Haunted Flat, Mumbai

House hunting is never an easy task. You have to keep contacting agents regularly, read up on advertisements, then find time to go and see the places. Then of course you have to think of the budget. I was trying to find a flat in Mumbai close to my workplace at Bandra. It wasn’t an easy task but if you want to live better, you have to work harder and smarter. Here’s what happened…

Getting away from the city and living in new upcoming sections of the city was not on our wish list. It meant isolation from the city’s buzzing lifestyle. We contacted a real estate agent who took us around every weekend until we found our dream apartment.

We narrowed our search to a flat on the sixth floor in Bandra close to Pali Hill. It was the only flat that remained unsold. This newly constructed building looked very promising from the outside.

The flat was articulately furnished and acted as a live brochure for all prospective buyers. It was furnished with the best of furniture, wooden panelling and layered chandelier. This three-bedroom-flat was like a movie set. No doubt, we were all dazzled by it. We moved around independently, already convinced that this was it. As I entered the master bedroom, the room resonated a gloomy feeling. I was drawn to the large French windows. Outside, was a tree.

This leafless tree had a scaly texture and looked like it was covered in warts and cottony fibres. It looked decaying at a glance but its branches seemed to be holding up well. It was rooted in the soil of the adjoining plot. I slowly opened the window and stepped out. The bedroom’s balcony extended outside like a galley that had a blind turn and ended into the kitchen on the left side of the building.

Suddenly, two ravens flew in from somewhere and sat on a branch, very close to where I stood. They looked at me curiously and cawed loudly. They were large, darker than midnight with roving, shiny eyes. I stepped back and quickly shut the sliding window. There were no other birds on that tree. Some of my family members joined me and I pointed out what I saw.

The real estate guy asked me to walk ahead to balcony and explore the kitchen from the other side. I got this weird feeling that ledge of the galley was a good place to jump. The thought startled me. Why did I think that? Why would I want to jump off the sixth floor?

Quickly, I changed the topic. “This is a dead tree. See there are no birds sitting here. Can this tree be cut down?”

Follow this link to read the rest of this scary experience: My Flat Search In Mumbai

Horror In The Bathroom

And You thought, only I had paranormal experiences in the bathroom. Well, I am not alone because Koji Suzuki, the Japanese author of the horror story “Ring,” which has been made into movies in both Japan and Hollywood has written a horror story on toilet paper called Drop.

In Japan, ghosts are believed to be living in the toilets. Parents tease their children that a hairy hand will come out from the toilet and suck them in the dark pool below.

Koji’s story is set in a public restroom. It takes up about three feet of a roll and can be read in just a few minutes, according to the manufacturer, Hayashi Paper.

The company promotes the toilet paper, which will sell for $2.20 a roll, as “a horror experience in the toilet.”

I Am Haunted Everywhere I Go, Including The Loo

It is true that paranormal anomalies follow me everywhere. One of my globe-trotting adventures enticed me to Tibet. To reach this destination, I had to pass the Chinese border and complete the immigration formalities. After several hours of waiting in line, my passport details were finally entered into their system and I crossed to the other side. 

The rest of my group didn’t want to proceed ahead until they had tucked in authentic local cuisine. They stumbled upon the first restaurant in sight and with feasting eyes surveyed the menu. Few of them, couldn’t wait to order while others were discussing the specialty of the day.

I ordered a soup and decided to freshen up. I left my backpack with my friends only to regain the flexibility of my spine. The restaurant didn’t have a restroom so I went to inquire at the reception desk. The lobby was buzzing with tourists who were waiting in line to check in at the hotel while others waited to get a table at the restaurant.

“Excuse me, Can you tell me where the restroom is?” I asked.

A woman behind the counter pointed upstairs.

 I dashed up the carpeted stairway only to find a blind turn. I followed it and found a landing. To my left, was a continuous array of rooms and it was the same on my right. It didn’t seem like the rooms were occupied. The corridor was pitch black and silent. Only the landing where I stood was lit up. I couldn’t even hear the buzz of chatter from the reception. It just didn’t feel right.

Click here to read more of this haunted loo adventure

A Haunted Encounter In A Hotel Room, Delhi, India.

It didn’t seem like a spooky hotel when I entered and checked in. The hotel was in the heart of Delhi city. It was a hustling bustling locality as the festival of Diwali was approaching soon. There was a restaurant adjoining the entrance of the hotel and a lot of families were enjoying an early dinner.

My room was on the second floor, in the middle of the long corridor. The hotel was recommended by few friends who had stayed there on their last visit. It was newly renovated and smelled of fresh paint. My room was clean. Some light fixtures still needed to be installed but it was well lit. My first impression was that it was alright.

