An Eerie Venture

The characters of a story or novel arise from the deep instincts of an author. Some great writers even confessed that they disguise themselves as their characters to bring life to them.

Characterizing a killer might need at least thinking like a killer, if not behave like one. Probably those characters are too risky to try. But some other characters are little easy to enact in real life so that we authors have first hand information about them and can picturize them better in our creation.

Once I wanted to write about a miser. I literally slid into that character. I cut our family expenditure, told my son that his pocket money would not be coming any more and started eating little and counted money every night. My wife and son were fed up with me for that entire week. Another time, when my character needed little absent mindedness, I simulated part of the story at my office. I was almost out of job, but for our director, who finally burst into laughter, when I explained my experiment.

As I put three to four years in this art of writing, I recently decided to do little more courageous experiments to throw new light on my writings. I thought of writing about a young woman’s night trap in a lonely abandoned building. It must have been the theme for some hundred novels and another hundred movies so far. Still, I thought I would certainly give something new and innovative for that kind of story.

I chose a dilapidated and abandoned three-story building in the outskirts of our town. To my knowledge, it was abandoned at least for the last twenty years. It belonged to a Raja family who flourished in the regime of British Rule. With India gaining the Independence and democratic awareness among people, they slowly lost their prominence as kings. For some years they remained as a symbol of rich class in the society, but later they lost themselves in the time. The last reliable information about that family is that its only heir is now settled in London and has no interest in coming back to this poor abandoned building.

As per my experiment, I had to stay one full night alone in such kind of building. I had heavy snacks that evening such that I could survive through the night. I deliberately dropped my watch at home. Though I desperately wanted to take a torch, I did not take one.

I left around evening four o’clock. I told my wife that I would be going on an official trip and would be back next day afternoon. I took an auto till the last bus stop, which is close to the building. I waited in the bus stop for few minutes to avoid people noticing me. Then I slowly started walking towards the building from the side street.

I started to think about the building. I feared that thieves might be using such building as their resort. Sometimes beggars and homeless could be living in such kind of buildings. Thinking a little further, my body trembled in fear. Dealing with thieves and beggars is ok, but what about ghosts? Some time back, I heard that some old horror movie was also shot in that building. Though all these thoughts troubled me, I made a strong determination to conduct my experiment.

As I approached the building compound wall, I noticed that the main door was closed completely. I looked for any opened sideway doors. I noticed that some of the windows were left open and the panes of the windows were broken partially. The balcony in the first floor with the pillars at the sides formed a perfect portico. The yellowish-brown painting on the outer walls of the whole building was gone long back and the lime stone coating inside was falling out in sheets. Overall, the house was really having a ghostly appearance. But that building would have been the most beautiful one, in those olden days.

I started going around the house. There must have been a beautiful garden around that house those days. Now all that remained were some creepers, which grew all over the place, some small plants and grass. I found five entrances to the house and all were closed so, I decided to enter the building through the side window.

With my hands on the window rim, I rose above and pushed myself through the window. I must have entered into the living room. It was a big hall and almost empty except one old wooden chair in the corner, with one leg broken. On the walls, I saw an old frame without any photograph or portrait in it. I slowly started walking towards the center of the hall. I found a big dining space on the left hand side of the hall, which led all the way back to the kitchen and then to backside of the house. On the right hand side, I found a staircase to the top floors. Just beside the staircase, there was a bedroom.

First, I went into the kitchen. It was fairly big and there was a storage room also. I opened the storage room and looked inside, there was nothing there. Then I inspected the bedroom, which was sharing a bathroom with the main hall. I took the stairs to go to the top floor. The railing of the staircase was beautiful and still intact. The first floor was having three bedrooms and a small common place, which opened to the big balcony into the front side of the building. Every room was bare and deserted. Then I inspected the top most floor of the building.

The floor got spoiled almost in every room at one place or the other. The ceilings were covered with cobwebs and the entire house was filled with some kind of foul smell. The top floor room was filled with bird’s feathers and the smell was almost unbearable. I don’t know why, but I got little confidence that I could spend the night alone in that building. It did not seem to be as difficult as I thought it would be but least did I know what was about to come.

Slowly it became dark outside. I tried couple of switches for a light to glow but nothing happened. Wasn’t that foolish of me to expect something like that to happen? Why would a building like that have an electricity supply? But anyway, that suited me well. Then I planned how and where to spend the night. I decided to stay in the first floor till midnight and then in the ground floor for the rest of the right. So, I sat on the floor in one of the bedrooms of the first floor.

