Starting Of A Haunt

This incident happened to my Grandfather (my Mother's Dad). When we were young, Mom would tell us the story and creep us out. Then, of course, she would regret telling it to us, since we would spend a couple of sleepless nights just thinking about it!

During the Second World War, fearing the Japanese bombing the city, my Grandfather relocated his family to a small town. There he bought an enormous two storied house with a huge garden in the back. There was also a summerhouse at the back of the garden where guests needing a bit of quiet could stay.

One evening, after dark, a couple approached Grandfather. They were a man and a woman, the man short and stocky with closely cropped hair and a silver locket at his throat, and the woman young and quite lovely, wearing a lot of gold jewelry. The stranger introduced the lady as his wife and informed Grandpa that they were traveling to another city but he was fearful about the safety of his wife since it was very unsafe to travel at night. They told him they were out of towners and requested my grandfather for a one night stay. My Grandpa took pity on them and told them that they could stay the night in the summerhouse (it was quite common during this time to offer hospitality to complete strangers).

In the morning, nobody went to check if the couple had left. Everybody forgot about this incident until about 4-5days later. The house was invaded by policemen who approached Grandpa for information about the couple. They wanted to question the man who was a murder suspect. Grandpa told them all that had happened and then escorted the policemen to the summerhouse at the back.

Since the garden was HUGE, not even the servants or the children actually went to the summerhouse until absolutely necessary. Checking the summerhouse, they found no evidence of the couple having stayed there at all. However, they noticed a bad smell surrounding the whole area. The police searched the area, following the smell and found loads of maggots crawling under a tree where the smell was the strongest. When everybody looked up and they saw the guy - dead, his feet strung by a rope and hanging upside down. The body was bloated and fluids were running down the body and dripping onto the ground where the maggots were having a field day. The woman with him had totally vanished and nobody had any idea what had happened.

Everybody was horrified and speechless! The police took the body away and told Grandpa that probably the lady with him that evening was not his wife. Surely, the inspector said, this guy's rivals or the woman's husband was behind this sordid act.

This incident left a bad taste in my Grandpa's household. For days on end, everybody was speculating and theorizing what had really happened that night. But like all incidents, even this became quite stale and boring while news about the war took precedence.

A few months later, hoards of relatives and friends arrived to escape the imminent threat of the bombing of Calcutta. Overnight, space became constrained in the house. So, the men started sleeping on the terrace (it was summertime and quite hot) leaving the rooms for the children and women to sleep in.

A friend of Grandpa's sleeping on the terrace at the end of a row of mattresses was unable to sleep due to the hot and humid weather. Sometime later, he saw a man creeping on to the terrace. Now he thought this was weird since they were on the second floor. He said nothing but kept watching. This guy, he saw, went creeping to each sleeping person, peering into their faces and then moving on to the next sleeping man. The man approached him at the end, peered into his face, and when found his victim awake, just gave an impossible jump like a super monkey and disappeared into the trees.

Needless to say, Grandpa's friend was quite shaken and didn't sleep throughout the whole night. In the morning, he narrated the incident and described the man as short and stocky with a closely cropped hair and a silver locket at his throat. Nobody paid much attention to this incident.

Then one night, Grandpa was in his room sleeping, when he suddenly woke up. His bed was right alongside a window which had iron bars in it. He saw a man clutching the bars and looking at him with blazing eyes. He recognised him as the same guy who had approached him that fateful evening for a one night stay with his "wife". When it realised that it had been seen, this ghost came in through the window, bars and all, sat down on my Grandpa's chest, and started choking him slowly to death!

Grandpa was an immensely brave person. Although he could not move and was slowly losing consciousness, he still kept his head. Concentrating all his energy at one point, he blasted that energy towards this thing, and suddenly, it was off his chest. The ghost exited through the window through which it had entered, but before leaving, it slapped Grandpa on the cheeks with such force that it made his head swim and his ears ring.

In the morning, when everybody was up and about, he kept mum and didn't say a word so as not to scare anybody. However, Grandma was shocked to see a clear five finger hand print on Grandpa's cheek and was very concerned. Grandpa's answer - he slapped himself in his sleep while fending off mosquitoes!

Needless to say, after this incident, worried about his family's safety, Grandpa started looking for houses. Very soon he moved, and only after that did he narrate this incident.