The Knock That Followed Me

This happened during the later June of 2018, in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. I was living in my grandma's house back then. It was a joint family. Dhaka is like any other heavily populated city of the third world you can expect to visit. Crowded, buildings, traffic and dust sums up the place pretty well. The precise area of Dhaka this happened in is Savar. I will not go into the details of which street.

The first incident took place during noontime. Around 2:00 to 2:30 pm. I was returning home from school and I had taken a local bus that dropped me off in front of my alley. Entering the alley, there is a lane a little more than two hundred meters in length. I was walking through the lane and was somewhat thirsty, but not dehydrated, as the sky was cloudy and the temperature not much. To my right was a series of shops. Most shops were open, some were shuttered. To my left was a bunch of residential homes. It didn't jump at me right then, but there was only three other people aside from me on that road; the roadside shops were either shuttered, or open but empty. One of the people on the road walked behind me and two stood near a light post, chatting, I believe. Mid-noon is a lazy time in Bangladesh. The wind was present and it blew up dust.

There was a shuttered shop. The shutter was a light grey. To the right was a confectionery shop, also shuttered. To the left was a clothes shop, empty. I didn't remember it being there and I know that's supposed to be a red flag.

A few meters from it, I heard the knocking. It was urgent and incessant. It was precisely the kind of knock you'd give if you needed someone's attention.

I hesitated for a bit. Dhaka is a dangerous city and if you don't watch where you step, you'll fall into places you would never want to be.

When the knock came again, just as urgent as before, I knocked back on the door.

The reply was immediate, "Someone there?"

I said, "I'm here. Are you okay?"

No reply came. I checked out to see if I could open the shutter. It was locked. The lock was odd. It was one of those old bronze colored locks with carvings on it. It looked like it could take a bullet. I considered going to one of the shops nearby and asking for help, but they were all empty anyway.

When five minutes has passed, I knocked on the shutter again.

The second my knuckle touched the metal, there was a loud crash from behind the shutter, as if something heavy slammed against it. White dust that had accumulated on the shutter's curves fell. I took a step back and almost tripped over as I descended from the footpath. As I regained myself, another bang came from behind the shutter.

"Are you okay?" I yelled. In reply, something banged against the shutter once more

At this point I turned around and walked out of there as fast as I could. The shutter kept banging.

It only stopped once I turned the corner. The next lane was a lot more crowded than the last. The shops were open and rickshaws and vans moved around. I walked to my house as fast as my feet allowed, never looking back.

I thought about it all day and through the evening. I talked about it with my cousin that afternoon. He was as puzzled as me. He also pointed out the fact that the clothes store and the Confectionery are side by side.

My grandma's house was a four story apartment complex. Each of the apartments belong to one of her children. My mom lived in Mirzapur at that time with my dad. I lived on the fourth floor apartment, the one my parents owned, and I ate downstairs at my grandma's.

My parents had hired a maid to make sure I lived in a human condition and not as a raccoon. She cleaned the place up and slept in a different room of the same apartment for safety.

My bedroom had an adjacent bathroom. The bathroom has a PVC door, so if someone turned on the bathroom lights, I could tell. I could also tell if someone was in there based on the shadows they cast on the door. There was also an adjacent balcony that faced the street. It had nice cool breeze at night.

I had gone to sleep that night, and my maid had turned off all the lights. Because what happened earlier, I took some time to fall asleep.

I woke up in the middle of the night, and the it took me a moment to distinguish the sound of knocking over the ticking of the overhead clock. When I heard it, I absolutely froze.

The light to my bathroom was turned on and I could see the outline of something behind the door. It was large, almost covering the entire door (this door is almost seven feet in height). It knocked and then it said, "Someone there?"

There was no reason for my maid servant to be using my bathroom, neither did she have such a long shadow. She didn't have that voice either.

I don't know how long it went on for, but between 4:00 to 4:30, it stopped. The bathroom light went out. I didn't sleep that night.

I went to school the next day and told one of my friends about it. He told me to recite the Aiyatul Kudsi before sleeping.

That noon, when I was walking back to my apartment, I noticed that there was indeed no space between the clothes store and the confectionery, and neither of them had Light grey shutters.

This incident happened again two days after. This time I took note of certain things.

It knocked in short bursts. First a single faint knock. Then two bursts of three knocks. After that, it said, in the voice that I had heard in that street, "Is someone there?" Then it repeated, down to the pronunciation and the uneven interval between the knocks, like a recording.

This went on for the seven more months I lived there. My maid also came across it one time and she got so freaked out she quit. My parents convinced her to come back. She would never come into my room at night after that.

So as to say, I never opened the door to it. I had strong hunch it'd follow me wherever. If I had to pee, I peed in a bottle. If I had to poop... I've never been in that situation and I'm glad for that.

After I moved away from that apartment, I've never experienced something like it save for a random knock on the door one night.

So, what do you think was it, and why do you think it turned on the bathroom light?