Both my parents were living in Canada when covid happened. I was in high school and living with my maternal grandparents, mostly to take care of them. When covid became big in April 2020, and all the schools and colleges were closed, we moved away from the city to avoid the possibility of them getting infected. The house that we moved to was situated on a river island in the middle of the Padma River.
When I say that it was isolated, I mean it was ISOLATED. The river island was shaped like a boomerang. Its northwest arm was about 4 miles long, and older. Around thirty years above water level. That was the part we lived in. That portion had other inhabitants, and a few trees. There was a village of about fifty people at least three miles to the north. Everyone in that village had boats because the island would largely go underwater come monsoon, so they lived on the boats while that happened. All the trees it had were small shrubbery, occasional bamboo groves, and exactly five tall palm trees. Most of that side of island was covered in grass at least as tall as I was at the time.
The southern side of the island was 2 miles long, new and was mostly still exposed white sand. It had barely been there for a year, and nobody lived there.
The house we were moving into was an old tin shed house built on tall stilts. It was one story and despite requiring significant renovation when we moved in, its layout was modern. It had three bedrooms, two to the south and sharing a long balcony, and one east with a large window. One of the southward and the east one had attached bathrooms. They were connected to a common dining space that had a kitchen, a common bathroom and a window to the north. The door and the patio were to the west. All the doors were made of steel. I took the eastern room, and my grandparents settled in the southern room with the attached bathroom. When we moved in, we had people redo the paintjob for us. We bought a small generator for electricity.
My grandfather had suffered a stroke in 2018 and had diminished strength on the left side of his body. He could walk, take baths and use the toilet himself, but he needed help getting dressed and someone to hold his hand when outdoors. My grandmother's feet would swell up painfully if she walked too much.
We also got a housekeeper, because as soon as the schools would open, my high school graduation exams were supposed to start, and I needed to study and prepare for that. She was a young (mid 20s) local woman whose husband left for the city and then stopped picking up her calls. She had no formal education beyond 5th grade and needed money to support herself.
Whatever supernatural forces had been attached to the place seemed to target her. She faced the most violent and mentally degrading of the supernatural phenomenon that happened in the house. And she told me about it because we got along quite well, being close in age. But she asked me not to tell anyone about them. I will be respecting her wishes, and only divulge the incidents that I myself experienced.
The first incident actually happened when we first moved in. My grandparents were already asleep on their bed. The housekeeper hadn't arrived yet. I was struggling to fall asleep in a new place. Around 1:00 AM, I heard some noise coming from below. It sounded like someone was hitting the stilts with sticks. My first thought was that we just brought a lot of new furniture and load into the house, and this is just the house settling into that new load. But the sound was regular. And it very clearly sounded like something being hit over and over again. I started to wonder if the structure is starting collapse. So, I took a flashlight and went outside to check on what's making that noise. But by the time I walked down the stairs, the sound stopped, and when I shone the flashlight under the house there was nothing there.
Afterwards, when our housekeeper arrived at our house in the middle of May, and I was studying in my room when my grandparents had gone to sleep. Around 11 pm I saw someone or something dark standing in the dining space. Non-sensibly, my first thought was that it's the new housekeeper. But this thing was almost as tall as the ceiling and broad as a door. And the housekeeper was 5 foot nothing and very skinny. When I realized this and looked back at it, I saw it moving fast towards the window, loudly tipping over a chair on its way. The window has bars by the way, so it wouldn't be able to simply jump out. I ran into the dining room and turned on the light but there was nothing there. The housekeeper came out of her room to check, but I told her I accidentally tipped it so that I don't scare her away on her first night. I still regret saying that to her.
After that, things started happening around the house. I'd sometimes see shadow people out of the corners of my eyes. Strange noises like people talking outside with words I didn't understand, but when I check no one is there. I'd hear my name being called from outside nearly every night. Something would touch me when I'm studying or trying to sleep. Sometimes our generator would randomly shut down, but that is probably mechanical failure.
There was nothing being thrown around, but the presence seemed to do way more aggressive things to our housekeepers. She'd hear the voices provoking her with insults about her situation. Her food would get ants if she left it alone for even five minutes, when the rest of the house didn't have an ant problem. Sometimes she'd feel as if something pierced her skin only to find the spot on her skin hot and red, as if she had been scratching there. That might be insect bites, but in context, I'm inclined to believe they're not. One time she got locked in her room from the outside. After that, she didn't feel safe in her room at night, so she'd try to spend time elsewhere around the house. She couldn't quit because apparently, she had nowhere else to go. Nearly nothing happened with my grandparents. My grandma was quite pious, and she insisted faith Allah kept them safe and kept really bad things from happening. It seemed to only be working for her and grandpa.
