ghosts and the darkness
do ghosts exist or not ? this is one question that has intrigued researchers and normal people (like you and me) all around the world for many centuries. i have also had similar discussions, lasting whole nights, with my friends during the college days. though nobody knows the answer for sure, but i have found one common thread in all these discussions. no matter what stand the group takes, one starts feeling some mystic force in the environment after such discussions and it becomes real hard to discard the existence of ghosts. i will cite three real life incidents, spread over last 8 months, that made me rethink.
the mid-term examinations of the second semester were over. myself, chamad, thakur, chirag and pal decided to board pal's car and proceed towards the main city. the agenda was to watch "Vaastu Shashtra" supposedly a supernatural thriller. the movie was spooky and gripping in the start but by the end it turned fad as it started showing ghosts coming from every nook and corner to kill the pretty sushmita and her kid. all was well till now except for the fact that thakur din't watch the movie but just listen to it, he had covered his eyes. anyways so we left the theatre and started the talks on ghost and related theories. in no time, there was almost no traffic as it was close to 1:30 am plus the discussions were so engrossing that we lost track of time, we reached the taratala bypass. since the road lights were up, pal preferred to drive with the head-lights switched off. soon we reached an area where there were no lights. just as pal switched the head-lights on, and by this time we were engorssed in a heated discussion over ghots, the lights fell on the road side and took our breathes away; pal almost lost control on the steering for a second. there were 5-10 white sculptures each around 5-6 feet in height standying by the road with arms wide open. the talks that we were having coupled with the storyline of the movie had created such an effect on our minds, that as the headlights illuminated the sculptures all of a sudden in the quiet dark surroundings, we misidentified them as white ghosts all set to attack us. though the incident lasted only a couple of seconds, it took a few minutes before we all returned to the normal state.
i had planned a trip to orissa with pulkit, rajesh (call him AT) and shrikanth. we had had a nice day, sighting of a rare species of dolphin in the chilka lake, fun at the beach, casual walk across the village. we had rented a room at a government lodge for a day and had decided to leave for konark by the early morning bus. while the dinner was getting ready, we decided to do a little star-gazing session. pulkit, as usual, helped us in identfying various constellations (though now i only remember orion). soon AT initiated some discussion on the movie "Blair Witch Project" (based on the real life story of 3 students of UMD who ventured to find a witch; when there was no news from them for months, eventually police started investigating but could only find their dead bodies and some video-tapees which were edited to make this movie) and the fact that he himself was planning to do a similar adventure. slowly our talks became more and more focussed on ghosts, witches etc. and thanks to our hungry stomachs we decided to put a pause on the discussion. i am quite sure that except for AT, the stomach of three of us was tickling not because of hunger. anyways , we went to bed after the dinner only to spoil our nights as AT decided to continue the discussion. the room was already pitch-dark, and so when all of sudden AT exclaimed "i see a dead body hanging from the fan", the room now acquired a pin-drop silence also. none of us had the guts to lift the quilt above our head and see whether a dead body was indeed hanging from the fan or not. silence was finally broken by the sheepish laugh of AT and it was only after we had kicked and scolded him real hard for this joke, that the room appeared to come back to life. not sure about the fan, but three dead bodies were lying on the bed for some time indeed. it was probably the worst night of my life till that date. pulkit confined the same months later.
the last one happens to be the latest also. during my summer internship at pune, i was put up at a small 1 bhk flat close to my office. on one saturday, i wake up late as usual only to find water all around my sports and leather shoes. the surpising aspect was that this place was far away from the bathroom so there was almost no chance as if my roommate might have spilled some water after washing clothes. also the water had stayed there only even though floor sloped a little down from that place. when i popped up the mystery to my roommate, his first reaction was "abe, kahin bhoot to nahin aa gaya" and i felt like "oh no, not again". what happened that night confirmed my feelings. as i was about to catch sleep, i felt some pinching in my little toe. i wake up all of a sudden and found very small skin portion removed from the toe and little blood at the location. also there was no mosquiton or any other insect in the vicinity. to add to the growing suspicion in my mind, i got a glimpse of the mountains behing the window of my room and all those stories of ghosts in the hilly areas came to my mind. the window that till now was a source of fresh cool air in the night soon became the source of a nightmare. i don't remember the number of hours i spent strolling in my room and lying on the bed with lights on and eyes open before eventually going in slumber, but no doubt this has been "the" worst night of my life even surpassing the previous one.
