Do you believe in ghosts?" asks Shine, a slightly plump young lady of 21 years, late at night on my train to Ahmedabad.
"No.", I say shaking my head. (I don't know that this really translates - in India you'll often ask a question and get in response a sort-of bobble-headed side-to-side gesture which means, I think, "OK." The problem is that often times this is the response to questions like "Is there a bathroom? Toilet? Water Closet?!")
"I do." she continues. "Maybe I'm old-fashioned. But I watch all the ghost programs on T.V. Have you seen Ghost Hunters? The Exorcism of Emily Rose? I watch them all. My mother yells at me because I get scared, then don't want to sleep alone! "Why do you watch these silly movies?" she says. In my village we have a ghost. There is this bungalow and this woman was killed there years ago..."
At this point I start to fade out. I keep wondering if anyone has the top bunk above me, so that I can lay down, since my spot has been usurped by a very persistent middle-aged, gruff-looking Indian who knows I'm not going to start a fight at 12:00AM to get my spot back.
"....so about 20 people have been murdered there and no one can explain it."
That, of course, grabs my attention. "What? How long ago was this?"
"She was killed in 1987."
That really grabs my attention.
I ask her to start over, along with a lot of other questions along the way. She explains that there was this woman who worked at the house. She was pregnant. She slipped and fell, was knocked out, and the other people working and living there were afraid to call the police for fear of being implicated. So, naturally, they dug a hole in the basement and buried her. Alive. (They didn't know that of course. Well, maybe they did, and just didn't care for her all that much.)
"As she lay there she kept wishing: "Please let me live so that I can have my baby!"" (Again, how one knows the final thoughts of an unconscious woman under six feet of soil... (And, it was probably only one foot. I've seen Indian construction standards.)) She continues to tell me that everyone involved was eventually killed - they were all found in the yard with "mysterious injuries to the neck". And, everyone who has stayed there since has befallen the same foul fate at the hands of "the witch". Apparently, even the "T.V. shows" have gone there, but wouldn't enter the house because it was so foreboding. The State Government called for an investigation, but "The police couldn't find any explanation." (Police investigation is, I'm sure, of the same high level as construction.)
"The entire village is terrified. No one will go into the house anymore."
This really gets me thinking. The anthropologist in me is coming up with titles for a paper: "Modern Superstition and Urban Legend in Central India - a Case Study." (Scientific papers have to to have ponderous titles like that, or they're just not scientific.) Also, I figure that if I go inside, and come out alive, then perhaps the "curse" will be broken, and people will no longer be "terrified." (I could be a local hero!)
So, I decide that, considering I got screwed into paying far more for the ticket than I should have, I will oversleep my 4:30 AM stop and go on with her to the small town of Parbhani. I was lucky the new conductor we got in the morning sympathized with me getting taken for a ride (no pun intended) by his predecessor, and didn't fine me.
Me, Shine, and her mother, who speaks no English at all, get a motor-rickshaw from the station to their house. The town itself is small, rural, dusty. People stare at me with more than passing interest - they don't get too many tourists here, I'm sure. We pass kids playing cricket in the empty dirt lots. (Man, how they love cricket here.) Their place is a very nice, little white house with a courtyard in front, the deceased fathers small white sedan sitting on blocks, partially covered with a canvas tarp. The living room is a fairly standard affair with pictures of various Gods on the walls, no-where to sit but the carpeted floor, and a TV in the corner. They're a middle class family with a few servants/ tenants living with them, who serve us chai (tea) and breakfast while the Rickshaw driver arranges, I am told, permission to go inside the house.
Did it occur to me to be worried at all? Only after I asked her if she actually knew anyone who had been killed...
"Yes. My fathers friend that he went to school with. He stayed there a few nights and was found dead, too."
Hmmmm. That was a little disconcerting, actually.
"Are you sure? I mean, it seems like the kind of thing that would be in the news."
"Oh yes, you can look it up in the newspapers."
Discounting that the local Indian journalism is likely on par with Rush Limbaugh's own "Excellence in Broadcasting" (Maybe not that bad, but still...) I start thinking... What if...? OK, if I learned anything from watching Scooby Doo, it's that the idea of a murderous witch from beyond the grave killing people is, in a word, absurd. BUT... what else could cause this? Is there a murderous monkey living in the house? No - somebody would see it. Cobra? No - different injuries. What about.... hantavirus? Is that even a thing in India? What about carbon monoxide? Is there mining in the area. Methane gas, maybe?