When monsoon came in July, the river island flooded completely, water rose to the fifth step leading up to the house. Our house was completely surrounded from all sides by rushing water. My grandparents bought a motorboat for commune. I was the only one who used it because the housekeeper stayed home in case of emergency.
One evening about 6 pm, I was bringing groceries and petrol for the generator by the motorboat, when some vegetables dropped from the boat. I leaned over the water to pick it up, and I heard a splash, and felt that something had climbed on the boat. I was going to turn to look but I was hit with an intense feeling of wrongness. I slowly turned my head and out of my periphery, I saw that something black in coloration was sitting on the other end of the boat from me. In this case, twelve or so feet away from me. I kept my eyes down, avoiding eye contact, and waited for it to vanish. It did not. I couldn't see it, but I had the distinct feeling that it was looking at me. After a while, I reached out and turned on the motor of the boat, hoping moving will get it away. It did not go away. I managed to steer the boat to the house all the while not looking at it and jumped into the water fifteen or so feet from the stairs. When I got onto the stairs and looked back, it was gone. I dragged the motorboat in and took the groceries and petrol.
That night something banged on my window. It shouldn't have been possible, because it was open water on the other side, and the window is at least six feet above the water level.
One night around midnight on September of 2020, I found the housekeeper's room door was open. I went in to chat, and she wasn't there. I looked around for her in the house but found the front door open instead. When I came out, I found that there was a clear trail of flattened grass, as if something heavy like elephant or buffalo went through there. There was no way that our tiny housekeeper flattened that much grass while moving.
I followed it anyway, and I came to the newer, southern side of the river island about two hundred yards away from the house. There I found that our housekeeper was walking off into the white sand, seemingly sleepwalking. I got to her and shook her to wake her up. When she did, she started crying and saying that she won't go back to the house. But she had walked out in clothes she'd slept in (September in Bangladesh isn't conducive to sleeping with a lot of clothes on, especially in a tin shed house), and for modesty's sake she came back. But she laid on the floor of my room that day and got up and went back to her own room before my grandparents woke up at dawn.
The next day she was doing her usual chores again, no talk of leaving the house.
Things got even worse for her after that. She did a lot of things to avoid being the victim off these forces, like bathing outside in the river instead of in the house, eating her meal as soon as she's done cooking etc. But things seem to follow her, and as soon as night fell, they'd torment her, whichever room may she be in. Bad things happened in that house. My grandma would constantly pray, and it seemed to work for her and grandpa, and even quieted things down momentarily for me. But had no effect on our housekeeper. At one point, I think our housekeeper wasn't here for the shelter or money, but to simply spite whatever was in the house.
In the April of 2021, our housekeeper announced that she'd gotten a trail of her husband. So, she took her things and left.
Things became much less aggressive after that. I'd see things from the corner of my eyes now and then. The occasional touch on the arm when I'm sitting on the table. I once heard something heavy loudly fall on the floor, and dashed around thinking one of my grandparents fell down. Nothing was amiss.
We left that house 4 months after that. I never experienced paranormal things of that nature again. I did experience unexplainable things, but they felt very very different from whatever was in that house.
I randomly saw the housekeeper again last year in November. We talked. Apparently the supernatural never followed her around, but her life has been on a downward spiral since then. Now, she cannot bear children. I gave her some money before going on with my life.
What do you think about this? The house had sat empty ever since my grandpa built it so there's no history there. The land is also very new. Why would a spirit target a singular person brutally like that?
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Thank you for the kind words and sympathy.
The river is the Padma River, and it's the most culturally, ecologically and spiritually significant river in all of South Asia. I'd say it'd have more than a few spirits attached to it.
I wasn't really in the deep river with my boat, per se. The river island we lived on went under the water seasonally during the monsoon season. The place I was traversing had been dry land a few weeks ago. Even as I was taking my boat through it, you could see tips of shrubbery and bamboo bushes sticking out over water.
During the monsoon, the whole of the island goes under water and the house that I was living in was surrounded by running water from all sides as well. The only reason we didn't have water standing inside the house was because it was raised on stilts.
Our housekeeper was also from the fifty-person village that had been living on the island for a while, though she wasn't welcome there anymore. Because after her husband was gone, some local men kicked her out of her house, took it over and pressured her to leave the village, stating that a young woman without a male partner would be bad for the community. That's why she had nowhere to go back to.
Maybe there's some history to those people. But she didn't know much about that either. She told me they were just homeless people who latched onto new land when it popped up.
Thank you for your opinion. It's given me much to think about.