The family was engaged in small talk with my brother who was on vacation. While filling him on the local news I had casually mentioned the spooky happenings reported in the local newspaper. “Do you really think there are ghosts?” I asked him, almost sure that with his scientific mind he would ‘pooh pooh’ the whole thing. Contrary to my expectations, he said in a very serious tone, “Yes, I’ve seen one and I think I’ve told you about it”. He narrated the incident over again.
It was years ago when he had just passed out of engineering college and was doing an apprenticeship in Ernakulam. Dad had retired and we were settled in our ancestral home in Kerala. Our house could be accessed only by a long country road of about a kilometer from the above highway. This mud road also passed through a stretch of paddy fields. My brother who had decided to surprise us and come home for the weekend, boarded a night bus. When he got down from the bus, he was disoriented, not knowing which direction to take as it was pitch dark. The sky was overcast with clouds and there was a slight drizzle. The whole village was asleep. It was just him and the elements.
When he reached the area of the paddy fields, visibility had slightly improved but the atmosphere was eerie with the sky above and the vast expanse of water below, enveloped in a deathly silence broken only by the sounds of crickets and croaking frogs. Apparently the heavy monsoons had filled the fields with water up to the road level, making it look like a huge winding serpent in the water.
Taking measured footsteps, he was surprised to hear a corresponding ‘plonking’ sound in the water. He looked to his right and there he saw a huge dark figure looming over the water! The apparition seemed to walk along with him. His hairs stood on end with fear but better sense told him not to run or scream. Instead, he watched the figure closely. He put one foot forward. The apparition did the same. When he took it back, the same was repeated. A couple of steps later, fear gave way to logic and he realised that the figure was connected with his movement.
The apparition was nothing but his own shadow! The plonking sounds were the frogs jumping in the water. Thus ended the masterful narration of the incident, accompanied by the right actions and sound effects, taking us to the pinnacle of fear and making us fall flat in an unexpected anti-climax. “All ghosts are created in this manner, by a combination of fear and circumstances,” he said and added that he was glad he didn’t run because then he would never have found out.
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