Ghost Stories

GHOST STORIES

I have always been interested in ghost stories. They somehow intimidate me, make me engrossed in them. When i was a kid, I used to read a lot of Goosebumps books by R.L.Stine which then moved to Fear Street. These books always fascinated me. As I grew up & bordered my teens, I read the Twilight Saga & each vampire book I could lay my hands onto. Ghost stories- there is definitely something intriguing about them.

Thankfully, I have never experienced anything ghostly or paranormal. But I have heard stories. Since I was a child, I have heard a lot of stories evidencing the existence of ghosts in this world. I have seen a lot of movies portraying the power of the paranormal.

Once my Maasi told me a story. She had visited her native place & had gotten this third-person experience of a ghost. The story went by that in the village, there was a "Peepal ka Ped", where there was supposedly a spirit or what I would prefer calling an "aatma". One evening, Maasi heard someone crying out loudly. She went outside the house & checked everywhere but couldn't see anybody. But she could still hear the sobs. She checked the entire veranda, failing to spot anybody. As she was still investigating the source of the loud wails, her neighbor came out angrily & started saying, "this is an everyday course. I am so fed up of this woman. The moment the sun goes down, she starts with her sobs!". Saying which she stormed out towards the "Peepal ka Ped", & sternly said, "Stop it now. Told you so many times to not come & cry here. Still you do every single evening. Just go away now. Go from here. Otherwise you know whom I'll be calling to get rid of you!". & surprisingly, the sobs stopped. Maasi not once again did hear any sobs the entire evening or night.

We all know how its said usually that "Peepal ka Ped" is a tree upon which there are the most number of "bhoots" wandering. "Peepal ka Ped" also being the tree that gives the most oxygen, is another scientific fact which is better ignored as we are talking about ghosts, something that science does not belive in. In fact, it is also said that one should not utter the words, "C'mon, lets go (chalo, chalte hai) or come with me, beneath a "Peepal ka Ped" at evening, as it is said that this phrase attracts the free spirits residing on the "Peepal ka Ped", & you get possessed by a spirit. I do not know if that's true or how true it is, but I would want to know that do these spirits like have a small talk as to which one of them shall go & possess the poor person or is it pre-decided amongst them? OK jokes apart- my mom would kill me if she knows I am making fun of "ghosts". Shush!

Once a friend of mine had told me another such eerie ghost story. The story went on that one evening, she was alone at her house, doing random stuff. That is when she heard some noise. She checked the entire house but could not find the source of the noise. As she settled down again, she heard a sound of a door squeaking open. It was the bathroom door, which she got up & closed, thinking the wind must have opened it. She closed all the windows- it was anyways the season of winter. As she settled down again, she once again heard the door creaking open. Now she got scared. She once again got up & closed the door. After a minute of nothing, the door again creaked open. My friend, being scared out of her bones, just walked into another room & locked herself in, until her family came back home. Though that was it, & she never experienced anything weird again.

When I was in school, a friend told me a story she had heard from her other set of friends. She went on to recite that, there is a game called "Bloody Mary". Once it had so happened that few girl friends decided to play this game. The story revolved around the fact that there actually existed a girl named "Mary", who had died and it was said that if you call out her name thrice, looking into the mirror at night, saying "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary", she would appear in the mirror, and take you inside with her, in the process strangling the person or stealing her soul. I do not know how true that is, but none of us had the guts to try it out.

One of my colleague once recited me her personal experience with "ghosts". She told me her story which went by that once, as she & her brother were sleeping in their room, her brother saw somebody at the window. As he got up & went out to check, he could see no one & hence thinking of it as a hallucination, he returned back to his bed. Just to once again find someone staring at him. He got up & went out - & started screaming. His sister got up & asked him why was he screaming, upon which he answered that he couldn't move, that someone had gotten hold of him & wasn't leaving him. However, his sister could not see anybody. The same incident occurred again one night, where her mother experienced somebody pulling at her hair, however when she got up & checked, there was nobody to be seen. The same night as the brother saw that somebody again, & he went out in the balcony to check, when the windows just slam shut & he couldn't get inside the house.

There are many more such stories that I have heard of, which if I start writing, would be never ending.

All this makes me think about the existence of "ghosts" or "spirits". Do they really exist? Are there really spirits moving around us, that we are unaware of? Is there really such a thing as "bhatakti aatma"?

If we go by the stories, then yes there is. Because most of the stories we hear are such of which no logical or scientific explanation can be given. These paranormal activities just happen without any reasonability, neither with any factual base. & people do experience them.

To be honest, I am a very timid person, you can call me a fattu when it comes to such things, but I do believe in ghosts- my line of thought being, why take risk? What if I say I don't believe in them, but they do exist & some "bhoot" feels obligated that he should show me that he exists? Better to believe instead! Though it sounds lame, but for me its reason enough.

However I also feel, logically, ghosts must be existing. Agreed their existence has not been proved scientifically, but so is not the existence of God proved by science. But we still believe in His existence. We believe that He is there. We worship Him. Why? Just because he is the "good" force? So when there is "good", shouldn't there be a bad too?

In fact, scientifically speaking, though the existence of God hasn't been proved, but science does believe in the concept of what it calls as "good energy". So similarly, there must be a "bad energy" too, & who knows, that's what might be ghosts?!

The world does not exist one sided. For every good, there is a bad; for every bad, there is a good. For every positive,there is a negative. With heaven, there is hell. With right there is wrong. With electron there is proton. Which only proves that nothing one sided exists. Like every action has a reaction, every word has an opposite. Hell, even a pencil cell has a positive & a negative, without which it won’t work.

So I guess, even the world has a good energy & a bad energy to it. The good one we believe in as God. Maybe the bad ones are the spirits.

Maybe while I am typing this right now, the God is looking onto me from above and as you are reading this, a spirit is reading it too, standing right beside you.

Happy Halloween!