My Tryst wid The Supernatural!!!!!!!!!

An old lady with white hair, she comes out at the dead of night when the moon is full. Her hair is waist length and shimmers silver and black with the moonlight playing hide and seek with the clouds. She stands in the middle of the old pool on her golden boat and moves it with her golden oar. If anybody passes by she will beckon at you to come and get the golden coins which she has hidden in the bed of the pool. Nobody has seen her face as she's devoid of any features. By the time you reach the pool, you are neck deep in water and you are pulled into a watery grave as she chokes you inside the water mercilessly. So, greed is bad.

That's how my neighborhood 'Grandma' used to teach me moral lessons. Yeah the side effects were there, giving sleepless nights to my poor parents. The first night when I heard that story, I got a fever and was in a delirium, screaming at short notices. From that day poor grandma got scared with my spooky exertions. She made it a point that I wasn't around while she dwelt on stories of witches, ghosts, evil dwarfs to the attentive audience of my cousin and my siblings.

As I grew up, that biased treatment of being deprived of the supernatural knowledge got the better of me. When I was 10 years old, I borrowed a book 'World Famous Ghost Stories' from my classmate. I carefully covered it with brown paper, not because mom will chide me that I am wasting my time not reading my course books. It was only because that I see terrible nightmares and scream enough to scare the ghosts away if they are any around. The first story was fine, of a dead sailor who died on the way to his marriage and though he couldn't make it, his soul could find his way back only to evaporate when his fiancé kissed him. It was somewhat funny when I think of it now but back than it was too scary. The second story, I don't remember but the third story was terrible. It was of a new house which was built in an ancient graveyard and faces of people showed up in the tiles.

After reading that, I started seeing faces in the tiles of our bathroom floor, throwing suspicious questions to my parents that why can't we dig our backyard and see if we had some kind of treasures hidden there. Well I put it that way as they will become askance if I start talking about skulls and graves. As obvious, they didn't give any attention to me, except for weird looks and that book got a save place under the sofa, which I flipped out of fear. My hands were too tiny to get inside the sofa. Well! what happened after that let’s not dwell in that. By this time you must have guessed it! I wasn't sitting on the sofa for a long long time as I thought the spectres inside the book will come to fetch me. I used to look at the shower if blood is coming out instead of water, typical Ramsay style, which I used to have a peek as my uncle had a collection of VHS tapes of those movies which he used to rent from our local neighbourhood VDO parlour.

As I started growing up, studies, activities occupied me but by then cable TV had made an appearance, and I always used to catch the repeated episodes of Zee Horror Show and Aahat as prime time was an impossibility with my parents around. When I reached college, 'Hamlet' was my favourite play and guess what I knew all the Hamlet's soliloqueys by heart.

Ten years hence after leaving my hometown for higher studies, I got my first tryst with the unexplained. Me and my two friends used to stay in an old flat in the third floor in Mayur Vihar, Delhi. Delhi was at its boiling best than, so we never had a habit of closing the windows. My roommate’s window opened out to an unused space. One summer night, we had slept off almost roasted with the hot climate of Delhi. At 3 am, I heard a sharp shrill ear-piercing scream and I could make it out, that it was nearby. I woke up, checked the clock, 3 am(the time when Jesus was dead and spirits come out, according to my friend). I soon realised that it was my roommate. In the dark, I could make out her crouched silhouette, and that weeping sounds like she's possessed or something.

I went numb as somebody has taken the wind off me! I just leapt to her and held her as I couldn't figure out anything else to do. Well the consequence was that she started screaming again, I also started screaming and crying like a numbskull! My other roommate rushed in and switched on the light. Finally, she came to her senses and started pointing at her window. She spoke but it sounded like Spanish, as we couldn't make out what she was saying. We gave her water and than she told that a thing in the shape of a human being was coming in from the grilled window and going out. Her body became cold and when she tried to pull on the bed sheet she confronted the red eyes with white eyeballs. She screamed out by than it was gone (Well she screamed loud enough to wake up the dead, I was a witness to that). We changed the house asap.

Another incident happened where I stay now, though miles apart in Bangalore. My previous room was haunted. It was dark and resembled a cave. Well the ghost is a typical lady in red sari coming and choking you, playing games like pulling the blanket, peeking at you when you watching TV at the dead of night when you don’t get the much -needed sleep. All my roomates have seen it except me, I feel kinda deprived though. Is it I am so gross that ghosts are scared of me!!! Or is it I am blessed and so good that evil forces can't touch me!!!

What do you think? So do you believe in ghosts?