Now Shine is getting into it. "Oh - maybe! There was one lady who stayed there, who said she wanted to prove there was no ghost, and she burst into flames and died!"
Not really where I was going with that, but it was a nice bit of information to have.
So, just to be on the safe side, I pack up a few things to be sent home with brief notes explaining that I was killed by a ghost witch in central India. I mean, if you have to go, you might as well do it with flair. I bring a handkerchief, just for Hanta virus.
Finally, the two of us get into the rickshaw and go to the house. It was remarkably un-spooky. Just a plain one-story house fenced off of the main street with barred and shuttered windows, and a large padlock on the door. We stop at the all-purpose shop next door and a lengthy discussion takes place, the shop owner looking slightly more irritated than concerned. Cell phones are called, and conversations I don't understand take place. (Everyone in India has a cell phone. They pay about $1.00 a month for service. Try to tell me we're not getting screwed in the US.)
The rickshaw driver explains: "The owner says it's OK to go inside. He'll bring the key later."
Back outside the house a small crowd is starting to gather. Not wanting to wait for the rest of the town to arrive, I tell them: "Well, if it's OK, then I'll just take a look around." Without objections, I hop the fence and head toward the stairway off to the right, leading to the roof. At the back of the house is a small private, walled-in patio with two back doors leading into the house. Neither have padlocks. Hopping down onto a crumbly brick wall, I am able to then jump onto some stairs leading down to the patio. The first door seems to be unlocked, but a very heavy, 50 gallon metal barrel only moves a bit from my shoving before getting lodged on something. The next door is completely covered in Hollywood-horror-movie-style cobwebs, which I brush aside with my hat. The door handle turns, but it's latched from inside.
Like the front of the house, there are two boarded-up windows to the side of the doors, so I decide to climb up onto the window sills and look through the open upper transoms. Inside the first is a nightmarish scene. Pink paint, the the color of which would embarrass a 1959 Cadillac, covers the walls. And that was it. A few cobwebs and an empty water bottle. Really a boring room, minus the pink paint.
The second is a dingy, cobweb covered white room so boring it's painful. No blood spattering the walls. No axe with hair and dried gore clinging to it.
"William! Are you OK?!! William!!!"
I yell back: "Yeah! I'm fine! Just a minute!"
I climb back on the roof. For a brief moment I consider screaming like a banshee as I wave my arms running to the edge of the roof, but decide it wasn't a very professional thing for an anthropologist to do.
By now, a large crowd has gathered and they want to see the photos I took of the rooms. There's a few laughs from the younger people in the crowd. The rickshaw guys says something to Shine. She tells me: "We should go before the press arrives. I'm serious - they'll come." (Secretly, I'm a little disappointed. Getting my picture in an Indian newspaper wearing my Indiana Jones hat would be kind of cool.)
Back at her house we have lunch. Time passes. I try to nap. I inquire about the key again. "Oh, we have to wait, the driver's brother will bring the key." Shine and I spend a few hours chit-chatting. I take a bucket water shower in the squat-toilet bathroom. I ask Shine, again, about the key, as I've now missed the first train leaving town and will have to catch the 5:30. She's a bit evasive and makes a comment, half to herself. "If my mother finds I'm delaying you, she'll kill me!"
Hmmm. "Delaying" me?
After more tea (It's a wonder I'm ever able to sleep, with all the tea I drink here.) the conversation eventually turns to language. I explain I speak some Spanish, and we write down expressions and phrases for each other. For me, the Hindi for: "How much is it?" "That's far too expensive." "Thank you." "Excuse me." "I don't speak Hindi." "Where is the Train station?"
I write these down in Spanish for Shine. She adds a few to her list she wants translated: "I like you." "I love you." "I can't live without you."
Now, I'm finally starting to get genuinely worried.
My relief comes when the rickshaw driver arrives. He talks in a subdued tone to Shine. I ask: "Is this about the key?"
"Yes"
"Well? Does he have it?"
"Uh... It's complicated."
Complicated. Great. I ask her to explain and in a quiet voice she tells me. "Wait a minute. I don't want the workers to hear." (Not that the guys working on the electricity spoke English, but, whatever.) After they leave she tells me. "His brother was bringing the key on his motorbike. But he crashed. They are saying it's because the witch is mad you went into the house."
