Is somebody else in the room?

It’s a seemingly innocuous CCTV footage. The top-left corner of the display shows the time ticking away. As the clock strikes 6.18 am, a shadowy hooded figure flickers at the centre and vanishes just as quickly. The camera soon goes phut and darkness fills the screen. There may not have been much sound or fury but many believe that what they caught on camera on February 14 at an old pub called Ye Olde Man and Scy the Pub in Bolton, UK, was nothing but a chance ghost sighting.

The manager of the pub swears that it is actual footage and many who live in the locality take it to be proof that we are surrounded by unexplainable beings. “Of course ghosts live amongst us,” reads a comment below the video online, while others dismiss it as publicity stunt and graphics work. Instead of giving answers, the video has only raised the same questions that have been haunting humans forever — Do ghosts exist? How do they look? Are they harmful?  

In our country, people have always talked of ghosts and their encounters with paranormal activities. Says Srinivasan, 48, a bank employee from Chennai: “In a flat next to my house in Saligramam, one can hear the sound of a sobbing woman. Whoever enters the bedroom could hear the sobbing throughout the day. Many tenants vacated the flat, citing this problem.” He requests us not to publish his photo. Now, the house owner has decided to sell the flat.

If you think it’s a psychological problem, listen to Chennai-based psychologist Dr Mini Rao. “Despite being a psychologist, I do believe in spirits. People might think I’m nuts, but the fact is that most of us are in constant denial due to fear. Nineteen years back, soon after my mother’s sudden death, my sisters and I had gone to a temple to communicate with our mother’s ‘spirit’. Though I was sceptical, I couldn’t help but believe when the mediator who contacted my mother through the Ouija board, spoke exactly like my mother. She used the same kind of language and accent. My mother also warned us not to contact her, as it is really dangerous. Ever since I feel she’s always around me. There are times when I feel a strong presence next to me.”

While some may have accidental encounters, there are those who seek and find paranormal activities. The experiences of Soumen Kotal of Angel Paranormal Society, based in Kolkata, may send a chill down the spine. “When we visited a 350-year-old ruined Zamindar Palace in Howrah to verify if it was haunted, we couldn’t record anything. The camera we set up kept going off every time we went there and we couldn’t find an explanation. Similarly, we visited a cemetery in a hilly area of North Bengal to record paranormal activities. Until we returned to our rooms, we didn’t sense anything unusual. Then we found that our hands had identical scratches,” says Kotal.

So, do ghosts exist? While paranormal researchers choose to call it by different names such as intelligence or energy, they agree that we are indeed surrounded by beings, mostly without being aware of them. “While many imaginary stories have always been going around, there are empirical evidences of paranormal activities taking place in the last 200 years,” says Gaurav Tiwari, a certified Paranormal/ UFO investigator and founder of Indian Paranormal Society, New Delhi. Tiwari quit his job of a pilot and plunged into paranormal research after experiencing something extrasensory in a flat he was sharing with friends. In the last eight years, Tiwari has visited over 6,000 haunted places across the country and abroad.

Tiwari narrates a bone-chilling experience during his recent visit to a haunted place in Australia. “I stayed alone in a mortuary the whole night amid stinking bodies. Next day, we found that the recording had registered a laughing sound which I hadn’t heard in the mortuary,” he says. Tiwari has also captured a full-length apparition using spectrum camera during his investigation at Old Geelong Gaol (Jail) in Australia. The website of Indian Paranormal Society (www.gripteam.org) has videos of his visits with his colleagues to many haunted places showing audio and visual proof of their communication with non-physical elements. “Once we took a TV journalist and the one we could connect to was extraordinary and told the journalist’s name clearly, including the surname. This is what we call intelligence,” he says.

From empirical evidences and personal experiences, the observations that Tiwari makes about spirits or ghosts are pretty interesting and a bit scary. “When someone dies, the person is only free of physicality, the consciousness is still there. A lot of spirits move on to what lies next, but many who are still attached to their loved ones, property, unfinished business, don’t move on and show their existence. There are 39 different ways in which they can make you feel their presence such as touching, sound, smell, shadow and partial or full apparitions,” he says.

While Tiwari believes that spirits are shy and not harmful, he quickly adds that there are violent ones too. “Spirits can’t do anything beyond human’s potential. They can move objects without physical body. Parapsychology defines it as Telekinesis. Spirits can startle you by scratching, pushing, touching or even spooking with weird voices. But it all depends on who you are.”

But according to mental health experts, the rationale for such a belief system is often disconnected from reality. Dr Minnu Bhonsle, a

Mumbai-based consulting psychotherapist and counsellor, who has done her doctorate in Psychotherapy & Counselling denies such an existence. “In most cases, an ephemeral reaction to trauma such as the death of someone close can trigger off hallucinations and a severe condition called psychosis,” she says. “Those who have preconceived notions about the existence of ghosts often exteriorise these beliefs by configuring a form and a structure.”

Santanu Sen of Angel Paranormal Society admits that many ghostly experiences are nothing but people’s imagination. “Recently, occupants of a flat in Kolkata felt uneasy because of something and we stepped in to help them. We found out that the electromagnetic field was high in the flat due to faulty wiring,” he says.

Sanal Edamaruku, president of Indian Rationalist Association and Rationalist International, laughs off the belief that technology is used by ghosts to communicate with people. “It’s nothing new that high tech is misused to exploit the technical illiterate. It is known that telephones and transistors, before they became popular, were used by missionaries in Africa to make local people hear ‘other-worldly’ voices. Despite using the fruits of science and technology in everyday life, many people could not develop scientific temper,” he says.

However, Tiwari calls ridiculing the whole paranormal concept the superstition of science. “When people are ready to believe in some supernatural power that they have never experienced, why not paranormal activities that many often experience across the world? The fact is many are reluctant to accept for fear of having their earlier stance on the subject questioned. Now, there are evidences about the presence of non-physical elements and only people’s mindset should change.”
Is someone else watching?

(With inputs from Nishadh Mohammed)