My First Encounter With The Unnatural

by Gurumayum Menonkumar Sharma
(#209 Khudda Lahora, Chandigarh, India)

My first encounter with unnatural:

I was in the 7th standard when this incident took place. It was in Shillong a state in India.
I was a student in the NorthEast Adventist College, Shillong, Jowai, it was the year 2001, I remembered the day clearly since its my first time encounter with spirits or ghost.
I stayed in hostel of our college room no.909, small boys hostel. Our hostel was a long and rectangular shape with a small park in the middle. On this night, me and some of my friends were talking about supernatural and ghost stories. One of the local boys was with us. So he was telling us a true ghost story about the place. He told us that the college campus was built during the reign of British in India, it was not as a quarter or camp but as a cemetery. We were a little taken back but interestingly we further asked to know more, so he continued that the place was haunted since then and many people have encountered unknown beings or spirit-like creatures. So we asked him that what kind of being did they see. And he replied, 'like a small dwarf they can transform into animals like dogs, cats... etc.. So after hearing the story we were all a little scared but me the most. My friend also told me, "if you are scared of it, then it finds its way to you." This words were ringing in my ear the whole time after our conversation. And I was feeling uncomfortable that night. So it was late already and everyone went to sleep. And i was not able to sleep, the words kept ringing in my ears and i felt uneasy, the night was so quiet even a small creak could be heard loudly. My bed was positioned in one corner of the room there was a total of 18 double-bed (double-deck) in our room and my bed was the upper part. I lay there on my bed for a while and suddenly I started to feel scared, and I started hearing things like 'Cling! Cling!' and after that a footstep-like sound. But then again just to cool down my fear I thought, "There's are so many people here so I don't need to be afraid and if I see any ghost I would wake my friends to comfort me." Taking this in mind I lay down to sleep when suddenly I heard a sound of footsteps walking towards our room, it was the footstep of a leather shoe but who could be here in the middle of the night wearing leather shoe and the things is that our hostel gates are closed.
So I sat up to watch who it was and looked out the door, our door was always open because there's no chance of anyone entering our hostel during night time. But to my surprise I saw one of our college staff who's a cashier, carrying his big file and walking pass our room. I saw his face clearly, and it was not blurry like thing, and when he passed the room I saw him looking straight at me. I was stunned! Was I seeing things or was it real, I thought to myself. Just to make sure, I got up from my bed to look outside the door if he really passed our room. I wasn't feeling scared that time just a little surprised. But when I went outside the door, he wasn't there anymore as if he vanished in thin air, and again I started hearing footsteps but this time a different pattern, it was not human, at first i heard sounds like, 'tik! tik! tik! tik!' in a faster pace. I looked at the direction of the sound and what i saw was a dog running around our hostel small park, at first I thought it was just a regular dog and tried to chased it out but instead it started running in the reversed direction, "what the...". I felt afraid and was about to run inside my room when suddenly I saw one of the people from the other room coming outside. "He must have heard the sound too,' I thought, and I signaled him toward the dog and together we chased the dog out. The dog ran to the direction of the gate but it just passed through the gate without even slowing down and the gate was totally metal and doesn't have holes so I, surprised, told the other person, "Did you see that?" and turned around. To my amazement he wasn't there anymore. All of a sudden I felt like I was being haunted and my fear went up high, so high that I didn't even realize when I reached my room.
I jump on my bed and covered myself with the blanket and I started praying. I was so freaked out that I didn't even know what to do. Then after a long wait, morning came and my fear cooled down.
So when everyone awoke I went to the person I saw the last night and asked him if he came out of the room. He said that he didn't and was sleeping well.
I went to the warden and consulted him of this. At first he told me that it might be a dream but after I persuaded him to believe me, he knew that I was serious and consulted a pastor. The pastor prayed for me and had me change rooms.
So this was the first time I encountered supernatural and paranormal things. I didn't even know why I saw that and what it meant. After that day much happened but that's another story...