I Fell in Love With a Ghost

FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Entertainment

I Fell in Love With a Ghost

And surprise, surprise, it didn’t go well.

I come from a family of poets. My father, Praful Chandra Ojha ‘Mukt’, was a famous Hindi poet and a close friend of the late and legendary Harivansh Rai Bachchan. But my uncle had different interests. I grew up watching him perform planchette, and hearing stories of him making pencils move on their own to write solutions to people’s problems, and move tin cans. However, it wasn’t him who taught me the art of talking to ghosts.

Advertisement

I learnt from a saint in 1975 in Kanpur, where I was working at a private cotton mill. After my mother passed away, I began to think about life after death and the ‘other’ world. I also felt a strange affiliation towards shamshan ghats (cremation grounds). One day, when I was passing through the Bhairav Ghat crematorium in Kanpur after sunset, I met a sadhu. “Go away! Spirits are always looking for curious prey like you,” he said to me. I replied, “What if I am also looking for them?”

We started talking and I told him about my mother and how I wanted to meet her once again. “Come tomorrow. Bring a ply board that has one smooth side, a small glass, a dhoti, candles, incense and some paint,” the sadhu told me. Through him, I spoke to my mother, relatives who had passed away, and many other ghosts who had died recently. After much persuasion, he agreed to teach me his art, with a warning that I should be wary of ghosts who might chase me.

I was a curious learner and, within time, I was using planchette to talk to ghosts almost every night. It was an interesting world—hearing their stories. And it was during one such night that I met her. Her pain was so powerful that the glass moved on its own. Like most ghosts I had met, she didn’t remember her own name. “ Main Chalis Dukaan me rehti hoon (I live in Chalis Dukaan),” she said. I knew that there was indeed such a place near Juhi Colony, Kanpur. “My soul is burning. There is so much heat I can’t even tell you,” she added. It was almost as if I could feel her intense pain.

Advertisement

The ‘ghost of Chalis Dukaan’, as I referred to her, was an only child, married at an early age to a man after her intermediate studies. She led a happily married life in the beginning, with her husband supporting her when she expressed a desire to complete her graduation. Things began to change when he started to suspect her of having an affair with a classmate she was just friends with. She tried convincing him, but to no avail. “One night, when I was cooking dinner in the kitchen, he came with a can of petrol, poured it on my sari and put one end of it on the gas burner. I still feel the burns that led to my death,” she said.

During one of our conversations, she told me that she stays with me through the day. “I never leave your side,” she said. That was the first time I felt a little afraid, remembering the sadhu’s warning. But I was young, too full of adventure, and mesmerised by our conversation. Days merged into each other without an untoward incident.

For a while, I got busy with work and then went to my family in Delhi, staying away from the board for more than a month. I couldn’t sleep during that time and was very restless. But I wanted to concentrate on the physical world. One night, I finally took the board out. She was really angry and used a lot of scary and harsh words, but calmed down after a while. Then she said something odd: That she was with me here, in Delhi, in my home.

Advertisement

“It was me who was made you restless. Promise me you will talk to me thrice a week,” she said. I tried to convince her that I can only talk to her once a week, but in the end, she had her way. Gradually, I reached a phase where I couldn’t sleep without talking to her. One night, I told her what had been going in my mind: That I wanted to see her in the physical realm.

First, she made fun of my love governed by bodily desires. She told me that she couldn’t come into the physical realm, but could ‘take’ another body which would look almost like her, though not exactly the same. “I am so beautiful that you wouldn’t be able to take your eyes off of me,” she said. I agreed to all her conditions, which she narrated in detail over the next two nights.

“After five days, you must come to Bhairav Ghat at midnight. Walk towards the stairs leading to the Ganga river. Wait for me on the thirteenth stair, facing the water. On the right is a tree. I will come down from the tree holding the branches,” she instructed. I was warned to go alone; otherwise I wouldn’t be able to see her.

It was my love for and also my curiosity to see the other side of reality that made me agree. I knew she wouldn’t hurt me, but there was some fear. When I told my friends, they said I was crazy to listen to a dead woman. “There can’t be love between men and spirits. These spirits find boys like you, hypnotise them and then take their lives,” one told me. When I didn’t relent, my friend Shahi insisted on accompanying me, promising to stay at a safe distance.

Advertisement

It was a dark, moonless night. I left Shahi at the gates Bhairav Ghat and moved towards the stairs. The river looked like a black painting. It was a peaceful night, and the only sound I could hear was of the bodies burning and the crackling fire. As soon as I reached the thirteenth stair, I heard a sound in the tree on my right. It was shaking. My heartbeat raced. I looked in every direction. But there was nothing.

Then I looked towards the roots of the tree near the bottom of the stairs. There, I saw a shadow-like apparition trying hard to climb the stairs and move towards me. I got goosebumps; I felt like my life was in danger. And the moment I heard a strange sound. I started running, jumping over three stairs at a time. I didn’t look behind and kept running until I saw Shahi, and that’s when I fainted.

I gained consciousness 10 minutes later and saw I was at a tea stall, with a strange man offering me water. The tea stall owner told me nobody goes to Bhairav Ghat at this hour.

The next day, my friends packed up my planchette boards and accompanying apparatus, saying that if I ever touched it again, they’d tell my father. The next five days, I stayed at home, sick, sensing her around me, angry. I left my job and came to Delhi.

It was many years before her uneasy and uncomfortable presence left me.

Follow Zeyad Masroor Khan on Twitter.