India: A Horror, a Haunting, and a Mystery
Women dropping dead inside of temples, a haunted limestone mine, and a mysterious orb of light attacking locals. We're doing a taste of Indian history and folklore by sampling one story from each category.
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SOURCES
https://uttarakhandtourism.gov.in/destination/mussoorie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHH9uuQlbQw
https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/1420-history-of-limestone-uses-timeline
https://www.vice.com/en/article/93bnjd/paranormal-investigation-helpline-jay-alani-ghost-buster
https://culturalindia.org.in/lambi-dehar-mines-mysterious-underground-city/
https://www.thisday.app/en/details/lambi-dehar-mines-horror-amidst-the-hills
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2205194.stm
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries. I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore
So, I was thinking about this the other day. I realize I say that at the beginning of every episode. This is a podcast of Horrors, Hauntings and mysteries. Each episode tends to fall into one those categories, and that’s by design. My goal was to kind of make it so each week you wouldn’t know what you were getting. I think it keeps the content fresh, and for me, it also keeps the research interesting.
But today, I want to try something with you guys. I told you last year that I saw a lot of audience growth in India, and so I started poking around for stories, listening to what my audience over there suggested as well as talking to friends who grew up there. And I realized there was soooo much to talk about. India has such a wild history full of triumph and horror, as well as a folklore and storytelling tradition that expertly weaves in parts of that history. At the end of the day, there were just too many different things that I wanted to include.
So today’s episode, I’m going to do one of each. A horror, a haunting, AND a mystery. All from India, to kind of give you a taste of the myths, legends, and true crime that comes from there
And a quick note for todays episode, please give me a little grace on the pronunciations. I looked up everything to get as close as I can, but at the end of the day, I did not grow up speaking hindi or Marathi and some sounds my mouth simply cannot make. But I promise, I tried.
But first, some quick housekeeping. If you’re listening to the ad supported version of the show, thank you so much. Our advertisers make this show possible. And if you’re listening on Patreon, ad-free, well, you’re also making this possible so thank you. And on that note, we are doing a revamp to our Patreon starting in February. More details on that next week, but we’ll be archiving the current $3 tier–our only tier at the moment–and introducing a couple of new tiers, so if you want to get in at $3 make sure you do it before the end of the month. And don’t worry existing Patreon supporters–you’ll be able to continue at $3.
Now, we’re going to take a quick break, and when we get back, we’re going to jump into our first category, a horror. One that takes place on the outskirts of the city of Bengaluru, far away from the pervasive symphony of traffic and under the cover of night. It’s about women who disappear and are found dead inside of temples, and the shocking culprit. After the break.
Our story starts In early December of 2006, on the outskirts of Bengaluru, India's largest southern city. It’s sometimes called Bengalor, but for this episode, I will be referring to it as Bengaluru.
There, ornate temples painted head to toe in pinkish white sit against a backdrop of lush trees and rolling mountains. It’s a beautiful contrast. In one specific temple, Sri Yogi Narayana, the day is just getting started, when a scream rings out from the dormitory area of the temple.
Others run over to find out what the commotion is all about, not expecting what they see. The body of a young woman was sprawled out on the floor.
Police are called to the scene immediately, but aren’t really able to piece together what may have happened. There was no sign of trauma or foul play to the woman’s body, no sign of struggle or forced entry into the dorm. It appeared as if she just dropped dead inside of the temple. But she was so young, early 20’s maybe. How could that have happened?
To make matters worse they were unable to identify the woman. She had no identification on her, no one came to claim her body, and there wasn’t anyone reported missing in the area who matched her description. They end up changing her clothes, bagging the ones she wore when she died as evidence, and burying the body.
Three weeks later, a young woman named Manicalls the police. She’s worried about her sister, Renuka. She hasn’t heard from her in a few weeks, and that wasn’t typical. All of Mani's attempts to get in touch with her sister go unanswered, and so on December 29th, she calls the police to report Renuka missing.
The police ask Mani some questions, what was Renuka doing in the weeks leading up to her disappearance?
Well, Mani tells them, she had recently been hanging out with a new friend, an older woman. Mani had been working as domestic help at a family's house where she befriended the cook, a woman who went by the name Mallika. She had started hanging out socially with Mallika, and invited Renuka along a few times, who became fast friends with the woman and quickly got vulnerable with her. Renuka had been struggling to conceive a child. But Mallika offered some help. She told her that she could perform a ritual for her at a temple outside of Bengaluru that would ensure Renuka would give birth to a son. That was close to the last time she ever saw her sister.
