A Galloping Of A Horse Or Something More?

This was told to be by my mother. She is from Sylhet, Bangladesh. This takes place when my mother was a child. She and her family were visiting one of her grandma's home. The whole family was getting together after a long time. Some of them have visited each others' homes in between the last great gathering but there have been a few who have not seen each other since.

As is usual for Bengali families of that era, her family (both immediate and not) was quite large. Luckily for them, my mother's grandma's farm land was quite big and had a few houses on it and a workers house when they use to have workers helping them tend to the crops and animals. The area had other farms and forests close by. At this time none of the farms had electricity and nights, especially on moonless nights, it would make it difficult to see the front of your nose. Candles, lanterns and torches were used to lighting and though they were good for giving some light to a small room, they were not really good when you were moving from one house to another on the farm, other than to give you enough light to see that you are not stepping into a ditch or heading in the right direction following a well trodden path.

The day was merry and joyful with meals served, snacks, games being played and much talk and banter, updating about new happenings in their lives, new members of the family and so on. As the day drew to a close and night set in, it was about time for people to head to sleep. Everyone arranged (or managed to snag one themselves) a bed. The only people left without a bed were my mother's 3 brothers. They were all older than my mother and were teenagers. Unlike the others, they had kept playing games and turned in later, they had nowhere to sleep. Their grand suggested they sleep on the floor. To which they said they didn't want to sleep on the dirty floor. To this, their grand replied that the only place that had a bed which they could use was the old workers home.

This was a little cut off from the rest of the houses on the farm. They said they will take it. Their gran warned them they won't get a good night sleep. She said that workers that had stayed there complained they couldn't sleep. They told their grans that in the middle of the night they would hear a horse running past the house and the house itself would shake along with the bed and they would fall out. My uncles laughed it off. They've heard plenty of ghost stories. But that it was only ever stories. Nothing more.

They washed up, lit a lantern and made their way over to the workers house, making sure they followed the path and watching their steps in case there was a snake or other animals they might see. When they reached the workers home, it wasn't really much to look at. I don't clearly remember the description, of whether it was made of sticks or mud, but I think it was a little dirty and there only remained one large wooden bed, a table and a few candles and lanterns. The bed seemed clean enough to sleep on and so put down the mosquito covering and got into bed. They talked for a few minutes before they fell asleep.

My youngest uncle woke up first. He wanted to go use the bathroom, which is why he got up. As usual for the time, the bathroom was not attached to the house but outside. The bog was closer to the main house than the workers house. As he was getting out of bed he heard a faint noise. A first he couldn't ascertain where it came from as it was quite faint. The noise seemed to be getting louder and closer. It sounded as though something was galloping outside. The noise was getting louder and louder, closer and closer. My other two uncles woke up. As the noise got close, the candles on the table fell and rolled off the table, then the tables, the bed and the house started to shake and tremble as if an earthquake was happening. All the while the galloping noise became unbearable. The house was shaking the bed was jumping and knocked my uncles out of the bed. They didn't say it very clearly to be but it had sounded like a giant horse was running by the house. Just as it started the noise started to die down as if the thing making it galloped by the house.

My uncles picked themselves off the floor and got into bed. My uncles felt scared but didn't want to venture outside. They all got into bed and tried to get back to sleep. As they were lying in bed the noise had died down. It's as if what happened had passed. Tired, they started to drift to sleep again. That's when they heard the faint galloping sound again. They shot wide awake. Again the table, the bed and the house shook as galloping sound passed the house. My uncles now wide awake, scared and trying not to fall off the bed. And just as before the noise died down as it started. The galloping thing had passed. Only this time my uncles were too scared to even try to sleep again.

The galloping sound, the shakes and my uncles trying not to fall off the bed repeated a few times that night. By the 6th or 7th time my oldest uncle fear went away as anger took over. He wanted to sleep but could not. This thing, running outside was keeping him from it. His due to this he got out of bed and was heading for the door, saying to himself that whatever it is, he was going to beat it to an inch of its life. My other two uncles, scared, tried to stop him they held on to him as another galloping round was being made. The house shaking made them lose balance and fall to the ground. This enraged my older uncle even more. The others were trying to calm him and keep him in the house. After all, if this thing could make the house tremble, knock them off their beds; it was unlikely an enraged teenage boy could stop it.

And so, they spent the time being tormented by the noise until dawn. When it came they wearily got out of the house and steadily and cautiously made their way to the main house. When they came in, their gran said they didn't look like they slept well. Then they recounted what had happened. Their gran said it was probably a good thing they didn't go out and face it. She said was a large ghost horse and would probably have taken one of them with it.

Later that day, my older uncle went to check out the workers house. He looked around outside to see if there were any tracks or anything out of the ordinary there. He didn't find any.