As the night fell, it became more and more silent. The silence was very terrifying and all sorts of thoughts were creeping up in my mind. I felt as if there was somebody standing behind me and was about to do something from behind. I suddenly turned around and peered in the dark but could not find anything. I was getting sweaty. I had to be fully awake the whole night. So, to divert my mind, I started thinking about the up coming novel competition and couple of ideas towards the theme. I wondered what my wife and son were doing at that time.

It must be around ten o’clock or so. I heard some hissing sound from outside. Immediately I stood up and went to the window. In the dark, my eyes searched for something. I didn’t really find anything. It must be some snake. I came back and sat again on the floor. Even though there were no lights, I could feebly see up to some extent. I felt heavy bladder, so I used one of the stinking toilets.

I started imagining the feelings of a girl, when she is trapped in a house like that. I read my own mind to be able to understand that girl, when she is lonely like I was then. I started imaging what all could happen to a girl in that situation. She was alone and she could be scared or terrorized just for nothing at all. Small incidents can cause her feel scared, like an owl’s shriek, a snake’s hissing sound or the sound of the strong wind on the window panes could be good ideas to wrap up the grip around the story. Or I can introduce a killer in the story or may be a ghost would be much scarier. Or if nothing else, a scary encounter with the aliens from outer space would be a good one. Now a days, that kind of story would sell a lot.

Suddenly I heard the sound of a strong wind. I stood up and looked through the window. It looked like it was going to rain heavily. I walked close to the window. A gush of chill wind hit my face. I stood there watching the town at a distance. It looked beautiful with small lights and somewhere among those houses is my house too.

With lightning and thunders it started to rain heavily. The sound of heavy rain disturbed me a little. I stood like that for more than half an hour, watching the rain and the hazy street lamps. The rain had brought some activity to the somewhat scary silence, which was looming till then.
After half an hour or so, the streetlights went out. The same town, which was looking good in the night-lights, appeared to be a dark and ghostly town. I came back and sat on the floor again.
I wondered how the Raja family lived in that house years back. A cold shiver ran down my spine when a thought occurred to me. Those family members might be still roaming in the house as ghosts.

I wrote a couple of stories about ghosts in my early career. I always borrowed those themes and descriptions from others stories. I read lot of stories about people narrating their first hand experiences with ghosts. It is always bit scary to imagine those kinds of situations. So, as I was thinking about ghosts, I heard some squealing sounds of rats. Then I heard an owl’s shriek. My mouth went dry and my heart was beating high. If there was anybody else with me in that room, they would have heard it clear.

I thought praying might help me a little. So, I looked up at the ceiling and was just about to close my eyes to pray. Suddenly I felt like I was seeing a form in the air up above. It was hazy and appeared to be approximately in the shape of a human being. The elongated body and the unclear features made it scarier than ever. I was sweating all over my body. Then I realized in a flash, that I was seeing a ghost.

At one shot, I stood up like a spring and ran for my dear life. I turned away as fast as I could and tried to rush through the bedroom into the other side of the hallway, which lead all the way down to the ground floor. With nothing else in my mind other than to run, I suddenly felt like I was hit strongly on one side of my forehead.

In an impulse my left hand touched my forehead and I found something wet. I thought it was blood. By then, my heart was racing at its highest rate. I fell backwards on the floor, as I got dizzy. When I touched the floor, my head hit the floor again strongly. I faintly heard myself shouting in pain. And after that I lost consciousness.

When I regained, I slowly opened my eyes. I noticed that I was lying on the floor in front of the bedroom door and it was early morning. My head seemed heavy and I gathered all my strength to get up slowly. With my hands, I felt my head in the back and the front. To my surprise I didn’t find any bleeding. I must have mistaken my own sweat to be blood.

I looked around in the process of understanding what had happened the night before. I noticed that the door was broken on the top and a log was hanging out loose in the way. I realized that I must have hit myself to that log while running in fear. Immediately I remembered the ghost. I laughed at myself but still in some corner of my mind, I wanted to double check about the ghost. I went around the house again and again to find it, but there was nothing.

I came down to the ground floor and went to the window through which I had come. I made sure that nobody was watching me. Then I slowly jumped out of the window and caught an auto. I felt weak and hungry and all I could think of was my home.

Now all of you must be thinking that I must have written a big novel about this experiment. But all I did was to write this story about my own adventure. But certainly, in the future you will read my story about a lonely girl trapped in a ghostly building.