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A non-believer of ghosts, Madhumita, wanted to converse with the spirits. She needed a first-hand experience with the ghosts. On an advice of a friend, she tried planchette with ouija board, pencil and candles in a dark room. A ghost did appear. Learn what it said in this exclusive weekly column that would be published every Sunday, in Different Truths.
I do not believe in ghosts. But I needed to write a ghost story, as assigned by a friend. Personal experience of author, though not mandatory, is preferable for a story to be credible. I had no experience, as I had no belief in ghosts.
But I needed to meet a ghost. Desperately. I had to write a story and I threatened myself, it had to be credible. So I took advice from a friend. A friend who was a believer. In the status of life when in lack of it, post mortal. He suggested conducting a planchette, to usher in spirits who I could interview and interact with.
“But is that possible?” I was skeptical. “Of course it is. There are thousands of spirits existing in the supra-real realm. And many humans, hundreds of them, have been successful in meeting these spirits. Loved ones, famous ones, you know.”
“But hold it! Thousands of spirits you say? How thousands? People are dying every day, every moment, in this vast world. There should be millions and trillions of them hovering around. In fact there would soon be lack of space for them fly around in comfort.”
My friend was not happy. He was a dear friend and I did not wish to antagonise him. So I apologised to him for what I called my lack of knowledge and accompanied him to his friend’s home to experience this surreal happening.
After several attempts and an hour and a half spent in the dark room, sitting around a round table, with just a candle flame lighting up the surroundings, when I had almost given up hope, a friend sitting next to me, nudged me and whispered: “Someone has come.”
Woohoo! I was happy at the prospect of encountering a spirit for the first time and, yes of course, I would have my story! Based on a first-hand experience! But I dared not shout out my glee. The spirit might be extra-sensitive to aural signals and might perhaps flee. And my friend would be angry and upset. So I stayed mum. My eyes glowed with excitement.
We sat around a table, four of us. There was a medium, a friend of my friend, who had taken on the task of conducting the planchette. Questions were asked, and answered, in writing, with a pencil moving on the Ouija board placed on the table. I looked on agape, in awe.
It was dark in the room. We could barely see our faces. Four pairs of eyes glowed in the soft light shed by a lone candle. Suddenly there was a muffled soft cry from the one who held the pencil. He brought his hand up to his face and we looked at him and next at the table. The pencil wrote on the paper on the board, by itself, with no one holding it. The pencil wrote out a question. A question directed to me, directly. Yes, my name was written in a scrawl, but clearly.
“Why do you need to meet a ghost?”
I forgot to breathe. As did the others too. We looked at one another, suddenly feeling cold in the sultry, claustrophobic room. The pencil continued writing.
“Aren’t you one yourself?
“Are you still the one as you were born? Aren’t you a ghost of yourself?
“Look at you, a spectre if ever there was, it’s in you.
“You have seen and heard and lived it all through, life in this world as you have experienced, living and loving and laughing at it too at times, through the years.
“The ills, the evil of the world have got into your soul.
“You have soaked it all up like a throbbing, hungry, big piece of sponge.
“The black and the grey have got into you.
“Your innards are no longer pink and red.
“You have died long back.
“Your soul no longer lives.
“You are a ghost of who you were, once upon a time, when the earth sang, the air breathed.
“Write a story on you.”
I don’t remember how I reached my bed in my room, where I woke up in the morning. A morning grey and stifling, the sky cloudy, the sun hidden, and no sign of refreshing, cleansing rain.
© Madhumita Ghosh
Pix from Net.
