Panellists included paranormal investigators Sarbajeet Mohanty, Pooja Vijay, Meghna Porwal, Rith Deb, Siddharth Bantval and Savio Furtado. Image: Suvojeet Mukherjee
“We were called in by an old lady living in a government colony in Bhubaneshwar, who lived with her grandchildren. She spoke of a lady wearing a red sari who would constantly visit their place and jump off from the terrace, without leaving behind a dead body. The neighbours, a family living on the first floor, claimed they saw an unseen force snatch away their dinner plates once. When the lady’s oldest grandson started to record with his iPad on the terrace, he heard something call out his name, and was suddenly pushed and injured by an unusual black mass. This forced them to call us. The lady believed that the spirit haunting the place had killed her son and daughter-in-law.
Mohanty claims that the pink teddy bear, which had no battery or electronic component, began reacting to the EMF sensor and speculates that it was possibly a special toy for the spirit haunting the place. Image: Parapsychology and Investigations Research Society
The group noticed black finger-like marks on the cameraman's legs, which later disappeared. Image: Parapsychology and Investigations Research Society
“People have visions or feel like they are being contacted, and it’s up to us to break it down further and check how real that is. It always helps if we are given a complete history and necessary details. We were once called to Kandivali, Mumbai on a case where there was a small baby involved. That made it a priority because children are innocent and are therefore more susceptible to such presences. The family called us, saying the baby was developing mysterious marks and scratches and so they were scared. After we investigated their family history, we realised that they had a family history of women committing suicide under pressure, something we had not been informed about before. When we tried to connect the dots, there were a lot of gaps. That’s when one of our investigators isolated himself in a room in that house for some time and tried to communicate with whatever was there. Until then we had just received hints of some kind of energy. But, later there was an instance where I asked whatever was there if it was trying to get in touch with the baby or harm it. We received a clear ‘yes’ on the recorder in a husky voice that was only recorded on the device. The lady responded to us in Bengali, which Rith understood, and so we changed our entire communication process and tried to empathise with them about their situation. We concluded that it was the ghost of the client’s sister-in-law who used to live in Kolkata, and was taking revenge for being mistreated and worried that her child, who was still alive and living with the client’s family, would suffer the same. We passed on the message to the client that the lady’s child should be sent back to her hometown and properly taken care of, after which the haunting stopped.”
IPS uses thermal cameras, EMF meters and motion detector equipment to communicate with the spirits. Image: Indian Paranormal Society
“We were approached by a family who reported some paranormal activity at their Churchgate residence in Mumbai. Multiple people had multiple accounts of the story, so we couldn’t figure out what was actually happening. Our equipment was tampered with and moved about by a poltergeist. It was the scariest situation I’d been in as an investigator and it truly made me question everything. We believe that the son of the family who approached us, who used to disrespect his parents and never listened to them, acted as a trigger because every argument in their house led to some [paranormal] activity.Sometimes these conscious energies have a greater purpose—perhaps whatever is causing the activity was unable to do something in their past life, and now they were using the opportunity to mend things. We investigate, document, and then analyse our findings—which goes on for a month—and then ask other researchers for their views on it. At this point, it is either debunked or if no one can explain it is confirmed as evidence of paranormal activity. We then follow a cleansing process, where we communicate with that energy, empathise with it and try to help it move on, while also providing counselling to the families involved because they might still live in fear and need help overcoming it.”
Alleged apparition caught on camera by Indian Paranormal Society during one of their investigations. Image: Siddharth Bantval
“From a young age, I have shown psychic abilities and been able to predict things before they happen. Even though some people may call it man ka vehem (misconceptions of your mind), it was confirmed when I got a strange and inexplicably uncomfortable feeling that my mother was about to get into an accident. I warned her of it. Even though she promised to be careful, she ended up getting into a severe accident where she almost lost her life. The incident shook me, but also motivated me to do a course in Psychic Development at the Institute of Metaphysical Science in Florida, which in turn has helped me investigate many cases. I even experienced intense paranormal activity in my own house in Panvel, probably because I could sense them. It caused my AC to catch fire without any reason, made my younger son wake up screaming every night, and even made my housemaid fall terribly sick, so I had to call a team of experts to take care of it. Thereafter, I decided to lend my psychic abilities to help such investigations. Once, in West Bengal’s Kacheri Baari (the ruins of a courthouse known to be a place of former debauchery and sin), I sensed female spirits with heavy emotions, and I could tell that terrible things like rape and murder had occurred there. When the place was properly investigated, we actually found a well nearby where women, including prostitutes and young girls who were kidnapped, were held captive and tortured, because of which they had even committed suicide. We had sensed their energy and helped them cleanse the place.”
Vijay claims to have felt a strange, strong emotion at Kacheri Baari, where many women were raped and murdered in the past. Image: Parapsychology and Investigations Research Society