I ate at the restaurant and went back to my room around 9:30 pm. I unpacked, switched on the air conditioning and watched TV. When the room was fairly cool, I switched it off and put the fan on instead.

The double bed was in the centre of the room. It had a dressing table at one corner, chest of drawers and on top of it was a twenty-one inch TV. On the wall, there was a large, cream colored wall clock. Opposite the dressing table was a writing desk with a chair. There was a tube light illuminating the room and two wall mounted lights on either sides of the bed. The bathroom was at the entrance of the room. I usually leave the bathroom light on and with the door slightly open, incase I need to go in the middle of the night. No one enjoys tripping in their sleep, especially in an unfamiliar setting. Around eleven pm, I decided to call in for the night and switched off the lights. The dinner was very filling and the soft bed didn’t take long to put me in a deep slumber.

I felt something queer in my sleep… More

The Ghosts of the Villisca Ax Murder House

Villisca is located in a remote corner of Iowa, far off the modern interstate and a good distance from any town that might have a population of more than a couple of thousand souls. It’s an isolated place, accessible by only an old, two-lane highway and, believe it or not, this is in great contrast to how it was back in the early 1900’s. In those days, Villisca, which means “pleasant view”, was a booming town of more than 2,500 residents. The streets were lined with flourishing businesses and several dozen trains pulled into town everyday. It was a popular spot in Montgomery County in those days, offering not only stores and shops of just about every kind but restaurants and a theater as well.

Villisca was a close-knit community in those days but the peacefulness here was shattered on June 10, 1912 with the discovery of eight bloody corpses in a house along one of the town’s tree-lined streets. The J.B. Moore family, respected and well-liked members of the community, along with two overnight guests, were found murdered in their beds. And now, more than 90 years later, the crimes remain unsolved.

What happened on that dark night in Villisca? And what occurred to cause at least some of the spirits of this terrible crime to stay behind in this world? More

Ghost Hunt

It was 11pm on a cold, windy night as I and Ripley and Heanor News photographer Lindsay Colbourne entered the Cock Hotel in Ripley. We were not there for a lock in, but to meet the Alfreton Paranormal Group for a ghost hunt.

Over the years there have been many reports of ghostly goings-on at the pub which dates back to the tenth century, including the sensing of the spirit of DJ Darren Hunt.

Darren, 22, was killed in a car crash two years ago and according to staff and friends at the pub his spirit regularly haunts the place. Pub manager Marc Watson has heard many accounts of spooky sightings and sounds in the pub, adjoining club and upstairs bar. He said the spirit
of a young boy with cigarette burns had been seen by a number of staff sitting on top of a stack of water bottles. Marc has even seen the boy, who was last spotted a year ago, himself. He said: “It’s like an image, you blink and it’s gone.”

Marc thinks the presence of the paranormal group, which formed a year ago and has carried out a number of vigils at the pub may have led to the recent inactivity of the ghost.
As the lights were turned down at the start of our search for paranormal activity, one of the members Roy Brown-Lowe showed me a video filmed on his mobile phone at a 2,000 year-old graveyard. He described what he captured as a surge of energy.

It was like something out of a horror film, the images showed what looked like child spirits surrounded in a green glow chasing each other. Were we going to see anything as spectacular as this I wondered? I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Of course, even if we didn’t see anything there was still the possibility of hearing, or feeling something. The most active time for
spirits, according to Roy is between the hours of 1am and 3am, so to be honest we were a little early.

Accompanying Roy that night were group members Stephen Walker, Stephen Elliott and medium David Williams. Stephen Walker operated a EVP (electronic voice phenomonen) device which was constantly recording and was run through a computer and analysed
afterwards to see if any noises below the level of those that can be heard by the human ear were picked up.

Although we couldn’t hear them at the time Roy told me the next day that the EVP device had picked up some whispering voices. Stephen Elliott operated a video camera to film the whole night. He was hoping to pick up any unusual spots of light, otherwise knows as orbs.
The medium David’s role was to see if he could sense any spirits. On previous occasions he had seen bodies in the cellar and believes that they could be linked to bare-knuckle fighting which took place at the building many years ago.

He has been what he calls ‘helping people’ for the past five years and first discovered he had ‘the gift’ at the age of five when he saw a group of people in his bedroom. His mum reassured him it was just a nightmare but when he went to the bathroom the people were still there.
He said: “I have used it all my life in terms of knowing things that are going to happen but it was only five years ago that I decided to do use it for charity through medium nights.”
All money raised from events set up by the paranormal group also go to charity. More

Real Estate Agent Sued For Hawking Off Haunted Flat

A flat buyer in Hong Kong is suing the estate agent who tried to sell her a “haunted” apartment without telling her a woman had died there, a news report said yesterday.

