Ouija board 3:(

chapter 2 : OLD BUNGALOW

                OLD MAN

I liked the idea of conducting seances. My first attempt at making contact with a spirit failed largely because my friend started asking the spirit to demonstrate its presence and it resulted in our planchette, a shot glass, shattering.

It put an end to ourlittle stunts for a while but we successfully attempted a seance in December last year.It had an unexpected outcome but if I reveal it here I will be getting ahead of myself.I will start from the beginning.

Last year myfriend Vidya and I formed a society in our college. It was dedicated to the systematic investigation of the paranormal and our first meeting involved a serious seance in the abandoned bungalow I had written about earlier. We had our suspicions that the place was haunted and all of us decided that it would be an ideal place for what we had planned.I had written about the place before, how itis desolate and nearly forgotten. We had heard a lot of stories about the place; people said that the person who had built the place refused to leave it and he still haunts it. I have often heard other stories of unearthly laughter and lit oil lamps in the old bungalow.We met at my house at 7 in the evening to prepare and left at 8.

We grabbed our Ouija board, some flashlights and a few candles. We also chalked out a plan about what we had to do. It was a chilly night with a little wind and I could feel the anticipation building in each of us as we walked.

There were five of us: Vidya, me, 2guys and another girl. It seemed like the perfect night for spirits to wander about. There were no people around and sneaking into place was very easy, the windows minus the glass panes made it so.The conditions had become worse than they were before and the walls had crumbled a little; it was mostly due to the heavy thunderstorms which took place earlier that year.

After getting in, our first thought was to check for any vagrants or stray animals in the place but the haunted reputation of thebungalow kept any vagrants out and apart from a cat that promptly fled on seeing us, the place was empty.The interior was stripped of furniture, the paint was peeling off the crumbling walls and the place had an air of foreboding to it.There was a kitchen, a store room and the living room on the ground floor and a flight of stairs lead up to the first floor which housed 2 more rooms. Vidya said that she could feel something in the living room andwe decided that we would carry out our seance there.

Apart from the light of our candles, the place was wrapped in velvety darkness and all of us were scared even before we started. The guys were joking about how it was the perfect place for a slasher movie but after seeing our spookedfaces, wisely, shut up. We had started our seance by asking if anyone could hear us, did anyone want to talk to us and almost immediately we got a response.

It was amazing how the planchette seemed to move of its own accord. All of us had lightlyplaced our index fingers on it and it was being pulled towards "yes" on the board bysome mysterious persona.Needless to say, we were thrilled and kept on asking more questions about who he was and were there any others present in the room just like him. We didn't find out who he was, the ghost turned angry and started asking us to leave.

The planchette repeatedly spelled out 'L-E-A-V-E' on the board. We said goodbye and it seemed to have stopped when everyone noted a change in the temperature, it had gone down. It was a little chilly that night but after our seance, we didn't want to stir up any theories about a ghost entering the room as we were terrified. We decided to think it was the wind that had cooled down the place.

In the middle of this, Vidya started laughinghysterically. I have heard it isn't uncommon for a participant to be possessed during a seance and given that she has always been very sensitive to spirits, we had a fair idea what was happening.She stopped laughing and closed her eyes and looked serene, even peaceful.

All of uswere staring at her wide-eyed when she opened her eyes, pupils dilated and expressionless, mouth curled into a sneer and said something in a voice unlike hers. She said it in Marathi but for the sake of the readers I will write that it roughly translates to "leave this place right now or you will be harmed".

It was our cue to get the heck out of the place and we did.We took our candles, the board and the guys carried Vidya, who had lost consciousness at that point. The moment we were out of the gate, she was back to her senses and said that she saw an old man walking down the stairs when she went into her trance. She remembered that she was possessed and how it felt like a violation of her mind. Vidya was normal moments after we left the bungalow but she was going on and on about how scary the place was and how certain she was about the presence of someone else in the place.

I still think of what would have happened had we had stayed longer than we did. I don't like the scenario that comes to mind. This was my last visit to the bungalow. I declined when the guys in our group suggested that we return to the place in daylight. I had had enough of the wretchedplace