Our Old Apartment

So these are few of the experiences of me and my family that happened in our last apartment in Calcutta, India.

We bought a flat in a newly constructed building at a very old locality of the city. To give a small description of the flat, every floor had 6 flats and the building faced a main road and a service road on one side, and ours was the corner most flat on the second floor facing the main road and service road.

When you entered there was a small landing with my brother's room on the right and the living/drawing area on the front overlooking the service lane and a door to dining room and kitchen, with my parents' room on the opposite corner of the flat overlooking the service lane and the main road. Me and my sister sharing the same room that was on the right of my parents' room overlooking the main road, we had a common washroom between our rooms and one other washroom in the living room.

The first incident took place when my sister was home alone as she used to come back from school before us and my dad was at work and my mother was at neighbor's. My sister was taking her afternoon nap when somebody shook her legs and asked her to wake up to offer namaz, my sister has always been very religious like my parents while I am not into any religion, I do believe in a higher power. She woke up and started looking for my mother thinking she must have been back and woken her up, but my mother was not home yet so she offered her namaaz thinking my mother must have woken her up and then stepped outside for some other work. My mother came back a little later and my sister asked her if she woke her before and my mother said she just entered home.

Another incident happened with me and my sister doing our homework in our room when we heard someone using the washroom (the door was open and the water in the basin running with sound of splashing like someone is washing their face), thinking it's my elder brother I called out to him to get a glass of water but suddenly everything went silent. I waited for my brother to come out and say something like I am not getting any water or you bring some for me too, but when nobody came out of the washroom I went and checked but there was no one in there, I then asked my sister if she also heard him using the washroom and she said yes. I then walked up to our living room which was on the other side of the house and found my brother watching TV there with my parents. I asked if one of them were using the other washroom and they all denied.

One day my parents were out of town and all three of us were home. We were watching TV on a Saturday evening when suddenly we heard footsteps in my parents' room. And then suddenly it hit us that nobody should be in there. My brother being the eldest went in to check only to find no one there and the bedsheet was crumbled like somebody just sat on the edge and got up.

There was almost always this flowery sweet smell following us around. It used to just come and go on it's own. Like an invisible room freshener being sprayed by someone. My mom kept losing things and they would turn up in odd places. Like once she lost a lid of a jar to be found in my bookshelf a couple weeks later. My homework notebook in my dad's drawer, my brother's T Square ruler in the kitchen cupboard, these are just the few things that I remember, there were a lot more usually involving my mom's stuff.

We stayed at the same house for almost 5 years, we never felt threatened other than this one time when my mother was alone in the evening and she felt that someone was in the kitchen as she could hear the sound of the pots and pans and then the kitchen sink running. She went to the kitchen to check for herself thinking she might have left the tap running but the moment she entered she felt like someone was about to harm her physically. She didn't see anything or anyone but she felt threatened and came out to the drawing room and waited for us to get home. She didn't go back to the kitchen alone that night but this feeling was gone the same day and never came back.