And though the police were told this. Told that one of the last place Renuka was known to have gone was a temple on the outskirts of Bengaluru, no one put it together that the unnamed woman found a few weeks prior might be Renuka. and for a year, Mani was left without any answer as to what happened to her sister. Birthdays passed, holidays, all without word from Renuka.
What Mani didn’t know, was this was becoming a concerning pattern in the area. Women being found dead at different temples on the outskirts of Bengaluru. All without signs of struggle, foul play, or forced entry. Typically they were found by the first people into the temple, meaning they most likely died in the dead of night, when no one else was there.
As the bodies were being found, police had almost no leads as to what was happening. They initially assumed they were all suicides, though the cause of death was still unknown. But something strange was happening to the bodies. Police were holding onto the bodies of some of the women for testing and identification, and they noticed that they all decomposed at a rate much slower than usual. That was the first thing that tipped them off that something wasn’t right. Sure, that can sometimes happen naturally, but that can also happen when there is a toxic substance in the blood of the deceased.
Another clue that something was not right came from the families of the women that were found. They noticed that the jewelry their loved one typically wore was missing. Every single body was reported to have gold jewelry taken from it.
The next big clue came when they discovered the body of a 60 year old woman named Yashodhamma, in late 2007, a year after Renuka went missing. She was found at a different temple, Shree Siddaganga Mutt, and police noticed that the SIM card in her phone was swapped out.
They were able to trace her correct SIM card to a phone that was being used by a cab driver in the city. So they started listening in on his calls, trying to figure out how he was tied to the woman. Remember, they still don’t think there is any foul play, necessarily. One day though, he gets a call from a woman, and she tells him to meet her at a bus stop the next morning at 7am, so he does, with the police unknowingly right behind him.
When they arrive, there’s a middle aged woman coming from behind the bus stop with a large bag. She huddles close to the cab driver and opens her bag so he can poke around. At this point, the police think they have enough to approach the two and see what was going on, and when they do, they see that the woman's bag is full of jewelry that had been stripped off of the dead women.
But that wasn’t the only thing the mysterious woman had on her. Inside small vials in the bag, was cyanide.
A year after her sisters disappearance, Mani is watching the news when a report comes up that a woman has been arrested for the poisoning deaths of multiple women. When the picture of the woman at the bus stop pops up, Mani recognizes it. It’s Mallika, the woman who promised her sister a son. Her picture is next to the pictures of 6 other women, all that she had been accused of killing. Except the news wasn’t calling her Mallika, they were referring to her as KD Kempamma. India’s first female serial killer
KD Kempamma was born on the outskirts of Bengaluru in the 1960s. She didn’t attend school much, and married a tailor living in Bengaluru in her early adulthood.
From what I’ve read, it seems like from a young age Kempamma was always scheming up ways to make some quick cash. In her 20’s she started a Chit fund, which is a way for community members to pool money together to loan to one another. It may sound a little sketchy to some listeners, but it’s semi-common around the world, and a study done in 2018 found that between 5 and 10% of households in southern india participated in chit funds.
The way a chit fund works, is an organizer brings together a group of people who each put a monthly fee into a big fund. So say you get 40 people together, and they each put $1000 rupi’s into the fund. The fund is now worth 40,000 rupis. Each month, someone is selected to win most of the pot. Sometimes it’s through an auction, sometimes they’re randomly selected, but that person will win, say 30,000 rupees and the remaining 10k will be split amongst the rest of the group, and a fee will be paid to the organizer.
This system goes for as many months as there are members. It’s not a perfect financial model by any means, there are tons of risks. Someone could just bail after winning the pot and no longer pay into the fund. And there’s tons of scam ones where an organizer will just collect for the fund and take off. But, when it works and people are honest, it can be a way to get a low interest loan from friends and family. The person who has the highest chance of making any money in this scenario, though, is the organizer, who was Kempamma.
Only, she must have done a horrible job organizing this chit fund because she lost nearly all of the money that she put into the fund. And When her husband found out in 1998 because bill collectors were nearly knocking down his door, he left her.
With nowhere to live and now no income, Kempamma went into the line of domestic help, but the scheming didn’t stop. At this time she was robbing the homes she cleaned.
At one point, Kempamma had worked in a jewelry store and noticed that gold was dissolved in Cyanide. She figured if it was strong enough to do that, surely it would kill someone when ingested. Her connections at this store supplied her with cyanide during her killing sprees.
Robbing homes seemed to not be enough for her, because A year later, she started lurking inside of temples on the outskirts of Bengaluru, surrounded by hills and lush forests, where the swelling sounds of traffic was a little duller. She’d go to beautiful, ancient temples with tall gold roofs and men in bright orange robes who lead prayer. There, she would look for vulnerable women, posing as a concerned member and offering services. That’s when she met Mamatha Rajan, a wealthy 30 year old woman, and her first victim.
