The Hauntings

One of my favorite shows on the Discovery Channels is “The Hauntings”. Despite my family and friends assuring me countelss times that it doesn’t in any way involve real life events (the show claims that the events are real and interviews the people who have experienced them) I continue to watch, fascinated, as families after unsuspecting families across the US walk in to purchase these “haunted” homes. Some of them spot “an evil presence” right away but majority of them don’t sense anything wrong as they sign the contract and come to live there.

Then the real action begins. Some family members see strangers walking through their living rooms or peeping in through the windows. Children start talking to invisible beings. The furniture moves for no apparent reason – and without any mortal hands touching it. There is a perceptible drop in the temperature – despite global warming. The atmosphere in the house becomes heavy with evil. In a nutshell, things start going bump in the night!

It’s usually the women and children who first notice these goings-on while the reactions of the men range from plain incredulousness to dismissal to anger. Afterall, in the majority of the cases they are footing the bill. So the family tries its best to get on with life by ignoring the SuperNatural – till the crisis comes to a boil.

That means one of the family members gets possessed or comes to a bodily harm or starts becoming irrationally and dangerously aggressive. Then it’s mostly the woman of the house who decides that “she won’t go down without a fight”. So she googles for help and Hey Presto! The friendly neighboorgood ghost-busters are at the doorstep in a jiffy. They walk in with their audio-visual equipment and set up a base in the house. The children are packed away to a friend’s or neighbors’ and the husband-wife duo sits anxiously huddled on a sofa.

The ghost-busters walk about the house noting down “cold spots” and asking if anyone there wants to talk to them. No one generally accepts the invitation so they go back to their headquarters and process the data. The family is then invited to have a dekko at the results where more often than not someone is whispering “help me” – sometimes in Latin or Greek for an exotic twist. The ghost-busters also provide a value-added service by fishing out records of (a) people dying in a car crash near the property, or (b) previous family dying a violent death (c) the property being constructed on an ancient burial ground (d) the property being a part of the battelfield. The family is relieved at this proof that there really is a supernatural presence and that they didn’t go bananas collectively.

Sometimes there is a psychic in the neighborhood who volunteers to chase the spirits away. She tours the place closing eyes and wincing occassionally as the horrible events of the past unfold before her mind’s eye. She flushes out the spirits from their hiding place and asks them to go to the light. Sometimes a priest walks in to perform cleansing with Holy water. Sometimes the family takes it upon themselves to perform the cleansing.

In majority of the cases the spirits decide to leave them alone. But in some instances they are back to their mischief with renewed vigor – angry that the mortals tried to drive them away. Then the occupants pack their belongings and run for their life – hopefully not to another “haunted” house. :-)

These spirits mostly are of human beings who died prematurely or violently but sometimes to spicen things up a bit a demon or two make an appearance with a Latin sounding name and scares hell (!) out of the occupants and their helpers alike. I remember one case in which the devil himself was haunting the place. With so many sinners pouring into hell every day I am sure he felt rather claustrophobic there :-)

Mind you, though I am writing all this in a jocular way I do believe in spirits – good as well as evil. I don’t demand proof of their existence – actually I hope I don’t see any proof in my lifetime! But the way these stories always turn out have a distinct pattern and so I am becoming convinced that at least some of them are contrived.

But with Halloween around the corner, I will give these ghosts and ghouls a break. After all, there are only so many ways that they can spook the living daylights out of us :-)