Oh oh. That's not good. This is usually the point in the endeavour when the guys in the pith helmets end up in a large boiling pot for bringing harm to one of the villagers.
"Is he OK?"
"Yes, he just hurt his leg."
Well, so much for that. "No key, then, I bet."
"You still desire to go into the house?" She asks, surprised.
"Well... no.... I don't care. I mean, I just wanted to help, but it looks like I'm just causing trouble, so I guess I better not."
Between the amorous Shine and a potentially pissed off village, I decide I really don't want to spend the night, so I get myself packed up. About a half hour before the train was to leave we get in the rickshaw. As we pass the house, Shine jokes: "Maybe you want to say goodbye to the witch?" I lean out the open door, and waving my hat at the passing house I yell: "Goodbye witch! Goodbye!!"
Scariest of all was the train station. The entire town had shown up to buy a train ticket. All 5,000 of them were gathered in the station. There was no way I'd be able to get a ticket in time.
The rickshaw guy muscles us through to the back of the building where he talks to a station guard, pointing at me. The guard disappears into the building, then comes out a few minutes later, with a ticket in hand. I pay the guard and shake his hand. Relief mixed with gratitude just as quickly fades at what I hear next from Shine, as the train pulls into the station: "The driver wants 500 rupees."
"What?!"
"For the day."
"He wasn't even with us most of the day!"
"For helping to get the key"
"He didn't get the key."
"But his brother got hurt."
Uhg. "I'll give him 200."
"I can give him 300, too."
"No... OK, fine, I'll give him.. uhg.. 400, but that's it!"
She translates. "He says OK."
I hand over the cash and get on board. As the train pulls away, Shine waves and yells to me: "Goodbye, William!! Goodbye! Call me!!"
The rickshaw driver, with a devilish smile and a wave, also yells up at me, in a slightly disconcerting way: "Yes! Goodbye, William! Goodbye!"
The train that night was so packed, and hot, I joined the locals and stood in the open doorway. It occurred to me that my demise would most likely come that night, not from a ghost, but from someone accidentally pushing me out the door.
But I held on extra-tight to the hand-rails, just to prove the old witch wrong.
"No.", I say shaking my head. (I don't know that this really translates - in India you'll often ask a question and get in response a sort-of bobble-headed side-to-side gesture which means, I think, "OK." The problem is that often times this is the response to questions like "Is there a bathroom? Toilet? Water Closet?!")
"I do." she continues. "Maybe I'm old-fashioned. But I watch all the ghost programs on T.V. Have you seen Ghost Hunters? The Exorcism of Emily Rose? I watch them all. My mother yells at me because I get scared, then don't want to sleep alone! "Why do you watch these silly movies?" she says. In my village we have a ghost. There is this bungalow and this woman was killed there years ago..."
At this point I start to fade out. I keep wondering if anyone has the top bunk above me, so that I can lay down, since my spot has been usurped by a very persistent middle-aged, gruff-looking Indian who knows I'm not going to start a fight at 12:00AM to get my spot back.
"....so about 20 people have been murdered there and no one can explain it."
That, of course, grabs my attention. "What? How long ago was this?"
"She was killed in 1987."
That really grabs my attention.
I ask her to start over, along with a lot of other questions along the way. She explains that there was this woman who worked at the house. She was pregnant. She slipped and fell, was knocked out, and the other people working and living there were afraid to call the police for fear of being implicated. So, naturally, they dug a hole in the basement and buried her. Alive. (They didn't know that of course. Well, maybe they did, and just didn't care for her all that much.)
"As she lay there she kept wishing: "Please let me live so that I can have my baby!"" (Again, how one knows the final thoughts of an unconscious woman under six feet of soil... (And, it was probably only one foot. I've seen Indian construction standards.)) She continues to tell me that everyone involved was eventually killed - they were all found in the yard with "mysterious injuries to the neck". And, everyone who has stayed there since has befallen the same foul fate at the hands of "the witch". Apparently, even the "T.V. shows" have gone there, but wouldn't enter the house because it was so foreboding. The State Government called for an investigation, but "The police couldn't find any explanation." (Police investigation is, I'm sure, of the same high level as construction.)
"The entire village is terrified. No one will go into the house anymore."
