Row House

The below incident has no conclusive evidence of influence of any supernatural presence. But when looked at closely it brings out a picture that made me very uneasy. Moreover all this has been happening right in front of everyone without a slightest attempt to disguise or hide the facts. To a certain extent the experience is bit incoherent but that is mostly in the places where the concerned people were reluctant to give information.

It was month of August, 2001. City of Pune was growing like anything and the area that I am describing was basically a farm land converted into residential one and hundreds of row house plots were sold. They were all adjacent and were almost same size. Some houses were already built and inhabited as well but most of the row houses were either under construction or empty. On the whole this entire housing colony did not present a pretty picture because each owner had tried being an architect or decorator and the end result was variety of row houses with different colors and shapes.

One day I was walking back with my friend who is a good medium for Ouija board sessions and is an expert in the field of vastu shastra which is a traditional Hindu system of design based on directional alignments. When we were near that particular house, my friend tensed. He stopped me and did a full circle of the house. I was surprised. Even though he was a quite successful medium, I had never come across a situation where he had sensed any presence outside the planchet room. After going round the house he pushed the gate open and stepped onto the lawn. The house was newly built and had very average construction. When my friend completed his scrutiny he was quite nervous. I asked a few questions to which he took a while to answer. He finally told me that he suspected that there was something very wrong with the house. In his opinion, in this particular house all the seven major rules of vastu shastra were violated. Not only that, but the doors and windows were placed in such a way that, they would bring maximum negative impact. He said a few mistakes can be attributed to coincidences and ignorance about the technique but this particular construction was made with certain nasty intention and it was not a mistake. I do not understand vastu shastra and did not believe it in as well. But I thought it wiser not to argue.

Around four months after that, I was walking back from the usual weekend meeting of occult forum. I was absorbed in my thoughts and if it would not have been for the small ambulance that was parked in front of one of the same row house, I would not have noticed anything. It was not a hearse but a typical compact ambulance that is often used to carry dead bodies. Motley crowd of friends and relatives was standing on the tiny lawn that the row houses generally have and the body was just being carried inside. A young boy in early twenties seemed to be the center of attention. I guess he must be son of the deceased. I spotted a maid servant who used to work with us sometime back. When everyone from the family went inside, I called her up and asked what had happened. She told me that the father of the young man I had seen outside the house died of a massive heart attack last night. She said within a month's time the young man has lost both his parents and how the poor chap must be suffering. I asked what she meant by both the parents. Was there any other death in the house? To this she replied in the affirmative. The mother had died of asthma the week after moving to the new house. I started to feel uneasy.

Next weekend I took a decision on the spur of moment and while returning from the meeting rang the bell of the house. The door was opened by the young man himself and he looked so horribly ill that I was taken aback for a moment. There was swelling on his hands and face. His eyes were red and hair disheveled. It must have taken him a lot of effort to drag himself to the door. I took him to the nearest armchair and settled him down. He was not in a position to speak and not to long after I had arrived he fell asleep. His breathing was heavy and his tongue was rolled inside which was not a good sign. I called an ambulance and he was taken to a nearby hospital. The initial amount was contributed by me and my friends and the chap was admitted to the general ward.

The doctor attributed the condition to the possible liver problem due to excessive drinking and started his treatment. Everyone including the hospital staff was amazed by the speed of his recovery. Not only was he back to normal in the next two days except for some weakness, he also managed to get his insurance cover rolling and paid all of us back. What was surprising was that he was a teetotaler and never had any medical history of liver problem. Not even mild jaundice. We had already told him what we thought about the house. He worked in a different city and was planning to ask for a transfer and then settle with his parents in the rented house. But the tragedies had stuck almost instantly after the parents moved. After all this he was not ready to move back to the house. We helped him collect his baggage and once he was discharged from the hospital, he moved back to the city where he was working.

After this with the help of the local estate agent we snooped around as much as we could. It took a while but we managed to find out that there was one more tenant before... The first tenant who perhaps was more sensitive had let go the deposit and one month's rent. He vacated the house within two weeks of shifting. While he stayed there he bitterly complained about a certain room where floor tiles were loose and came out in spite of the plumbing work he carried out twice. This room was in the north direction and when the tiles came out, some moisture used to spread around in the area as if there was an active source of water somewhere down the earth. During this short period as well two tragedies had stuck the family.

In one freak accident, his grandson, a toddler swallowed a coin and had to be hospitalized. His daughter in law, who was carrying, lost her child and the new tenant himself was badly troubled by same dream again and again. In his dream he saw himself chasing a wounded fox that finally eluded him. He always carried an empty tumbler in his hand and threw it away in frustration once the fox disappeared. I think the tenant was internally convinced that the house was bad and finally decided to move back to his old two rooms flat. Another interesting fact is that the rent was very low which was almost a giveaway price and the owner who was a very old man had never even bothered to collect a single rental cheque so far.

I visited the house with only one another colleague of mine. We did that after twilight. It was a risky thing to do but our hunch was it will bring out the worst in the house. We did not sense anything wrong anywhere in the house except for the north bound room. There was definitely something very wrong there. The tiles had come undone even now. I tried my level best to focus. For a very short span of time I could see a rather deep old fashioned well and on the surface there was a body of an animal was floating. I suspected it to be of a fox but cannot say for sure. The room had a "feeling". Once or twice my hands grew cold and hair at the back of my neck stood up. My friend also had similar physical reaction though she did not see any vision.

Once last thing I needed to do was to meet the owner, before I could actually meet him, it transpired he was hospitalized and by the time I traced him he was in the last stage of liver failure. When I went near his bed his opened his eyes once or twice. No doubt the yellowness in the eyes can be attributed to the hepta cellular jaundice but there was an underlying look that carried such intense hatred and malice that I was badly shaken up. I could not sleep that night. The owner died shortly after.

The time when the owner was admitted almost coincided with the time when the young man was discharged from the hospital. The doctor himself did not look very sad about the death at all, he was perplexed. In confidence he commented once that he was not really sure about the age of the owner. He always suspected him to be much older that what he claimed and the kind of physical condition he was in, it was a miracle that he had survived so far.

The next of kin was sort of an indirect relation. She did not know much about her uncle except that he was a teacher who had taken early retirement and hated to meet rest of the family. He had many vices including drinking and womanizing. Even she was not sure about the age. But she thought that he must have been above ninety at least without any much change in his appearance over the years. He seemed to have extraordinarily healthy constitution. The house itself was pulled down because certain retail outlet chain had shown interest in building a small shop there.