though none of the incidents involve any ghost sightings, but they give the feeling as if ghosts do exist, may be in some other world, when we talk so much about them they are able to listen to us and then try to make their presence felt to us in our world. even as i write this post at such late hours, i feel some mysterious feeling about my sorroundings. hope i get a good sleep. good night and sweet dreams.
the mid-term examinations of the second semester were over. myself, chamad, thakur, chirag and pal decided to board pal's car and proceed towards the main city. the agenda was to watch "Vaastu Shashtra" supposedly a supernatural thriller. the movie was spooky and gripping in the start but by the end it turned fad as it started showing ghosts coming from every nook and corner to kill the pretty sushmita and her kid. all was well till now except for the fact that thakur din't watch the movie but just listen to it, he had covered his eyes. anyways so we left the theatre and started the talks on ghost and related theories. in no time, there was almost no traffic as it was close to 1:30 am plus the discussions were so engrossing that we lost track of time, we reached the taratala bypass. since the road lights were up, pal preferred to drive with the head-lights switched off. soon we reached an area where there were no lights. just as pal switched the head-lights on, and by this time we were engorssed in a heated discussion over ghots, the lights fell on the road side and took our breathes away; pal almost lost control on the steering for a second. there were 5-10 white sculptures each around 5-6 feet in height standying by the road with arms wide open. the talks that we were having coupled with the storyline of the movie had created such an effect on our minds, that as the headlights illuminated the sculptures all of a sudden in the quiet dark surroundings, we misidentified them as white ghosts all set to attack us. though the incident lasted only a couple of seconds, it took a few minutes before we all returned to the normal state.
i had planned a trip to orissa with pulkit, rajesh (call him AT) and shrikanth. we had had a nice day, sighting of a rare species of dolphin in the chilka lake, fun at the beach, casual walk across the village. we had rented a room at a government lodge for a day and had decided to leave for konark by the early morning bus. while the dinner was getting ready, we decided to do a little star-gazing session. pulkit, as usual, helped us in identfying various constellations (though now i only remember orion). soon AT initiated some discussion on the movie "Blair Witch Project" (based on the real life story of 3 students of UMD who ventured to find a witch; when there was no news from them for months, eventually police started investigating but could only find their dead bodies and some video-tapees which were edited to make this movie) and the fact that he himself was planning to do a similar adventure. slowly our talks became more and more focussed on ghosts, witches etc. and thanks to our hungry stomachs we decided to put a pause on the discussion. i am quite sure that except for AT, the stomach of three of us was tickling not because of hunger. anyways , we went to bed after the dinner only to spoil our nights as AT decided to continue the discussion. the room was already pitch-dark, and so when all of sudden AT exclaimed "i see a dead body hanging from the fan", the room now acquired a pin-drop silence also. none of us had the guts to lift the quilt above our head and see whether a dead body was indeed hanging from the fan or not. silence was finally broken by the sheepish laugh of AT and it was only after we had kicked and scolded him real hard for this joke, that the room appeared to come back to life. not sure about the fan, but three dead bodies were lying on the bed for some time indeed. it was probably the worst night of my life till that date. pulkit confined the same months later.
