Real Ghost And Paranormal Stories From India (4 page)

For many, possession is something that they see in the movies and they forget
that it actually happens. I know it happens; I have seen it. The dead do talk
and sometimes, they take over the living. Let me tell you my story and you can
decide for yourself if you think possession is real or just something
manufactured by the movie industry.

I loved when we visited my
grandparents in the village. The village was very rural surrounded by paddy
fields all around, it was a lovely place. My cousins and I would always have
fun and the “pepal” tree in the courtyard was our favorite spot to play. One
day, we were playing under the tree when we heard shouting and then a lot of
voices. My uncle shouted for us and we came running, eager to see what was
going on. Much of our family was there. My father and uncle were holding down a
man - my granddad’s cow herder. In the villages, farmers who were slightly well
off would have someone to herd their cows. My granddad had one too.

The cow herder was yelling
incomprehensible things and his eyes were rolled up in his head so all we saw
was the whites of his eyes. The man was thrashing around, shouting gibberish,
trying to break free from my father and uncle. He would bend over backwards so
far that I was sure that his spine would break. It did not seem humanly
possible to bend the way he was trying to it. 

We tried to catch some of
what he was saying, but it was just shouted gibberish and some of it sounded
like it was not words at all, just sounds and odd sounding syllables. 

“Go clear out a cot” my
uncle shouted to us and we ran inside, clearing off a cot and moving it towards
the center of the courtyard. My uncle shouted for us to get a rope and my
cousin ran to get it, bringing it back quickly.  Another man took the rope and
my father and uncle tried to get the cow herder onto the cot but he fought
against it.

It took three more men to
help my father and my uncle to hold the cow herder down and then another person
to tie him tightly to the cot. They tied him to the cot with his hands down by
his sides so he could not reach out and grab anybody and his legs were tied so
that he could not kick. The entire time, the cow herder jerked his head around,
shouting, fighting his bonds and shaking the cot. I half feared that he would
break free from the rope and attack us.

His eyes were still rolled
up and then suddenly he went still. The silence was almost as bad as the
shouting. His eyes went back to normal and he regarded us quietly.

“How did I get here,” he
demanded, “Untie me at once. I wish to go home.  What are you doing to me?”

Something was very wrong, the
man was our cow herder but suddenly he seemed as if he did not know as at all.

“Who are you,” my uncle
demanded to the man tied to the cot. The man gave his name, I cannot recall his
name at this time but he was a man who lived a few houses away in the same village.
He was not that well liked in the village, he had a reputation for being a bad
man and we had always been cautioned to steer clear of him. He was a known
gambler, and he had often cheated on his wife and often beat her. He also had a
reputation for land grabbing and while not much is known about his past, it was
known that he had left one village quickly after cheating several of the men in
the village. The man had fled rather than take responsibility for his crimes.

The cow herder was no
friend of this man but yet he claimed to be him. His entire demeanor had
changed. The cow herder was a friendly man, with a kind face and expressive
eyes. Now, his face was sullen, his brow was furrowed and his eyes were
squinty. There was nothing friendly about his face, it looked mean and even
evil. It was unnatural, seeing the cow herder, our friend, glaring at us.

My uncle told him that he
was not the man from a few houses down that he was our cow herder and he just
laughed. 

“Not anymore,” he laughed.
He then began to scream and curse, rocking the cot from side to side. I
flattened myself against the wall, scared. My uncle and the adults went outside
to discuss this very bizarre occurrence but I hung back, afraid to move.
Finally, I got my courage up and started to inch towards the door and the
movement caught the man’s eye.

“I’m scared,” he said,
pleadingly. Indeed, his eyes shone with tears and he looked just as scared as I
am sure that I looked. “Help me,” he said. I inched closer to him, and just as
I was nearly to his side, his eyes rolled up and he wiggled one arm just enough
to nearly grab me. I screamed and ran from the room. The cow herder continued
to scream after me, words that made no sense but the look on his face was no
longer scared, it was evil and it was a hungry look.

He shouted that he would
be free again, that he had more life to experience, and we would not keep him.
He actually moved the cot over to the other side of the room by his thrashing
around. I stayed outside, peeking through the window or the door. I was
terrified. The man who was shouting sounded nothing like the cow herder.

My uncle had concluded that
the cow herder was possessed. Something had possessed him while he had been out
in the field with the cows and my uncle had to perform a village exorcism
ritual to get rid of the demon inside of the cow herder.

The exorcism was very
strange, something that I had not seen before. My uncle stuffed red chilies
into the ears of the cow herder, which made him howl in anger.

Using an old shoe, my
uncle tried to force the cow herder to drink water from the shoe but the cow
herder tried to spit it back out. Finally, my uncle forced him to drink the
water. My uncle began to recite verses from the holy Lord Hanuman Chalisa, and during
these verses, the cow herders thrashing increased. He was now shouting threats
to my uncle and to my granddad, and even to us children. The things that he
said he would do to us were vile, evil things. The cow herder had a good, kind
heart so we knew that that this was our evidence that he was possessed. Never
would he harm any of us, or burn our house down to the ground as the demon was
saying that he would do. 

My uncle never lost any
resolve to exorcise the cow herder, even though the threats grew more and more
horrible. I was sobbing by this time, huddled with my other cousins. The cow
herder had his eyes rolled back, straining against the ropes, the veins in his
face and neck were so pronounced under his skin that I thought that they would
burst through his skin.

My uncle then took some
stones from the street and held them in his hand and he began to recite mantras
for exorcising evil spirits. The first time he said it, the cow herder roared
in rage, the demon within him recognized the mantras and it was fighting. He
tried to shout over my uncle but my uncle recited the mantras in a steady
voice, holding the tiny stones in his hand.

When he was done with the
mantras, he said it again, still holding the stones. Over and over again my
uncle said the mantras and with each recitation, the cow herder grew more
violent, more enraged and the crude, violent threats that he were describing
that he would do got worse and worse. I sat with my hands over my ears, trying
to block out the sound of his voice but it did not work. His voice echoed in my
head.

My uncle recited one
special exorcism mantra one hundred and twenty one times and then when he had
said it for the last time, he threw the tiny stones over the body of the cow
herder. The cow herder’s body flexed so that his back was arched against the
bonds as best as it could and he screamed, a primal rage of a scream and then
he stopped screaming and sagged, limp against the cot.

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.

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 he 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.