Ghastly affairs!(Useless philosophy)

Most of us have fears of one thing or the other, literally named as "phobia's" fear of- cats, dogs, height, and what not, but there is one certain fear that is universal and and every one has, the fear of ghost, supernatural beings. Apart from being afraid of, this is always has been the hottest topic to talk about. Be it in the grandmothers tales or an awful experience of a friend, an encounter with the unknown. Whatever be it; it does generate a lot of enthusiasm and excitement. No, no I am not at all going to narrate a certain one out of so many experiences that I have! but there is one particular incident when I was alone at home during my late night study just before the Board exams. It was on of the chilling December months, when my family leaving me at home went to attend a marriage ceremony of one of the cousin. It was like "Home Alone" thing; no school(Study Leave), no one to scold and TV all day long, Music system full volume, cook your own food awesome!!. So that night I had a horrible burnt dinner, I do not exactly remember as to what experiment had been done but I do remember it was Social Studies what I was reading, "Powers of the President of India" when I heard this strange howling. As if someone was crying just under my window. The voice was very low initially then it suddenly increased, I was dumb struck. Slowly tried to look around the room, unfortunately had this habit of using table lamp so the rest of the room was quite dark. I checked and rechecked if anything seemed moving anywhere, NO! nothing but the howling continues. "Intuition" you can say it was when I turned the table lamp to focus the light on the window curtain and come down from the chair, crawling towards the window slowly. Suddenly with a big yell stood up at the window, still nothing happened, tried to look through the window there was absolutely nothing, opened the window and discovered the howling along with my ghost. It was coming from Among uncle's place..."a group of carol singers with their dissonant screaming of Christmas Carol."

I never told about this incident to anybody thinking they may make a joke out out me, however I now feel laughing at myself. If you have the experience of staying in a hostel be it at school or in college then you will definitely have had the experience of plain-chit thing calling of souls and all. We tried all that in our hostel, too inspired by the inhabitants of the senior girls hostel that was near to ours. Nothing happened in our case, as the silence kept breaking now and then by a cough or a small giggle, or the fingers on the coin from the right hands kept replacing by those from the left hand. Actually how can some soul come to a place already full of live ghosts. Even the "knock the bottle off", from the edge of the northwestern corner wall on the roof on a rainy moonless night when there was no power. This past midnight prank was well organized by guys sitting in the dark corner just next to the bottle, along with the ones sitting on top of the water tank, all wet in rain only to surprise the challenger, which did work later on. Or getting beaten up while trying to surprise anyone in the dark corridor wrapped in the blanket were all very ghastly without any ghost at all. However there was one singular incident that took place during one of the similar very long late night Adda's, we were in the first year of college. Sitting in this room were around eight of us, some were playing cards and the rest were like audience for the card game and active participants for the discussion that was goin on, I do not remember how it started at the first place. Suddenly the point of discussion changed into stories of experiences with the unknown, one after the other came in stories of their own encounters and also of their neighbors or anything that would make the story interesting, and the card game too was changin its term now into famous Indian "Teen patti" our own counterpart for British Three-card Brag. When the stories became boring, someone said we can make a luck check using cards, the Teen Patti way. So the game had this new fire into it......who among us would be the richest?, who would have the most beautiful wife?....... so it went on from good to bad then to evil........ who among us will die first? Every one rejected it, we are not going to do this. Ok! I am sure there is ghost here in this room. Ha! ha! ha!...in came the replies. Let us check then. Alright, spread the cards. Those who say its there raise your hand, no one did except Ani' he is the one who started this check line. So everyone picked their set of cards. The peeping started and came in the 'Ooofs! Ooofs!; 5-3-2 multiple, A-4-7, no one had good cards only Ani' had hit the Trio A-A-A....... no one moved or talked. There we were at 3:15 am at night in room number 8.