This really gets me thinking. The anthropologist in me is coming up with titles for a paper: "Modern Superstition and Urban Legend in Central India - a Case Study." (Scientific papers have to to have ponderous titles like that, or they're just not scientific.) Also, I figure that if I go inside, and come out alive, then perhaps the "curse" will be broken, and people will no longer be "terrified." (I could be a local hero!)
So, I decide that, considering I got screwed into paying far more for the ticket than I should have, I will oversleep my 4:30 AM stop and go on with her to the small town of Parbhani. I was lucky the new conductor we got in the morning sympathized with me getting taken for a ride (no pun intended) by his predecessor, and didn't fine me.
Me, Shine, and her mother, who speaks no English at all, get a motor-rickshaw from the station to their house. The town itself is small, rural, dusty. People stare at me with more than passing interest - they don't get too many tourists here, I'm sure. We pass kids playing cricket in the empty dirt lots. (Man, how they love cricket here.) Their place is a very nice, little white house with a courtyard in front, the deceased fathers small white sedan sitting on blocks, partially covered with a canvas tarp. The living room is a fairly standard affair with pictures of various Gods on the walls, no-where to sit but the carpeted floor, and a TV in the corner. They're a middle class family with a few servants/ tenants living with them, who serve us chai (tea) and breakfast while the Rickshaw driver arranges, I am told, permission to go inside the house.
Did it occur to me to be worried at all? Only after I asked her if she actually knew anyone who had been killed...
"Yes. My fathers friend that he went to school with. He stayed there a few nights and was found dead, too."
Hmmmm. That was a little disconcerting, actually.
"Are you sure? I mean, it seems like the kind of thing that would be in the news."
"Oh yes, you can look it up in the newspapers."
Discounting that the local Indian journalism is likely on par with Rush Limbaugh's own "Excellence in Broadcasting" (Maybe not that bad, but still...) I start thinking... What if...? OK, if I learned anything from watching Scooby Doo, it's that the idea of a murderous witch from beyond the grave killing people is, in a word, absurd. BUT... what else could cause this? Is there a murderous monkey living in the house? No - somebody would see it. Cobra? No - different injuries. What about.... hantavirus? Is that even a thing in India? What about carbon monoxide? Is there mining in the area. Methane gas, maybe?
Now Shine is getting into it. "Oh - maybe! There was one lady who stayed there, who said she wanted to prove there was no ghost, and she burst into flames and died!"
Not really where I was going with that, but it was a nice bit of information to have.
So, just to be on the safe side, I pack up a few things to be sent home with brief notes explaining that I was killed by a ghost witch in central India. I mean, if you have to go, you might as well do it with flair. I bring a handkerchief, just for Hanta virus.
Finally, the two of us get into the rickshaw and go to the house. It was remarkably un-spooky. Just a plain one-story house fenced off of the main street with barred and shuttered windows, and a large padlock on the door. We stop at the all-purpose shop next door and a lengthy discussion takes place, the shop owner looking slightly more irritated than concerned. Cell phones are called, and conversations I don't understand take place. (Everyone in India has a cell phone. They pay about $1.00 a month for service. Try to tell me we're not getting screwed in the US.)
The rickshaw driver explains: "The owner says it's OK to go inside. He'll bring the key later."
Back outside the house a small crowd is starting to gather. Not wanting to wait for the rest of the town to arrive, I tell them: "Well, if it's OK, then I'll just take a look around." Without objections, I hop the fence and head toward the stairway off to the right, leading to the roof. At the back of the house is a small private, walled-in patio with two back doors leading into the house. Neither have padlocks. Hopping down onto a crumbly brick wall, I am able to then jump onto some stairs leading down to the patio. The first door seems to be unlocked, but a very heavy, 50 gallon metal barrel only moves a bit from my shoving before getting lodged on something. The next door is completely covered in Hollywood-horror-movie-style cobwebs, which I brush aside with my hat. The door handle turns, but it's latched from inside.
Like the front of the house, there are two boarded-up windows to the side of the doors, so I decide to climb up onto the window sills and look through the open upper transoms. Inside the first is a nightmarish scene. Pink paint, the the color of which would embarrass a 1959 Cadillac, covers the walls. And that was it. A few cobwebs and an empty water bottle. Really a boring room, minus the pink paint.
