One of the most unexplainable troubled moments I have faced with the unknown took place when I went with my mum to India to sell off our land to the Highway authorities, as they acquired the land for expanding the coastal roads and reducing the traffic congestion in the area. We flew down from New Hampshire for a month and decided to stay at our farm land for one night before the land acquisition.
To give a small briefing of the land, we had a 2 bedroom villa in the middle of the farm which was surrounded by teakwood trees. The back doorway led to the beach sand and the sea shore was within 10 metres from the last tree inside the wall. It is such a beautiful place to stay but it can get depressing and scary if there are no people around. My mum, I, my uncle and his family of 5 (4 children, uncle and aunt. Let's name my 4 cousins A, B, C and D) along with my friend went to the farmland. We had a housekeeper who stayed there with his family. He had kept the house clean expecting our arrival and sent his family to his hometown so that we can be accommodated in the house. We reached the farmland by around 11 am and had a heavy lunch. There are no shops nearby and the closest grocery store was 20 kms away. So, my cousins, I and my friend decided to stock up on our snacks after our lunch as we were all very excited to go play in the sea.
We played in the sand and the ocean for 7 hours straight and were literally dead tired when we decided to return home. All of us had dinner and departed to sleep. My friend and I decided to sleep in the terrace along with my uncle. It was a beautiful night. All we could hear was the silent noise of the waves and nothing else. The moonlight hovering over our faces, it was like a dream moment when I suddenly heard someone walk (like the noise you get when someone walks on top of dry leaves). I turned to both the sides and saw my uncle and friend sleeping. I wanted to get up and check, but the lazy bum I am along with the tiredness of playing in the ocean, made to just close my eyes and lie down. The noise now got a bit heavier like someone is running in the woods. I got up and woke up my friend and asked him if he can hear the noise. He acknowledged that he can hear it too and we turned back to wake up my uncle and realized he was gone. It was quite shocking because he was right next to me the first time I heard the noise.
Though it was around 11:00 Pm the moonlight was bright enough to lighten the entire forest area around our farmland. We started looking towards the direction from where we were hearing the noise. We saw my uncle from the terrace and could see him running in the farmland. He was looking back constantly when he was running and he seemed to be running away from something. We decided to go look what it was that's troubling my uncle, and took an emergency light (hand torch) and started running. The moment we came out of the apartment, there was eerie silence. We couldn't hear the sound of the ocean anymore or the sound of the leaves brushing against each other. Though we were in our late teens, the silence started to trouble us and we decided to hold each one of our hands and run towards my uncle.
We can see my uncle run exactly in front of us. He was waving his hand at us and looked as if he was scared. We were glad we found him and we stopped him. He had bruises in his shoulder as him someone scraped him with their nails. He had a huge slap mark on his back as if someone slapped him with their plain hands. He said he is being chased by someone and asked me to alert everyone. It was completely shocking and I immediately shouted at the top of my voice to raise an alarm. It woke up everyone who were sleeping in the apartment and showed up at the front door fearing that something might have happened to me except my cousin, A.
As always, my mum was the first one to sense that something is not right there. Mum started chanting something and walked towards the front gate. We like disciples, started following her. And suddenly out of nowhere, we heard someone growl behind us. We all turned back to something outrageous. A was there and I can bet he was not alright. He was walking on 4 foot (both hands and legs) and approaching us. My mum started chanting loudly and the growl became even angrier and louder. That's when my mum said, he is possessed and asked us to lock the main gate as he might runaway and it will become hard for us to track him or control him. I would have almost peed my pants because I have always rubbished the thought of coming face to face with someone who is possessed. My mum asked me and my friend to go grab his foot and his upper body. Bad choice. Very bad choice.
He kicked me so hard that I almost broke my thigh bone and punched me on my stomach that my intestines would have entangled inside. This time there was no hiding my fear. I peed in my pants. Maybe because of the hard blow I received in my thigh and stomach at the same time or maybe because of the fear, nevertheless, I peed and for once, I did not really bother what others are going to think of me. My friend caught him from the behind and I tried somehow to get hold of his legs. We pinned him down and finally everyone pitched in to stop him from moving. We tied his hands and took him inside the building.
And now, my mum is no expert chasing spirits. But she can sense things as long as I know her. I have seen her help people before and advice what to do, but for the first time I felt she was helpless. My mum was not sure what to do next. I have never seen my mum this worried and A seemed to be targeting my mum and intimidating her so much that she locked him in a room and went out. Mum said that this is beyond her control and we need a person who is experienced in chasing spirits away. At this time of the night, so far away from the city, we knew that finding help is not possible. And then, the housekeeper said there is someone in his village who might help us. But the problem was, his village was 10 hours' drive from where we lived and to go there and come back, we would lose a lot of time.
Given that we did not have any other option, we decided to go get some help. I went with my uncle and the housekeeper to his village, spoke to a sage and requested him to come. He refused to come initially. We offered him a lot of money (around 1000 USD) but refused to budge. After a lot of pleading, my uncle fell on his foot and requested him to come. He finally accepted but refused to take any money for the service. He said it is against his customs to do this for money, but we can donate the money to the local temple as a token of appreciation if he manages to chase the spirit away.
We reached our farmland a couple of days later and mum said A is still locked inside the room. She said, he has been relentlessly growling and has not eaten anything in the last 1.5 days. The moment the sage entered the room, A started acting ferociously. He tried to untie himself, but since he was not able to do it, he was biting the end of wooden bed to hurt himself. He was bleeding profusely and I think he lost of couple of teeth in the process. The sage went to the corner of the room and drew a line around him and sat there. He asked A what he wanted. A wouldn't answer. He asked A if he would cause any trouble and again no answer. He stood up suddenly, took a broom and started hitting A. A kept laughing the whole time. These were really shocking for us. And suddenly A started to be very abusive. Now, I am not that well versed in tamil, but the words he spoke sounded very ancient and very hurtful. I still do not remember the exact words spoken, but I remember my mum asking us to close our ears or walk out of the room.
The sage requested some candles and lit them up around A. And then started chanting something. A started to growl and now pleaded to leave him. A disclosed that it is the spirit of a person who died in the beach a few years ago. He said he wanted to live a complete life and would like to stay in A's body and not cause any harm. The sage kept chanting something and not listening to A. A was growing frustrated and suddenly said he is here to kill someone. It was completely different from what we heard a few seconds back. The sage asked the entity to leave the body of A and runaway. After some growling, A fainted and the sage immediately carried A in his arms and bathed him. He applied some holy powders on his forehead and requested us to take him outside the apartment so that he could 'Clean' the place. After the cleansing, we took A to a nearby temple and tied some holy thread around his wrist.
The sage then told us that he was possessed by a Devil (Chaathan) and it was trying to take over his body completely. He said the entity was so powerful that he could sense the negativity the moment he met us in his village. He refused to come initially because his daughter was recently married and he did not want anything bad to happen to her as a result of him helping us. Luckily nothing bad happened.
He asked us to vacate the apartment and mum was glad that nothing much happened. We sold the place to highway authorities and the land is not available now. It has become a wonderful long road to drive. Not sure what happened to the chaathan now but nevertheless, this incident completely changed my outlook towards the surroundings. Apologies if its too big to read, I tried to put in everything I remember of this incident and tried to explain as much as possible.
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