screaming in pain. When the family gathered around her, they found her in a pool of blood and found that one of her butt cheeks was gone.
They rushed her to the hospital, but did not know how to explain to the doctor what had transpired. Soon, once the hospital duties were done, the patriarch and the wife trooped to the local bez. The bez asked to be taken to the possessed house. He spent a few minutes before pointing to a spot in the courtyard, and dug it to yield a child's bone wrapped in red cloth.
The wife then recalled that she had let in a man two months ago to take away a betel-nut tree from the courtyard in exchange for a jackfruit. Turned out that her family had a feud with a family next door, who wanted revenge and had planted the poltergeist (beera in Assamese) in their house.

(Ila Sarma is a 56-year-old lawyer. She now lives in Guwahati)

I lived a life of fear
The year was 2003. I had just moved from Odisha to Delhi to work in a PR firm. I shared a room in an apartment in south Delhi's CR Park neighbourhood with Mansi. The apartment had another room, which the landlord had kept locked to rent to another tenant.
In the one year that I stayed in that house, I lived a life of fear. There was a spirit in that house. The first time I sensed something amiss was when, one morning, I noticed a broken pane of glass on the ventilator window. I immediately thought of informing the landlord, in the same building, to have it replaced. But it slipped my mind and I forgot to talk to him. To my surprise, when I returned from work that evening, the glass pane had been fixed. Now, the landlord did not have the key to the apartment. The two sets of keys were with Mansi and me, and both of us had been away from home all day. We couldn't understand how the glass pane was fixed, but didn't think much of it.
The next instance really left me spooked. Mansi used to pack two rotis in lunch for me everyday. One day, I called her from office to tell her that from the following day, she should pack three rotis. When it was lunchtime, I opened my tiffin and discovered that it had three rotis. When I called Mansi to check if she had packed three rotis that morning, she said she had packed two. I was taken aback and my head started to reel.
A few weeks later, the landlord's servant came over to ask us if we'd been staying up late at night. When we answered in the negative, he said he'd been hearing noises coming from our apartment, especially the kitchen. He said he had heard water gushing out of a tap, food being cooked and utensils being washed on several nights. We were completely besides ourselves. We spoke to the landlord about these instances, but he brushed off our concern, saying we were imagining things.
Then there was this one time when Mansi and I were listening to the radio in our room one afternoon. One of my favourite songs started to play and I asked Mansi to increase the volume. As soon as she got up from her chair, the radio came to an abrupt stop. Yet the song continued to play, as if on speakers. The music was coming from the locked room. There was no mistake about that. I was absolutely scared. Mansi started to walk in the direction of the second room but as soon as she reached the door, the song stopped playing. There was pin drop silence. A second later, the radio in our room sprang to life, and the same song started to play. It was terrifying.
After this instance, we made up our mind to move out of the house. One night, while I was asleep, I suddenly started to feel very hot. I was almost perspiring and I could feel some pressure on my legs. It was almost as if someone was sitting on them. The discomfort made me open my eyes. And it was right there – the spirit stood there, looking at me. It didn't have a shape. It was an ambiguous, glowing form. I was so scared that no voice came out of my mouth. I quickly shut my eyes hard and started to pray. I couldn't sleep the entire night.
The next day Mansi consulted a tantrik, who told her that a spirit was indeed residing in the house. Eventually, when I moved into another apartment, I had to ask my friends to move my stuff to the new house.

(Lopamudra Mohanty is a communications professional. She now lives in Bahrain)

Is she still with me?
On a windy evening last November, some of my friends and I had gathered at our friend, Anubhav's place in Delhi's Mayur Vihar area. One of the friends, Dutta, suggested that we call spirits. I was not convinced if it was a good idea to call spirits, and was paranoid about the very thought. Until then, I was as virgin as 'Virgin Mary' to the 'spirit calling' phenomenon. But since everyone else was game, we sat down in a room and switched off the lights. Dutta wrote 'A to Z', '0 to 9' and 'yes', 'no', 'enter' and 'exit' on a blank sheet of paper. We placed our index fingers on a one rupee coin on the paper and enchanted thrice the mantra, 'oo, tho, thai, yaa,' as per his instructions.
Then, Anubhav respectfully told the unseen: "If there are any spirits in the room, please enter the coin. If, yes please move the coin to 'enter'." I'm sure everyone in the room, visible or invisible, heard the sound of my pounding heart, as the coin moved to 'yes'. One by one, we all started asking it questions and the coin kept moving at a rapid pace. The spirit spelled out everything on paper: her name was Cindy; She died when she was 23; She had come back to seek revenge from her relative who had raped and killed her.
I mustered the courage to ask if she was standing behind Anubhav. She said 'yes'. Anubhav asked her the colour of my tee-shirt and she rightly responded 'black'. He asked if she would accompany me home in my car tonight. Cindy didn't say anything.
We then politely asked her leave and the coin moved to "Exit". It was dark by the time I decided to leave. I had to drive about 20km to my house. I couldn't get Anubhav's question out of my head and kept looking in the rear view mirror. After some time, I noticed that the coin was in my car. I was shocked, because I clearly remembered putting it on the table in Anubhav's flat. I kept wondering, "Is she still with me?"
(25-year-old Ujala Chowdhry now lives in Jammu)