In 1999, Kempamma asked Mamatha to meet her under the cover of darkness. She knew that the young woman was struggling in her personal life, and she promised that she could do a ritual that would bring her a better future. While the two were alone in the temple, Kempamma asked her to drink some of her holy water. Mamatha didn’t know it then, but the holy water was laced with a lethal amount of cyanide. The poison worked immediately, Killing the 30 year old in just a few minutes. Kempamma took the jewels off of her body and disappeared into the night.
Though she’d go on to take more lives, she was almost stopped right afterwards. In 2000, Kempamma was arrested for stealing valuables from a home she was performing a religious ritual in. There's not much information on this event, but this could have been part of the scam she was running to rob wealthy women she met at temples. She was caught trying to steal jewels from the woman who lived in the house. Ultimately, she only spent 6 months in jail.
But even jail was not enough to teach her a lesson. It seems like after being incarcerated, she doubled down on her deadly schemes.
In 2007, it’s believed she killed 5 women in three months, from October to December.
The first woman she targeted during this spree was a 52 year old woman named Elizabeth. Kempamma had noticed that Elizabeth had a granddaughter that went missing. She approached Elizabeth with the same promise she had made Mamatha, that she could perform rituals and prayers that would aid in the search for Elizabeth’s granddaughter. All Elizabeth had to do was wear her most valuable clothing and jewelry.
The next victim was the 60 year old woman named Yashodhamma, the one who had her SIM card swapped. She was suffering from asthma and was promised relief by Kempamma. She was lured to the temple after hours, when no one else was around to witness the meeting. This occurred at a different temple, Siddaganga Mutt, as Kempamma was careful to not visit the same temple too many times. She was also changing her name each time she searched for a victim. This is probably how she was able to avoid police detection for so long.
After Yashodhamma, Kempamma went after a 60 year woman named Muniyamma at a different temple on the outskirts of the city. She wanted to be a singer of devotional songs, and Kempamma promised her she could help her achieve her dreams if she just drank some of her holy water.
Then there was Pillamma, a 60 year old temple priest. Kempamma had promised to sponsor an arch for her temple, but when the two met, she tricked her into drinking cyanide as well.
The last woman Kempamma killed during this spree was a 30 year old woman named Nagaveni who was having trouble conceiving a child. Kempamma had approached her at a temple and listened to her problems and worries to quickly build trust. She told her she would perform a ritual at a temple on the outskirts of town one night, all Nagaveni had to bring was her best jewelry. At the temple, under the cover of night, Kempamma did what she had done so many times before. Presented the young woman with holy water to drink, watched as she died a slow and painful death, and then stole the jewels right off her body.
Mani watched as the TV replayed these crimes in horror as the memory of her sister racked her brain. Though Kempamma had confessed to the murder of these women, she hadn’t confessed to the killing of Renuka, which confused Mani. She called the police again after learning of Mallika’s, well, Kempamma’s crimes and told them the situation. That she had befriended the murderer and she had promised her sister a baby boy. The police had preserved the clothing of the body they found in the temple a year earlier, and Mani confirmed that yes, those were her sister's clothes. Renuka had been killed in a temple, just like the others.
And Mani wasn’t the only person coming forward saying that Kempamma knew their missing loved one. At least three other people came forward to suggest that Kempamma was responsible for more deaths
In the end, Kempamma was charged with 13 counts of murder, but only convicted of 6. she was given two death sentences for the murder of Muniyamma and Nagaveni, though they were eventually lessened to life sentences. She is currently serving her life sentences in ParAppana Agrahara Central Prison.
Kempamma promised young, vulnerable women a better life, but instead she killed them in cold blood to steal a little bit of jewelry. She’s known as india's first female serial killer, though it’s unclear if she killed for the thrill, or just to make some quick cash. And her prison sentence will never repay the families of those she killed of what they lost.
We’re going to take a quick break, and when we get back, I want to dive into our next category and walk you through one of India’s most terrifying hauntings.
For our next story, we’re heading up to the north of India, past Delhi, to outside of the city of Dehradun. Here, folklore and myth surround the nature of the area. Rivers are believed to have mystical healing properties, and there are caves where it’s said Indian robbers hid out from British Colonists. The gently flowing shallow river at the base of the cave concealed the footprints of those trying to get away.
If you took the winding roads up the hills until you were high enough to get a view of the Himalayas, you’d find yourself in Mussoorie , and there, you might hear locals talking about something paranormal that resides in those woods.