the last one happens to be the latest also. during my summer internship at pune, i was put up at a small 1 bhk flat close to my office. on one saturday, i wake up late as usual only to find water all around my sports and leather shoes. the surpising aspect was that this place was far away from the bathroom so there was almost no chance as if my roommate might have spilled some water after washing clothes. also the water had stayed there only even though floor sloped a little down from that place. when i popped up the mystery to my roommate, his first reaction was "abe, kahin bhoot to nahin aa gaya" and i felt like "oh no, not again". what happened that night confirmed my feelings. as i was about to catch sleep, i felt some pinching in my little toe. i wake up all of a sudden and found very small skin portion removed from the toe and little blood at the location. also there was no mosquiton or any other insect in the vicinity. to add to the growing suspicion in my mind, i got a glimpse of the mountains behing the window of my room and all those stories of ghosts in the hilly areas came to my mind. the window that till now was a source of fresh cool air in the night soon became the source of a nightmare. i don't remember the number of hours i spent strolling in my room and lying on the bed with lights on and eyes open before eventually going in slumber, but no doubt this has been "the" worst night of my life even surpassing the previous one.
though none of the incidents involve any ghost sightings, but they give the feeling as if ghosts do exist, may be in some other world, when we talk so much about them they are able to listen to us and then try to make their presence felt to us in our world. even as i write this post at such late hours, i feel some mysterious feeling about my sorroundings. hope i get a good sleep. good night and sweet dreams.
posted by himanshu agrawal | 1:46 PM
14 Comments:
Heman I jumped so high in the car on that day that almost smashed my head into the windshield. The timing of the appearance was the sucker punch.
Hagnesh bhai.. choohe kutar jate hain paanv.. khali fokat mein baccho ko darao mati
mujhe to lagta hai ki its all mind-game. In my childhood, I used to pass an unpopulated area with a big garden. Pure time Hanuman chalisa ka jaap karte hue jata tha :) Once I got scared of my own shadow for a second or so :). There are things which we cant explain now, but its difficult to accept the existence of Ghosts IMO. Surely, There is a lot of thrill in talking these in scary environments >:)
bhai, choohe hair-oil to use nahin karte na, coz i used to keep my hair-oil bottle at one place in the morning and find it at some other place when return back in the night from office..
Hey gups, you sound as if you almost believe in all that stuff!
It's actually scary, yes, even for a rationalist (and may I add, an atheist) like me. And now it's upto me to reason that out. Would a 'true' rational person never be scared of ghosts? Does a truely rational guy believe in non-existence of ghosts? Or does he not believe in existence of ghosts? It's the latter. If existence of ghosts is proved, he'd accept it. But then doesn't everybody count as a rationalist, after all, people who have witnessed ghosts have a rational reason to believe in their existence! No, they don't have a proof, which a conclusive evidence, which has no alternative. So for example, you room-mate may be playing a trick on you, or maybe you had actually forgotten where exactly you had placed the hair-oil bottle. But maybe you have discounted these explanations, so...
But a rational person who has not been proved this existence would feel compelled to denounce any evidence which is just stated by someone else. He'd look for possible explanations, and if he isn't able to come up with any, he'd wait for it to turn up by itself.
So yes, a rational person can be scared by thought of ghosts, because he doesn't believe in their non-existence. For that he'd need a proof that "ghosts do NOT exist". And I can't picture at this point of time, how to produce this proof!
Ah! Just a mental random walk, may not be highly correlated to your blog. Was written without deletions. :)
... so yes, I was scared that night. Dead scared. I almost wanted to kick AT. But I still (rightfully?) believe that I am a rational person.
Did I just conclude that atheists are irrationals ? :)
and the last "anonymous" was me :)
pulkit dear, ur theory was convoluted as always, never mind :) and ya it was obvious that u were the anonymous guy
hagge dear..what happened to your photo blog plans?
mere wala to dekh rahe ho na :)
It was convoluted, all right, but the last conclusion was the prize! I'll take that anyday :)
BTW, Ancic is doing rather well!
congrats for winning the prize pk dude.
ya, ancic is doing fine but he still has a long way to go. btw, there was a nice article on federer in yesterday's telegraph. read this: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050624/asp/sports/story_4908949.asp
il serenissimo indeed!
yup, the most serene one. that's what this quote means in italian. and he displayed the same, coming from 3-5 down in the 4th set to seal the victory 7-5.
Ok, but who else? ;)
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