MANGALORE: A team of rationalists on a fact-finding mission found no proof of paranormal activities as widely claimed at a house in Bantwal taluk.
The house at Nettarakere (a tank of blood in Tulu) gained notority recently as being a haunted house when middle-aged couple Koosappa, Mahadevi and their seven-year-old son Likhith witnessed objects flying from one end to another. Initially Koosappa, a wood cutter, dismissed the sightings of flying objects as nonsense.
“The unseen ghosts or spirits perhaps felt offended and decided to demonstrate their presence to him by throwing around a few objects for good measure,” ridiculed skeptic Prof Narendra Nayak, who led the team.
The spirit or the ghosttransferred things like sticks, stones, a bottle of perfume and other things from one point to another.
“None of the items, including delicate articles like LED lamps, were broken during the shifting process,” said Nayak.
The couple took the conventional road and sought the help of an exorcist who directed them to bundle the most dynamic objects and dispose them of. Even after doing so, the spirit’s or ghostly acts did not stop. When they sensed that their favourite objects were gone, they started with whatever they could lay their hands on, they claimed.
As this news spread, curious onlookers began flocking to the house.
“When we went to investigate the so-called abnormal phenomenon, there were huge crowds and half-a-dozen TV cameramen, journalists around the house,” Nayak said.
When the team interviewed the couple, a lot of discrepancies was noticed in their narratives.
In the end, the haunted house turned out to be damp squib. Prof Nayak suspected the hand of some people in the incident and sought a probe.