The second is a dingy, cobweb covered white room so boring it's painful. No blood spattering the walls. No axe with hair and dried gore clinging to it.
"William! Are you OK?!! William!!!"
I yell back: "Yeah! I'm fine! Just a minute!"
I climb back on the roof. For a brief moment I consider screaming like a banshee as I wave my arms running to the edge of the roof, but decide it wasn't a very professional thing for an anthropologist to do.
By now, a large crowd has gathered and they want to see the photos I took of the rooms. There's a few laughs from the younger people in the crowd. The rickshaw guys says something to Shine. She tells me: "We should go before the press arrives. I'm serious - they'll come." (Secretly, I'm a little disappointed. Getting my picture in an Indian newspaper wearing my Indiana Jones hat would be kind of cool.)
Back at her house we have lunch. Time passes. I try to nap. I inquire about the key again. "Oh, we have to wait, the driver's brother will bring the key." Shine and I spend a few hours chit-chatting. I take a bucket water shower in the squat-toilet bathroom. I ask Shine, again, about the key, as I've now missed the first train leaving town and will have to catch the 5:30. She's a bit evasive and makes a comment, half to herself. "If my mother finds I'm delaying you, she'll kill me!"
Hmmm. "Delaying" me?
After more tea (It's a wonder I'm ever able to sleep, with all the tea I drink here.) the conversation eventually turns to language. I explain I speak some Spanish, and we write down expressions and phrases for each other. For me, the Hindi for: "How much is it?" "That's far too expensive." "Thank you." "Excuse me." "I don't speak Hindi." "Where is the Train station?"
I write these down in Spanish for Shine. She adds a few to her list she wants translated: "I like you." "I love you." "I can't live without you."
Now, I'm finally starting to get genuinely worried.
My relief comes when the rickshaw driver arrives. He talks in a subdued tone to Shine. I ask: "Is this about the key?"
"Yes"
"Well? Does he have it?"
"Uh... It's complicated."
Complicated. Great. I ask her to explain and in a quiet voice she tells me. "Wait a minute. I don't want the workers to hear." (Not that the guys working on the electricity spoke English, but, whatever.) After they leave she tells me. "His brother was bringing the key on his motorbike. But he crashed. They are saying it's because the witch is mad you went into the house."
Oh oh. That's not good. This is usually the point in the endeavour when the guys in the pith helmets end up in a large boiling pot for bringing harm to one of the villagers.
"Is he OK?"
"Yes, he just hurt his leg."
Well, so much for that. "No key, then, I bet."
"You still desire to go into the house?" She asks, surprised.
"Well... no.... I don't care. I mean, I just wanted to help, but it looks like I'm just causing trouble, so I guess I better not."
Between the amorous Shine and a potentially pissed off village, I decide I really don't want to spend the night, so I get myself packed up. About a half hour before the train was to leave we get in the rickshaw. As we pass the house, Shine jokes: "Maybe you want to say goodbye to the witch?" I lean out the open door, and waving my hat at the passing house I yell: "Goodbye witch! Goodbye!!"
Scariest of all was the train station. The entire town had shown up to buy a train ticket. All 5,000 of them were gathered in the station. There was no way I'd be able to get a ticket in time.
The rickshaw guy muscles us through to the back of the building where he talks to a station guard, pointing at me. The guard disappears into the building, then comes out a few minutes later, with a ticket in hand. I pay the guard and shake his hand. Relief mixed with gratitude just as quickly fades at what I hear next from Shine, as the train pulls into the station: "The driver wants 500 rupees."
"What?!"
"For the day."
"He wasn't even with us most of the day!"
"For helping to get the key"
"He didn't get the key."
"But his brother got hurt."
Uhg. "I'll give him 200."
"I can give him 300, too."
"No... OK, fine, I'll give him.. uhg.. 400, but that's it!"
She translates. "He says OK."
I hand over the cash and get on board. As the train pulls away, Shine waves and yells to me: "Goodbye, William!! Goodbye! Call me!!"
The rickshaw driver, with a devilish smile and a wave, also yells up at me, in a slightly disconcerting way: "Yes! Goodbye, William! Goodbye!"
The train that night was so packed, and hot, I joined the locals and stood in the open doorway. It occurred to me that my demise would most likely come that night, not from a ghost, but from someone accidentally pushing me out the door.
But I held on extra-tight to the hand-rails, just to prove the old witch wrong.
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