Whenever I am on the field, investigating, I concentrate on the location, and try to get some evidence using Ouija boards, planchette and other spirit-calling methods. At times, when I get bored, I listen to music while keeping an eye out any movement.
But in one situation, there was no time to get bored because I had reached a tree near Dwarka Sector 9 metro station, in search of a spooky lady in white sari. Many spooky locations have this one thing in common — a lady in white who haunts people. As a paranormal investigator, I have also always been a great fan of this lady and trust me, I have searched in several places to look for her. Be it at Aarey Colony in Mumbai to a road in Bhopal. These places have had sightings of a lady in white, but with a different modus operandi.
Many of my followers had tagged me in different posts, articles, and videos related to the tree near the Dwarka metro, station, claiming it was haunted. Though my experience of investigating such places has always resulted in fake videos and stories, I decided to visit there. First, I visited the location during the day for a recce, noting the weather, temperature, traffic, locality etc., just to get a clear idea. Then, I reached the location around 11:30 pm, parked my car near the tree. There is a temple on one side of the road and an empty plot on the other.
I did not carry any tools for the investigation this time because there was a residential area nearby, and I didn’t want any disturbance for the people or any nuisance for myself. Moreover, I wanted to feel the air and I concentrate on my gut feeling. This time I wanted to fall prey to this lady in white sari. Slowly the traffic on the road started vanishing and within an hour the road was completely empty. A few people stopped by to click some photographs with the haunted tree. I questioned them about what they feel about the place, and they replied that they have heard stories and they are sure that the haunting begins post 2:00am.
I sat around a corner of the tree waiting for her. Two hours passed, and nothing happened. Around 3:00am, a drunk autorickshaw driver stopped by to smoke. He sat down on a corner and started smoking. I went to him and started a conversation. And during that exchange, I got to know the truth. He said there was no lady in white, “but these stories help us. Many times, youngsters visit this tree at night, and since I drive only at night, I can charge Rs 200 from them instead of the usual `50. Moreover, the people who come here to shoot sensational videos, take fake interviews and pay handsome amounts for saying lies on screen. This helps us in extra income, so why not. At 4:30am, the auto rickshaw driver received a booking through an app and left, and by 5:30am, I also drove off.”
Such myths and fake stories stay alive and get passed on to next generations because of how irresponsible we have become. For the sake of some views and likes on social media, we spread misinformation. Whether we agree or not but these things promote blind faith and superstition. What is even more dangerous is that we are not taking this attitude seriously.
As told to Nikita Sharma by Jay Alani who is a paranormal Investigator, media professional, author, tedx speaker, podcaster and founder of the Paranormal Company.