Scary ghost stories and stuff (1)

Darker Than The Night

Around 3 years back, my family used to own a new four bedroom villa in the suburbs. My dad was working in another country and so only my mom, my sister and I used to live in that house. I used to visit only during weekends or holidays since I was doing my Masters in a different city. While I was home, we three used to sleep in the master bedroom downstairs, mainly because my mom was paranoid about burglars and sought strength in unity.

I have had several experiences in that house. But I used to push it off into the recesses of my consciousness and explain it away as my eyes playing tricks on me.

The incident I am going to narrate is very significant to me since it proved to me beyond doubt that these incidents were not a figment of my imagination. This is one of the first incidents that happened since we moved in.

There is this saying in India, that you should lie with your head facing East or North, but never towards the South. When I used to come home, my mom used to place another bed alongside the king sized bed, so that we all can sleep parallel to each other. In order for the beds to fit, we had to place the beds in such a way that when we lie down, we used to have our head to the South. I do not know how much logic and reason is there behind the saying, and all I know is that your body's energy and karmic chakra is affected by the magnetic pull and energy of earth while it orbits the sun and the balance of positive and negative energy is affected. Vague, I know.

So, back to our story. Whenever I used to come home, and retire for the night in this position, I used to have this unexplained fear - true, blood-running-cold fear, that suddenly takes over my thoughts in the middle of the night. There used to be no particular reason to trigger the fear. Sometimes I will be sleeping peacefully when I wake up with a start, drenched in cold sweat, heart beating fast and shivering, like a cornered animal. I used to get the distinct feeling that someone was watching me from the foot of the bed. I never saw anything then. Just felt "it".

This became an everyday occurrence. I was afraid to sleep near the end of the bed. My mom tried everything, but nothing made that night terror go away.

One night, I slept in the middle, with my mom and sister on either side. That night I slept soundly. Next morning, my mom made us shift around the furniture in the room so that somehow we managed to have the huge beds placed the right way - with our head facing East. After that I did not experience anything. To this day, I still do not know whether placing your head in a particular way while you sleep actually affects us in any way or not.

The day I was going back to my hostel/dorm, my mom revealed something to me about her hasty decision to move the bed's position, which still gives me chills when I think about it. The night before the shift, my mom was sleeping where I generally sleep, and she too woke up in the middle of the night with a strange feeling. She shrugged it off and decided to go to the bathroom, which was attached to the bedroom - i.e right across where she was sleeping, about 3 feet away in fact. There is a cupboard a few inches away from the bathroom door and this created a slight gap big enough for a child to sit in. The room was flooded with light coming through the window from the streetlight outside. In this light, my mom saw a dark shadow resembling a person - a man, sitting in that corner between the cupboard and the door. It had its head on it's knees posture, and as my mom looked on, it lifted its head, and slowly stood/glided up the wall and vanished. My mom was totally shook up, but she went over and turned on the bathroom light. She saw nothing in the corner that could explain away the sighting. There was no vehicle that passed by on the road either - for its headlights to create shadows on the wall.

Now, my mom is a very practical person and she would never say something like this as a joke or unless she really truly believes what she saw. This cleared all my suspicions. After this incident we had a priest come over and do a cleansing ritual (we call it pooja) in our home and we didn't have that particular event again... For a while.