Nishi

I remember when I was a kid my mother used to drop me to my school. On the way to my school there was a well and I don't know why, quite often my mother used to take me near to that well and asked me to poke at it so that I could perceive the depth of the well. I must confess here that I from my childhood to until now have strong fear from the wells.

Days goes by, in 2012, I visited to one of my aunty who resides at Saket nagar colony which was about 4km from my residence. My cousin and I were of similar age group and I often share thoughts and topics between us. We both have strong believed in ghost and supernatural entities.

Whenever I made a visit to my aunt's house, I often see a building on whose entrance had eight human skulls on either side of the gate in increasing size. Whenever I see it, I always fill with curiosity and it gives me goose bumps too.

Although I had asked my mother regarding it and the answer I got from my mother was that place is famously known as the Keenaram temple and it is an abundant place for the people who are not Aghori's (they are known to engage in post-mortem rituals) or do not have any faith on aghortantra & black magic as it is regarded as the headquarter of and pilgrimage site for followers of Aghora.

The day I visited to my aunt's resident, my cousin putted an offer to explore the sandbank on the other side of river Ganga. Since, I had never landed on the other side of the river; I grabbed his offer with two hands. Although, we both did not informed our mothers regarding this as both of us do not know to swim and we had doubts that we won't get permission of going their either.

So we lied our mothers that we are going to watch movie and we would be arriving late. We took our bikes and headed towards the ghat. We choose the Dashashwamedh Ghat from where we could see the famous & spectacular Ganga arti (A group of priests daily in the evening at this ghat perform "Agni Pooja" (Worship to Fire) wherein a dedication is made to Lord Shiva, River Ganga, Surya (Sun), Agni (Fire), and the whole universe) on sitting the sand banks of the river. Although, we both were unaware that according to the tails/rumors, hovering on the sand banks of the other side of river after dark is not good at all.

The reasons behind is that it is where the Aghori's do their rituals throughout the night. People had witnessed Aghori's sitting atop a human corpus which they pulled out from the river and putting ashes on their body which they fetched from charnels grounds also there are rumors regarding the cannibalism associated with the Aghori's that they eat the corpus after completion of their rituals no matter how aged/decomposed that corpus is. Due to their practices that are contradictory to orthodox Hinduism, these places are generally opposed.

The dead bodies which they fetched from the river are of either those peoples who died due to some accidents and whose body was not found by the police or these are those unclaimed dead bodies which were thrown in the river after autopsy. I had too seen bodies thrown in the river after postmortem from the nearby bridge and I must say that it is a bizarre & horrible visual experience of bodies being thrown with their whole assembly (the wooden stretchers on which the body is laid) from middle of a 350ft tall bridge.

We packed some snacks and water for the day and haired a small boat that would drop us on the other side of the river. We reached their somewhere around 4:00pm, we first enjoyed the beautiful views of the ghat and slow boating under winter sunshine. Our boat reached on the other side of the river about 1 ½ hours later. Since we have almost an hour before the Ganga arti, so we decided to explore the area as much as we could.

One could see the jungle like surrounding almost 400 meters standing from the bank of the river. My cousin named Vikramjeet lovingly called as Vikki asked me whether I am interested in going there or not because it is worthless sitting like fools on the sand and doing nothing. Although, I do not had any interest in going there because the light was fading rapidly (since it was winter season) and that place was totally unknown for us.

But seeing his interest, I decided to accompany him. We soon entered there. It was a desolated place there was no one except us. After hovering here and there my cousin saw a well. He called me. The well looked like in use as we noticed wet surrounding as someone had washed that area. The creepy part about that place was that we saw some funeral clothes which are used to decorate dead body, a wide mouth small goblet and some human bones were thrown near to that well. I guessed that this place might be used by aghories and they must have performed their rituals.

Suddenly, Vikki yelled and said that he had seen a lady inside the well. I immediately responded and peeked inside but I saw nothing. I told him that he might have seen his reflection on the water. But he did not convince with me. To get assured, we threw a stone inside and we received a bid sound of splash! And nothing else. I said that see there was nothing inside.

We decided that we have seen enough and should leave that place as soon as possible. While coming out of from there, I felt that we were not alone and someone is keeping an eye on our activity. Suddenly, I saw a pitch black creature following us. I said Vikki that we are being followed and we should be better prepared ourselves for anything unwanted.

First, I thought that it might be any aghori of the well side place or it was something else may be my eyes were hallucinating since there were lots of stuffs going around in my mind regarding that place. I called our boat-man to pick us up.

But soon something happened that forced me to re-think about my hallucination theory. When we came out of that jungle and we started walking towards the sore of the river, we thought that we have left that black creature behind, it came out of that jungle and now we could clearly see him. It was a tall masculine figure. It did not have any solidity and it was transparent. We felt with fear and our hearts were pounding like lightening. We started retrieve backwards doing face towards that entity.

Suddenly I felt declination in my physical strength. It was hard for me to perform even normal physical movement. I saw Vikki; he too was stuck at his place. Slowly that black entity started moving towards us, he crossed us and vanished. His departure provides us salvation from our improper physical state.

We lay on the sand unmoved like a dead corpus. There was no energy left in our bodies either like someone had drained our physical power.

Soon our boat arrived. Our face had turned pale yellow. We could hear the sound of sholkas and mantras coming from far across the river which was of Ganga arti. The man droving the boat was too surprised to see us lying on the ground, He asked us what had happened but we neither have the power to talk nor do we have the courage to talk about that paranormal entity.

Somehow, we reached to our respective homes. That night I did not sleep well as I have nightmares like I was walking in the charnels grounds and around me number of pyres were burning.

I told the entire incident to my mother few days later when I was suffering from continuous ordeal. She was terrified to hear that. She told me that evening I and Vikki might have been encountered with a ghost called 'Nishi'.

It is one of the cruelest ghosts who lure his victims in an area like river banks or sea sores and it only strikes at edge of end of evening and starting of night and it drains the power of the victim when possessed. Nishi is the most common ghost called by aghories to guard his area so that no one could breach their secret place where they perform their rituals.

This same nightmare continues for weeks until I get myself blessed from Kalbhairav mandir (Kalbhairav is an incarnation of Lord Shiva and a complete replica of Shiva).