by Shalu Sharma
His face smoothed out, returning to normal and he appeared to be sleeping, his breathing was deep and shallow and then with a jerk, he woke up. He was afraid and told my uncle that he had been with the cows when he felt very uneasy, like he was being watched and then he felt dizzy and everything went black. He thought that he had passed out but was confused about why he was tied down and why his body hurt so badly.
He had no recollection of anything from being in the field to waking up tied to a cot in our house. My uncle explained to him what had happened and while he was explaining it, one of the neighbors came to our house to tell us that the neighbor had just died, a few hours ago, the same time that the cow herder started acting strange. The dead man had possessed the cow herder.
I saw this with my own eyes and it was something that haunted my dreams well into adult hood. It would haunt you too had you seen what we saw that day.
Ghost In The Toilet
I know that ghosts exist because I saw how my cousin reacted to seeing one. You do not see the wind but you see the leaves on the trees stir in the breeze. I did not see the ghost, but I saw how it affected my cousin and so I believe.
Every child looks forward to the summer school holidays. We no longer have to attend class or do our homework. We can play and just be kids without trying to learn. It was the best time of the year, not only because we had a break from school but also because that is when all of the cousins on my mother’s side got together over the summer holidays to visit our grandmother. It was a time of the year that we always greatly looked forward to.
Grandmother lived in the village in the Bhagalpur district of Bihar. It was a big house, with plenty of rooms and wide-open spaces. I loved the house, it was so roomy and open. The house was built in a square around a large square-shaped open courtyard. There were numerous entrances to the courtyard and in the hallways, the open rooms and the courtyard we would hide and chase each other. We would sneak around, screaming with joy every time we found somebody hiding.
My favorite cousin was Vikas. Vikas was a year older than I was, and you know how children always look up to their older cousins, I was that way with Vikas. I would shadow him, following him around, begging him to play hide-and-seek or ball. There were several of us who were children gathered there over our summer vacation and the courtyard always echoed with the sounds of our laughter.
The downside to grandmother’s house was that we had to share a communal toilet, and there was only one toilet for us to share. Just passed the boundaries for grandmother’s property was a Muslim graveyard. We were always afraid of the graveyard, with the graves jutting up from the ground; it was eerie to know that just below the surface of the ground were dead people.
The toilet was on the side of the house that faced the graveyard and it had a window so that anybody in the toilet had a clear view of the graveyard. It was okay during the day, the bright light of the sun chased away the shadow and the fears and it was just grass and heaps of soil. However, at night, when viewed out the window with only a lit candle and the soft glow of the moon, the graveyard took on a whole new feeling.
Shadows seemed to rise and fall as you watched, as if the souls of the dead were trying to break free from the ground. The moaning sound of the wind through the courtyard, to our young ears, was the cries of the dead, longing to catch us. Nights at my grandmothers were scary. This was before there was electricity in the village and all we had were candles and lantern after the sun went down. I, and my younger cousins, always dreaded going to the toilet alone and it was common for whoever had to go to wake up somebody to go with them, to stand guard with another candle or lantern to ward off the unseen demons that we were sure lurked in the shadows.
Grandmother’s house was close enough to the graveyard that we could often hear the wails and cries of the mourners. The undulating cries of the mourning relatives always filled us with sorrow and when a funeral went on, we would play quietly, no running and laughing. There was an old man who was the caretaker of the graveyard. He lived there, on the property somewhere but I never knew where exactly, we were never brave enough to explore the cemetery to find his place.
Vikas was very much unnerved by the caretaker. We would see the old man, with his white hair and wrinkled skin picking weeds and removing dead flowers from the graves. He would often watch the house, which scared us all but the old man would always stare right at Vikas. Once, Vikas came running from the toilet, scared because while he was in the toilet, he saw the old man standing there, staring at the window with such intensity that Vikas was afraid and came running out quickly.
The toilet window was close to the graveyard border, and the old man was standing right at the low fence, so close that Vikas could see the dirt under his yellowed nails, and see the individual hairs on his head. Our fears were discounted by the adults who said that the old man was just doing his job and that we should pay him no mind because he paid no attention to us.
At night, we saw the lantern that the old man carried with him around, while the man walked around the graveyard. I was in the toilet once when I saw that light coming nearer and nearer and I nearly fell down when I tried to turn and run away. When I got out of the toilet and turned back to take a quick look out the window, the light was simply gone.
It all started the night that Vikas woke up and needed to use the toilet. The rest of us were all asleep and so he took the lantern and went to the toilet, alone. Vikas was peeing, when suddenly; a hand appeared on the window. The hand was the hand of an old man, full of wrinkles and it had cracked yellowed nails with dirt under the nails. Vikas left the lantern, ran back to his room, dived under the duvet and waited, trembling.
He told us the story the next morning. Vikas was shaking and pale, which was unlike him. We decided that there was safety in numbers and we went in a group around the outside of the house, to the outside of the window by the graveyard. There was a single bare footprint in the dirt, just one print, under the window. A handprint was visible on the glass. We got a rag and wiped the window clean; looking around for other footprints but there was just that single, solitary footprint.
That night, Vikas went to use the toilet and one of our older cousins went with him. There was a scream from inside; it was Vikas. The adults and we rushed to the toilet. Vikas was in the corner, crying and pointing to the window, saying that the old man had put his hand through the glass, trying to reach inside to grab Vikas.
“It was reaching from the glass,” Vikas kept yelling over and over again. We were all scared by now. Vikas went back to bed, still shaking. A few hours later, he needed to use the toilet again, two of our cousins went this time, and one went into the toilet with Vikas. Seconds passed and then they both came out, screaming.
“The hand, it was coming up through the ground,” Vikas cried, “It grabbed my ankle. It was going to pull me under.”
Our other cousin nodded, “The dirt, it rose up like a hand and grabbed him and there was this moaning sound and the glass in the window rattled so hard we thought it would break. Did you not hear the glass?”
We all shook our heads no; we heard nothing other than their screaming. We had heard no moaning and no rattling glass. Vikas was nearly hysterical at this point. The adults were angry, thinking we were playing childish pranks on them but one look at Vikas and our other cousin, who was several years older told the adults that this was no joke.
Two of my uncles took lanterns and headed for the cemetery, “We are going to find this old man, find out what is going on!”
We watched their lanterns disappear into the distance and after a short time; they were back, looking frightened and pale.
“What has happened,” my grandmother demanded, “What did you find out?”
My uncle sat down heavily, “The old man, we found his house and we knocked and there was no answer. We looked in the window and saw him lying on the ground. He was dead. He had been dead for a while, but one arm was reached upwards, the fingers curled just as if h
e had wrapped his hand around somebody’s ankle.”
They fetched the authorities. It was not possible for the old man to have been playing tricks on us, as the adults thought. Vikas did not see the old man, he saw the ghost of the old man, reaching out to him through the glass and then again up through the ground. The old man was buried the next day, and he never appeared to Vikas again.
Message From The Author
I hope I have not scared you and hope you have liked these stories. These stories have been told me or I have experienced them personally. I have no reason to assume that the stories that were told to me are not genuine. I believe them.
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