Ho Chow-lan is seeking the return of her deposit and legal fees on the $750 000 flat after discovering that a woman’s body lay there for several days before being discovered. In her writ she accuses Centraline Property Agency of deliberately withholding information about the apartment.

Hong Kong people have a strong belief in spirits and feng shui, and apartments where residents have died or been murdered are often sold at knock-down prices. – Sapa-dpa

Creepy

After she died in 1824 at the age of 30, Sarah Symonds rested in an out-of-the-way cemetery in the small town of Hillsborough, N.H., for more than 180 years.

But sometime around Halloween her sleep was disturbed. Someone dug up her coffin and her remains, leaving behind only a few shards of wood, a meticulously dug hole, and a mystery for the local police.

“It was dug in a very strange manner. It’s perfect,” said Hillsborough Police Chief Brian Brown. “You’d have to see it. The sides are all squared. The bottom’s level.”
“We just don’t have any answers right now,” he said.

The grave robbers hit the Bible Hill Cemetery sometime between Oct. 30 and Nov. 2, Brown said. He said police were considering a number of theories, including the possibility that the body was unearthed by members of a Satanic cult.

Symonds was born March 29, 1794, and died June 18, 1824. She never married. Little else is known about her, said Gilman Shattuck, 80, a resident active in the local historical society who researched Symonds’s life after the news broke.

The cemetery is a small plot in an isolated area with a stone wall around it. It contains about 40 graves, the oldest of which dates to the late 18th century.Most of the graves are from the first or second decade of the 19th century, and a few are from the late 19th century, Shattuck said. Brown said police in the town of about 6,000 people are puzzled because grave robbers looking for valuables wouldn’t have any reason to dig so neatly and would likely try to fill the grave to cover up their crime.

“You’re not going to waste time to square the corners,” he said. “Why leave it open? Why dig it so meticulously? . . . Somebody obviously wanted us to find it at some point.” Police hope someone will step forward to shed some light on the case, he said. 
More Details

Paranormal Night

Halloween may be over, but the mystery of the paranormal was alive and well Friday night at Dorsch Memorial Branch Library. Parahaunt, a team of paranormal researchers based in Riverview, held a
presentation on Friday. Led by founder and lead investigator Scott Hattis, the group of ghost hunters discussed the type of equipment used in paranormal investigations, their own experiences and encounters, and tips for successful hunting. They investigate houses and public cemeteries.

Even though the event was advertised for “teens only,” possibly half of the 35 guests at the “Paranormal Night” event were adults. Kathryn Lear of Trenton was one of the many adults in attendance.
“I’m intrigued by the paranormal so I came here to see what they have to say and what they have seen,” she said.

During the two-hour presentation, the eight team members talked about their experiences during investigations. Through an audio-visual presentation, they showed pictures with orbs, which many believe to be ghosts in forms of balls of light. They also played several audio clips
of electric voice phenomena, better known as EVPs.

For example, during video shot at the River Raisin Battlefield site in Monroe, members of the investigative team asked questions, hoping for a response. When they played the audio, a faint “hello” can be heard.

While visiting a home in Whitmore Lake, the group came across an evil, or demonic, entity. Attempting to get an EVP, the team began asking questions. A low voice is then heard saying “phone” just before the
telephone rings. “We believe the demon was trying to create a diversion and make us stop what we were doing so we didn’t answer the phone,” Mr. Hattis explained.

While some skeptics attended the event out of curiosity, most people showed up to get a better grasp of the afterlife. Katlyn Gagnon, 14, and Chelsea Delker, 14, of Monroe attended the event. They are believers of the paranormal.

“I actually hear the ghost of my horse,” Katlyn said. “Even though my horse died, I will sometimes hear him out in the barn, but nothing is there. My mom said she hears it, too.” Mr. Hattis began Parahaunt about 15 years ago and has several members on his team, including a psychic, demonologist, researchers, equipment
specialists, and a Wiccan consultant. They have conducted investigations
throughout Michigan and other surrounding states.

Debbie Kelly of Maybee is the psychic on the team. “I’ve been able to see and feel entities since I was 7 years old. I like being able to use my abilities to help other people. It’s fun and draining at the same time,” she said. “I can tell you what’s there, who’s there and give descriptions of entities.”
Jadin Howton, senior youth services technician at Dorsch, was pleased that the team could visit the library.

