The Ghost In The Playground

The ghost in the playground

This narration is about an experience I had during my schooldays. I studied in Kendriya Vidyalaya which has got awesome all round academic activities. Apart from studies my school also used to give importance to sports and various other activities like scouting, nature club, readers club etc. When I was in 5th grade I joined the scouts club as I was interested in outdoor activities. And being a scout promised a lot of adventurous nights out along with my friends, of course it used to be under the guidance of our scout master (usually a teacher from our school).

There were exams to advance to next levels in scouting. It started with, being a cub when you join and then later once you are in 6th grade you become a scout. The tough levels used to start from 8th grade where in you had clear a level called tritiya sopan, then in 9th grade it was rajya puraskar (rajya means state and puraskar means award) and the ultimate award for scout in India is rashtrapathi puraskar. When I was in my 10th grade I had completed all the levels and was ready for rashtrapathi puraskar. That was a tough 3 weeks camp where in we had clear levels individually and also as group. We had tests on knots, lashings, constellations, compass reading, hiking and trekking, first aid, cooking, other physical exercises and written tests on a various subjects. In short it was a tough nut to crack. But I am proud to say that the group of scouts from my school cleared these tests and we all became rashtrapathi scouts. And got awarded the badge and appreciation letter from the President of India. There were 14 of us out of which 9 were boys and the rest girls. We went to a place called trivandrum to attend this camp.

As I said it was a tough camp as the director of the camp was a very hard taskmaster. So we had to be very disciplined and orderly during the camp hours which was from 7 am to 5 am. After which we could do our personal chores but didn't have permission to leave the camp. As I said the camp was held at a school in Trivandrum which was based in an Indian army base. There was a huge playground were soldiers used to do parade and stuff, this place was given to us for tests and other activities. We were to occupy class rooms in the school as it was summer holidays for other children. I was glad that my best friend Arun was also with during that camp. We used to have a great time pulling pranks and doing all sort of crazy stuffs together. By the 3rd day of our stay we got accustomed to the nook and corner of the campus. That night myself and Arun thought of pulling a prank on Sarun who was a good kid but a loser according to us (which I now know was wrong, my apologies). But we were wary of another kid Bhaskar who was our group leader. So at night when all of them slept we played our prank to perfection and to laugh out loud without disturbing the victim we snooped out of our room. We had a good laugh and then Arun said, bro let's go out for a walk. For the info of my readers the time was 1 am. I was scared to go out as there was no proper lighting outside. But then I thought what the hell, let's go.

We both went out in the darkness and headed straight towards the playground. There were stands for people to sit at one end of this playground. So both of us went towards it and sat down and were talking about the tests and the prank that we had played on poor Sarun. There were huge neon lamp posts near to the place where we were sitting and I could see a fair amount of area just it would have been during the day time. But there were no lights projected towards the playground, since that night being full moon and the sky starlit we could see kind of okay. We would have been there for about 15 minutes or so and both of us were enjoying the night, I suddenly saw a person in white dress or to be precise a white human shape in the ground about 400 meters away.

I got scared but then I started wondering who would be standing alone and then I realized that I was looking towards that place where the form is for about 2 minutes and it appeared in a blink of an eye and I am sure if some one would have walked from either of the sides of the ground I would have noticed. This thought brought shivers to my body. I said to Arun in a hushed voice and showed him the person. He was also shocked as he to felt the same as I had. Then to our further surprise the form moved about 20 meters to the left all of a sudden and then again moved back to the place where it was before. It was like one second its in this place and then in an eye-blink it changed its place and then back to where it was. I didn't have have to say anything to Arun, he understood the scenario well and we both got up and ran back to our rooms. I didn't even turn back to see whether the thing was following us or not. We both were scared to our wits and slept off our terror.

Next day we both didn't talk about the incident at all. As we both knew that what we had seen the other was not anything close to human. We had our daily tests during the camp hours and then once the day was called off by our camp director we both went back to our room. Then we spoke about the incident that happened the other night. I said we need to inquire about this to a local guy. There was this school gardener whom we had befriended the other day and he was a local person. We went to him and I said about what had happened. He said what we saw could have been a ghost as that place is haunted.

India was under British rule until 1947 and that place was used to torture and hang people to death who had committed crime. Then later when India got independence, the Indian army took over the place. He also said that there were many sightings before and people have been harmed or some times even been possessed by the spirits and we were lucky that we were not harmed. We both couldn't say anything and we just stared at each other. For the rest of the days in the camp we didn't fool around rather we concentrated on our tests. Its been more than 13 years but even now when I remember this incident a shiver runs through my body.