Short Stories

True incidents from my crazy life…

I have always been a TV Aerial, too receptive to things unseen. And having lived in 25 houses means that I received too many signals.

If you think it is funny, consider sleeping in your room for several years with the constant knowledge that someone is lurking in the next room; that your house is built on a demolished graveyard and the resident will most likely visit you in your dream; or that your dog is crazily barking at the ceiling of your room, which looks like it is made of water.

Only, you can’t see him…her…them…

You can’t ask them, however politely, to move their arse away. You can’t tell them, “Hey! Why don’t you go haunt Mrs. Snubnose in the house down the lane?” You might try exorcism, but it doesn’t always get the expected results, and failure will lead to a rebellion of the ‘permanent residents’ against you.

So, you get the idea.

Whenever faced with situations like these, my first response was to run to another room where my parents or my friends slept (depending on the location of the ‘incident’). But there are only so many times I could do that without raising suspicion.

Do you think I should have told them?

What response do you expect from them? If they were easy on me, they would have brushed it away by saying, “I don’t feel anything.”, “I think you are watching too many horror movies.”, or “You need to reign in your imagination.” Or they would have put it down as me “being a woman”. But, gradually, they would have begun questioning my intelligence. In the end, if they really loved me, they would have moved me out of the haunted house into a mental asylum.

So, telling my family and friends was a strict ‘No’.

Hence, most of the time, I would sit up late at night alone and try to discern what I was dealing with.

I would usually begin with questions like ‘how many?’

I know for sure that one of my houses had at least three. One of them lived in the room upstairs and tried to strangle me on the first night (I never went to that room at night again.). When I moved to the spare room downstairs, I felt another who liked to lay in the bed next to mine quite often. The third one used to simply cross the room at a certain time of the night and, if I blocked the path by placing my chair a certain way, it would begin muttering threats under its breath (Irony, I know!).

I would wonder what they were and if they could hurt me.

But there were too many possibilities: Ghosts, Poltergeists, Djinn, Ghouls… Since I couldn’t see them, I wasn’t sure. Their powers could also differ from the time they landed the job and the practice they had. They could have been around since before my great-great-great-grandfather was born or someone fairly new at the jig.

Did they mean to scare me?

Did they get paid for scaring humans like me or did they just exist as we do, and I just had a sensory overload by their presence? Aren’t lizards scared of me? Does that make me scary? (In case you are wondering, Lizards don’t scare me–I have lived in government-built houses half of my life.)

Did they mean to hurt me?

In most cases, they seemed to be just going on with their lives. Maybe they were late for their jobs but I blocked their path by strewing my stuff around. What if they were raising their kids in the house that (according to them) I decided to break in? I slept in their beds and ate from their bowls. Of course, they wanted me out. I wonder why only three tried to strangle me, especially since I was playing Ghazals around the house (Pure torture, I know!).

After my last encounter, I realized that in most cases, I can co-exist with them like lizards with me. So, now, I carry on with my life and let the Djinn in my spare room live in peace.