The Ghostly Touches In The Dark Room

This is something that happened to both me and my sister. I am sharing this with my sister's expressed permission.

If you have read my already published experience; The Dog man on the porch, then you would know that the house I lived in from age four to later parts of nine was haunted. This incident took place in that house.

Our house was a single floor brick construction from the early twentieth century. The layout of the house was a mixture of bus topology found in old colonial houses, and the long corridors and balconies found in Bengali houses. There were three bedrooms. One for my parents and one for me and my sister. They were both adjacent to a long balcony that overlooked the north side of the perimeter of the house. Our parents bedroom and ours also had a door as a direct link between the rooms. On the other end of the long balcony, lied the door to our kitchen, the door to our dining and living room (the two didn't have a door between them), and the door to our store room.

The incident in question happened in this storage room. It was a long time ago, but I'd say the room was twelve feet long and seven feet wide, with two feet wooden shelves coming out from both sides of it's length. This room has a tragic history to it (I know from older kids who had heard it from the old people in our campus).

As people who have read the previous incident that took place in this house would know, our house was used as a dumping ground for dead bodies by the Pakistani military in the genocide of 1971. Well, our storage room in particular was used to dump the bodies of the women the Pakistani military violated.

They had, as hearsay goes, found four bodies in our storage room. I will not go into the state of the corpse upon discovery, but let's just say they were vandalized in a way that it'd be very inappropriate for the younger audience to hear of it.

My sister, fifteen at the time, was home in a vacation. It was the late Autumn (Hemonto season, for my Bengali readers. October-November for my non-Bengali ones) months and we had decided to make a kite to fly it in the nearby field. All the instruments for this was in the storage room.

At that moment, the storage room was being used to hang my father's coats, by a wire. Cold was starting to settle down, and he'd have to start wearing them shortly.

It was afternoon nearing evening. Both of us were reluctant to go in alone; it was dark in there, so we went in together. The storage room had no other window, or any electric lighting and the light from the door was obstructed by the coats. On top of that, coats are not exactly transparent. My father's coats were long, as he is a tall man. It'd be fair to say that, we were quite blind in there.

My sister was telling me about her plan of which spot to fly our kite from when the little light we had from the door disappeared. We tried to get to the door, but I stepped on a coat and tripped, my sister falling right with me.

My sister, however, got up and proceeded to bang on the door, calling for our parents. She had thought that perhaps our mother had unknowingly locked us in. Nobody answered. I would come to know later on that they were out on their evening stroll.

A few minutes passed by before I felt a touch on my back. I know, I was surrounded by coats and they were touching me anyway, but this felt deliberate. I shook in place, thinking it's a bug. It moved away. Not three seconds passed before my sister slapped her leg, looking confused.

Then I felt the touch again. It was on my arm this time. I actually swatted on my arm but it didn't go away. My sister also jumped, grabbing her behind this time.

One after another, more touches joined in. They began to feel like hands, but no warmer than the surrounding. They weren't violent or forceful, although I believe I felt nails in some touches. All they did was touch and caress all over the body. Their demeanor was much like what old people do when they find young children. But at the time and in that situation, it was quite overwhelming. I could also note a heavy breathing sound, but since both me and my sister were in a small closed space, very much panicking, it's not really something that could pass to be of paranormal origins.

I do not remember much of what happened to my sister, but I believe I did hear her whimpering. Or it might've been me. I'm running on some old memories here.

This went on for a long time. It was after sunset that my parents came back home. Then they waited for us, thinking we're both outside. We had been there for almost three hours before our mother finally opened the door to the storage room. This encounter had gone on for the entire time we were in there, and stopped as soon as she opened the door. I was told later that when she opened the door, I was just sitting there like I'm laying an egg and staring at her. My sister had passed out and my father went in to carry her outside.

After she woke up, we narrated our experience to our parents. They listened to us, but told us that it was because the both of us were just scared in the situation and the touches were the clothes. It wasn't as if either one of us had anything to show for our encounter.

My sister stayed for that vacation but refused to come back to that house after she got back to the cadet college. She'd rather live in a dorm alone than come back to that place.

It is also worth noting that during that time, my sister was being bullied severely by her seniors in the cadet college. Bullying by seniors, or otherwise known as "Ragging", is already a big problem in cadet colleges and residential schools in general. But my sister's seniors went a step further with their bullying. It had went on until the month prior to this incident, when they pushed my sister onto a cactus. She spent a week in the infirmary after that. Two of the seniors who took part in doing this were suspended.

Now for the disclaimers:

My parents might be correct. It was dark and stuffed with coats. Coats had a lot of dust. It was enough to asphyxiate two kids. The touches could just be the coats, the nails that I felt either false memory or just the coat buttons. I was wearing a thin tank top with a three quarter pant, while my sister wore a loose t-shirt above pajamas. So we weren't heavily clothed. The breathing would simply be my sister. This does not explain how the door closed itself, though. It had a bolt on the other side. Perhaps it was a gust of wind that slammed the door and the bolt locked itself out of inertia?

For a long time, I was very much bothered by this incident and shuddered to think of it. But slowly the emotions attached to the experience faded away. Now it's just another inexplicable memory clunking in my head. My sister is still bothered by it, but she gave me the permission to share it, and I applaud her strength for doing so. And yes, I did compare notes with her, and what we experienced was almost absolutely the same, save for her passing out.

So, what do you think? Were my parents correct? Was it a residual haunting? Was it something foreign?