A caretaker in both life and death
This is when I was studying at St Anthony's in Shillong between 2007 and 2010. I lived in a PG down the road, which was run by a Khasi (tribe) lady. The PG, housed in a two-storeyed bungalow, was manned by an old woman who was our caretaker. We called her ai (mother in Assamese), and would turn to her for everything from heartache to head lice.
One night, my friend Sumita and I were playing ludo. The game went on for long, and by the time we were done, it was nearly 1:30am. We dropped her to her room and went back to our respective ones. What happened next is what Sumita narrated to us the morning after:
I could not sleep for a long time, and kept tossing and turning. So I picked up a book to read. Sometime in between, I dozed off, and when I woke up, the lights were off. I clearly remembered that I had not switch off the lights. Anyway, I was awake again, and switched on the lights. Suddenly, there was a thunderstorm and the lights went off. I was a bit spooked by now, and clutched my pillow. I heard some shuffling outside the door, and called out to ask who it was. I got no reply, but I thought it might be ai because when the lights go out, she usually came to all our rooms with a candle. Suddenly, I heard urgent knocking on the door. I got really scared for some reason, ran to my door and locked it. I still called out, and again failed to get a reply. After this, I did not get any sleep, and bid my time until daybreak. In the morning, I went to the common room, and when the girls filled in one by one, I asked them if they had heard anyone last night. They said no. But aunty overheard us talking, and then, in a slow tone asked me the time of the knock. I said it as somewhere between 2 to 3am. She looked disturbed, and when we prodded further, she said: "Ai passed away last night, and she left us at 2:15am."

(Richie is a 25-year-old public relations professional in Delhi)

Kids were talking to a boy 'ghost'
I don't believe in ghosts. But I clearly remember that day in 2011 when I was terror-stricken after conducting a yoga class at a residential society in Mazgaon area.
I had been teaching yoga to the building's women for nearly a year-and-a-half. The women would often tell me things that seemed to be too bizarre. My own friend from that building, and one other resident, had been telling me that their kids have been behaving strangely. Both the women had noticed their kids were having solo conversations. When they questioned the children, they'd both say, 'I am talking to my friend. He is right here. Can't you see?' In fact, even if they'd give snacks or fruits to their kids, the kids would ask for a second plate for this 'friend' whom they could not see, but the kids could.
As their yoga teacher, I thought it was good that they were verbalising their fears, because yoga can only be beneficial when practised with a calm, composed mind. So I would talk to them, but never really thought much about the ghost or the spirit that these kids were seeing.
Then one day, after yoga class, as soon as I switched on the ignition on my scooter, I felt a heavy pressure behind me. It was almost as if someone was sitting pillion. I was numb. I did not dare to turn behind to check, nor could I bring myself to look into the scooter's rear-view mirrors. I was so petrified that I started reciting our holy mantra, and sped out from the gate. Even then I could feel the presence behind my back. I don't know when the spirit left, but I only stopped the scooter when I had reached my own building. I stopped, parked and there was no one there.
Over the next few days, I fell ill. My family took me to the mosque, where the mullah confirmed that there was an evil being on my trail, but that it was now far away and would no longer trouble me. I stopped going to the building to teach. To this day, am not sure if it was indeed a spirit that was behind me that day.

(Shirin Unwala is a yoga teacher in Mumbai)

Earthern pots in the basement
I shared a duplex house with seven other journalist friends for a month in Ahmedabad in 2002. The house had a front and a rear entrance. The ground floor had the living room connected to an open kitchen and a bedroom. There were two more bedrooms upstairs.
Since we were all journalists, we kept odd hours. Often times, when I was sitting alone in the living room, I would feel that someone is sitting on the staircase steps and staring at me. It was all very eerie. When I would look at the staircase, there would be no one there, and the feeling would go away. This happened several times.
One afternoon, I heard knocking on the front door. When I opened the door, there was no one there. But the knocking persisted. This time at the rear door. Again, when I opened that door, there was no one there either. When I told the others about this, they too reiterated experiencing the same thing.
Then one day, a new room-mate decided to put his extra luggage in the spare room in the basement. When we went downstairs, we saw that the room was full of earthen pots (gharas). Some of these were full of mustard seeds (rai). That's when all of us started joking about it, about how someone in the house had been practising black magic. And soon all of us started verbalising our experiences — about someone watching over us, the knocking on the door, etc.
In the one month that I stayed in the house, one of my room-mates' bike was stolen and another room-mate became considerably ill and had to be admitted into a hospital. None of us stayed in the house for more than six months. Not that anyone of us was frightened, but when we think about it now, it all seems very spooky.

(Madhav Gore is a journalist-turned-corporate professional in Mumbai)

Compiled by Marisha Karwa and Amrita Madhukalya