“This the first time we’ve had something like this. We were looking for a teen event and thought this would be a good one for them,” she said. “I would love for the team to come back and actually do an investigation
at the library.”
Mr. Hattis and his team prefer to be called “hobbyists.” “We don’t get paid for what we do. We just enjoy helping people out if we can,” he said.
Source: For more information about Parahaunt, call (734) 934-5473 or visit www.miparahaunt. com.

Amittyville Horror

After a lengthy trial that concluded right before Thanksgiving, Butch DeFeo was found guilty of killing his father, mother, two brothers, and two sisters. On December 4, 1975, Justice Thomas Stark said that the crimes were “the most heinous and abhorrent,” and sentenced Butch to 25 years to life. No other suspect was ever prosecuted for the crime. Officially, Butch DeFeo acted alone in the grisly crime. Unofficially, the evidence pointed to a conspiracy.

Herman Race, a former New York City supervising police detective, was hired by Michael Brigante Sr. to investigate the murders. Brigante had testified at trial that he did not feel that his grandson acted alone in the commission of the crime. Since Brigante did not feel that his grandson had done all that he was accused of, he wanted Race, a licensed investigator and friend, either to prove or disprove the case against Butch.

Race eventually uncovered evidence that showed there were multiple gunmen and at least two guns used during the commission of the crime. During a private court hearing and at trial, Race’s findings were corroborated by the prosecutor and the medical examiner, who was astonished that one man sat accused of being the sole gunman.

During a November 30, 2000 meeting with Ric Osuna, author of The Night the DeFeos Died, Butch DeFeo confessed that, along with his sister Dawn DeFeo, he and one of his friends actually committed the murders out of desperation. This fact was confirmed by a letter written by Butch DeFeo. In his own handwriting, Butch wrote, “…it was cold-blooded murder. Period. No ghosts. No demons. Just three people in which I was one.”

During the 2000 interview, the details of the hours leading up to the six killings emerged. The DeFeo household had been in a frenzied state during the evening of November 12, 1974. Butch’s father, according to Butch, routinely abused his family. After that evening’s tirade had settled down, Butch, his 18-year-old sister Dawn, and two of Butch’s friends proceeded to get “high” in the basement.

Incensed that her father was preventing her from joining her boyfriend in Florida and worn out from the years of physical abuse, Dawn DeFeo approached her older brother about killing their parents. Butch initially refused. After a culmination of drugs, alcohol, and desperation over the next few hours, Butch finally gave into Dawn’s ghoulish request. Employing his two friends, Butch and Dawn left the safety of the family’s basement and headed for their parents’ bedroom on the second floor. It was around 1:00 a.m. on November 13, 1974. While one friend waited as a lookout, the other, with his Colt Python, followed Butch, who had armed himself with a .35-Marlin rifle.

A votive candle burning on the father’s dresser, the second-floor bathroom light, and a military-style flashlight that was later recovered by the police on the brown recliner in the hallway outside of the master bedroom was their only light source.

The parents were attacked while they lay in bed. Mr. DeFeo, however, was able to struggle to his feet to attempt a counterattack on his assassins. A second bullet struck him dead before he was able to reach his target. Louise DeFeo lay in bed, moaning for help, as she slowly bled to death. A second bullet would silence the woman for good.

Although the original plan called for the younger children to be taken to the grandparents’ house in Brooklyn, Dawn, according to Butch, killed them to eliminate the children as witnesses and potential threats. Butch claimed he was not in the house at the time of the children’s murders, but giving pursuit to one his friends, who had fled the scene, in order to lure him back to assist with the cleanup. Even while feigning insanity at trial, Butch DeFeo never admitted shooting the children.

One can only imagine the horror on Marc’s and John’s faces when their big sister entered their room with a rifle. Dawn callously ordered the boys face down. A clue that the DeFeos were awake at the time of the murders rested in the final position of Marc DeFeo’s body. Because Marc had suffered a debilitating injury from football, he was forced to sleep on his back. Yet, he was shot face down in bed. The prosecutor confirmed this fact at the DeFeo trial.

The next room Dawn entered was Allison’s. Standing at the doorway, Dawn raised the rifle, taking aim as Allison slightly raised her head before looking into the muzzle flash. Death was instantaneous, as the bullet impacted Allison’s left cheek and exited her right ear. Allison’s wounds were meant to disfigure the beautiful girl.

Butch, upon his return and enraged at the senseless murder, confronted Dawn DeFeo in her third-floor bedroom. After briefly wrestling for the gun, Butch got the upper hand and slammed Dawn against the bed knocking her out. As she lie unconscious on her bed, Butch placed the back of the rifle to Dawn’s head and fired. The murderous spree had finally ended, but the cleanup had just begun. More