Unexplained - A Spooky Holiday

To begin with, I would say that I am a firm believer in the paranormal. However, I had never experienced anything of the sorts which I could very firmly classify as a paranormal experience. The incident that I am about to describe, could very well fit into this category as it was also experienced by people accompanying me at that point of time.

It was in the summer of the year 2005, we had been on a holiday to one of the famous Indian hill stations called Manali. We had booked our stay at one of the very well known 3 star hotel. We had booked two rooms adjacent to each other. One for my parents and one which 5 of us children were going to share, two of my cousins (a guy and a girl), my brother's friend, my brother and myself. Me being the eldest of them all.

Now just a quick description of the room we were staying in. As soon as we entered the room, there was a small corridor, to the left of which was a bathroom and to the right was a small wooden staircase that led to the attic bedroom upstairs. A few steps further down the corridor would lead us to a bedroom, followed by a small balcony. We were all very excited to see our room. We entered and saw the entire downstairs and were very happy with it. Next we went upstairs to the attic and all of a sudden everyone fell silent. It was as if every single one of us was feeling a strange aura in that room. There was a distinct feeling of someone being around. Nobody spoke a word for few minutes. However, we decided to neglect the feeling and came downstairs, but no one was ready to sleep in the attic bedroom at night. We also went to my parent's room, which was an exact replica of our room. Very strangely, that room felt pretty normal compared to ours.

The day passed pretty well visiting all the popular tourist attractions around. We returned late evening. My parents went to their room and we went to ours. We spent the next couple of hours playing games. It must have been roughly around 12 am, when everyone started falling asleep. I slept on the bed with both of my cousins and my brother and his friend slept on the extra beds that we had asked for. For some reason I was feeling very scared and anxious all the time I was there. There was this distinct feeling of being watched. Hence I decided to leave all the lights on before sleeping. Everyone agreed to it because maybe they too were scared. Somehow I had this urge to shut the door that separated the bedroom from the corridor. I did so, and then was trying to sleep. Everyone slept but me. No matter how hard I tried, I just could not sleep. There was this weird kind of fear and anxiety that kept me awake.

I don't remember the exact time, but after a short while, I could hear soft sounds of footsteps coming from the attic. It was as if someone was slowly walking towards the staircase wearing heavy boots of some kind. Then all of a sudden I heard loud and quick footsteps as if someone came rapidly down the wooden staircase right until the door that I had shut. The door was made of translucent glass, still I could not see any shadow or any figure anywhere near the door. But I am pretty sure the footsteps stopped right outside the door. Initially, I tried to convince myself that I was probably hallucinating or maybe the sound must have come from any other room in our vicinity. There was a brief pause, after which I could hear the footsteps slowly go back to the attic. A few moments passed and then again I could hear the same sequence of footsteps, this time with a louder sound. It came down rushing toward the door, went back upstairs and repeats. I was absolutely terrified by now. I could barely move and broke down into cold sweat even in the cold weather. I knew by now that something was definitely wrong and very definitely I wasn't hallucinating because I had never fallen asleep and was wide awake the whole time. Everyone else seemed to be oblivious to the happenings and were fast asleep.

I started praying like I had never prayed before. I kept chanting my God's name until the sounds started fading. I don't know when I fell asleep. All of a sudden I was woken up by my mobile phone's ring. I was badly startled. I looked at my phone and what I saw was strange. Some weird number was flashing on my screen which was unidentifiable. It even couldn't possibly be a call from abroad as it was too weird to be any country's code and the numbers of digits were also less. Anyways I answered the call and... Yes... There was nobody talking on the other side. I kept the call on for almost a minute but nobody would speak up. Finally I disconnected the call as I was scared out of my wits by then. I checked the call log. The call had come exactly at 3 am. All that came to mind at that time was the so called bad omen associated with the time "3 am".

As outrageous or unreal as it sounds, I can swear on my life that this phone incident is entirely real. I had no idea what to do. I could not have awakened the other kids as that would have scared them too. And I was too terrified to move even, let alone going out of the room. I spent the night somehow, unaware about when I fell asleep again. Next morning as I woke up, I immediately checked my phone to make sure what I experienced wasn't a dream. It wasn't indeed. I could still see that weird number on my call log. I did not speak about the night to anyone.

The next day passed as usual too. It was night again and my apprehensions started growing. We decided to go to bed around the same time as previous night. My apprehensions were proved true and the same sequence of events started again minus the phone incident. I started praying again. Now what happened this time was that one of my cousins suddenly woke up in the middle of the night. He just sat up in bed blankly. He looked at me for a minute, puzzled, and was off to bed again. I was very confused as to what just happened. But I was too scared the whole time to comprehend any of the happenings. As usual I didn't realise when I fell asleep.

The next night was the same except that this time both of my cousins were quite restless throughout the night and kept moving about in the bed. I went through the ordeal for the third night and had decided in my mind to tell my dad to change our room the next day under any sort of pretext. Luckily my stars favoured me and we had to leave Manali the next day. It was only few months after the tour, that all of us met once again and someone among us mentioned about hearing noises in that room and if anyone else had heard the same. That was when all of us confessed to have heard the sounds but we were too scared and sceptical to admit it.

I still wonder, what exactly was it that we had experienced. Was it a poltergeist? Or a residual haunting of some kind? It remains "UNEXPLAINED"...