The Petrol Lamp

A short story about one of the many paranormal events I experienced. When I was a kid, we were in the early 50's. In that period there was a lot of witchcraft going on and ghost encounters were popular. In each family in the island, at least one member would have a paranormal experience in a year.

To come back to my story, as a child I used to live in a quite large house in a town named Rose Hill. We had a yard with two big trees; a mango tree and a litchi tree. There was also a place to wash clothes outside with a tap and a concrete block by the mango tree.

My house was not haunted but at night, many things would happen in the yard. Weird noises, weird mists and some people and neighbors would tell our family that they saw long white apparitions by the trees or some white lady standing under one of the trees at night.

One evening, we had a power cut and I had to go to the toilet. I lit a petrol lamp in order to cross the corridor and go to the toilet. The lamp was in one hand and the matches box in the other one. There were windows in the corridor which opened a view in the yard. As I walked in the corridor, a wind blew off the flame of my petrol lamp. It was weird because all the doors were closed and I never experienced any air draught in this corridor. I was feeling scared. It was completely dark and I dropped the lamp on the floor and took a match out of the box. As I was about to crack a fire, I heard a loud noise outside the corridor window next to me and the match box fell off my hand. I tried in the dark to find it but in vain. I must have spent a good 10 minutes touching the floor around me trying to find the matchbox. The lamp was also missing and I was very scared by that time. Then I heard like a complaint outside. I stood up, looked in the yard and saw a lady with a petrol lamp walking from the concrete block toward the mango tree. She went behind it and the light of her lamp disappeared behind the tree. I ran back to my bedroom and peed in my pants.

In the morning, I told my mum what had happen. She went outside and checked behind the tree. She found the matchbox and my lamp on the floor behind that mango tree. She told me to never go out at night in the yard and to avoid walking in the house at night when there is a power cut.