This tale of these woods comes from Jay Alani, a paranormal investigator in India. It’s from his book Haunted: Real life encounters with ghosts and spirits.
back in 2015, Jay received a call from a real estate broker. At the time, he was making youtube videos about hauntings in India, so he was used to being reached out to by people who thought they were experiencing something paranormal. But he never experienced anything like this.
The man said that his firm owned a beautiful plot of land on the outskirts of Mussoorie. It had everything a real estate developer would want, a gorgeous view of the Himalayas, an amazing destination to develop vacation homes, and a low asking price. But, the broker explained, they couldn’t sell it. No matter how low they set the price, once buyers heard where the land was they would immediately end the phone call.
“They all say there’s something wrong with that piece of land,” he explained. “That it has some sort of negative energy”
The man asked Jay to investigate, and prove once and for all that the area was safe. So together, they went to Mussoorie, and when they arrived, they saw an old abandoned mine, the Lambi Dehar mine. Only pieces of the old mine and buildings remained, decrepit concrete staircases that went off to where a second floor once stood. Crumbling walls that once held a bustling and lucrative limestone quarry. It was spooky looking, no wonder the locals thought it had negative energy. But that could be easily cleared. First, Jay explained, they needed to find a trusted local who could explain to them why people were so afraid of the land.
They came upon a lone Chai tea and biscuit shop on a path in the woods, owned by an elderly man, and They asked him if there was a story about the land they were on. They’re thinking that he’ll just say that the mine is creepy and dangerous, but in a quivering voice he tells them to come in, closing the door behind them. He pours them both some chai tea, and asks “have you heard about the Salt Witch of the mines?” Jay and the brokers eyes went wide, and they shot each other a look.
This is the story that the man told them
The story begins almost 200 years ago, in 1827 when India was still under British rule. Mussoorie was an unknown small town back then, but that didn’t stop a British officer from falling in love with the place. The view of the Himalayas was unlike anything he had ever seen. He’d spend his days walking through the woods, exploring the land that had been uncharted by the British.
One day, he came upon a small hut at the top of one hill, where a lone woman lived. What he didn’t know, was that locals tended to stay away from this woman. She was, lets say, eccentric. But the officer still went over to her home, where he found her cooking over a large pot and singing to herself. He was welcomed in and offered tea, and he asked her why she lived all by herself. Where was her family? I’m a nomad, she told him in an uncommon dialect of Hindi, this is how my people have always lived.
He drank his tea quickly and headed back towards his home. When he arrived, he noticed that there was a strange, white powdery substance all over his shoes that he tracked into the house. The man smiled wide when he realized what it was. Limestone. And a high quality limestone at that.
In that particular area of India, the mineral was so prevalent that you could pick up limestone rocks off the forest floor. This would make him rich, the english used tons of limestone to make cement. It’s a resource that is found close to the earth’s surface instead of deep underground, and so the officer knew that he’d have easy access to an almost unlimited supply.
He immediately ordered for mines to be built all across the area for the british. in doing so, he displaced the woman in the woods, and she was never seen again.
Soon, the Lambi Dehar mines, the mines that the broker and Jay passed on their way in, were up and running, owned by the British, but mostly employing the local indian population. The mines operated pretty consistently until the 1990’s, when tragedy struck.
One day, in 1996 a woman and her young son showed up to the gates of the mines to deliver lunch to her husband. It was common for wives to bring lunch to their husbands during their break from carrying limestone up the quarry. The woman left her son at the gate and slipped into the mines. A gatekeeper remembered seeing the boy playing at the gate alone, but when he turned around and looked back, the boy was gone. He radio’d for someone to find the woman, but she was nowhere to be seen either.
Later that evening, while the mine was full, a terrible crashing sound echoed throughout the mountainous region. The entryway to the mines had collapsed, trapping all of the workers inside. A green, noxious gas filled the sealed underground area, making the men’s skin peel off down to the bone. between 20 and 50 thousand workers were killed. People in town say that their screams can still be heard at night, the man in the chai shop told the two men.
The woman was a chudail A solitary witch. One that lives alone and does not like company. She becomes vengeful when disturbed and can change shape, form and age. The man in the shop believed that she was finally getting her revenge from the British, shutting down their mine for good, even at the expense of her own people.
This is actually a legend that’s been around for some time, and there’s been other versions of it. Some say that due to horrible working conditions at the mines, workers started dying. Their lungs were irritated by the limestone particles in the air, and they’d cough up blood before dying. The number stays the same, between 20 and 50000 workers died this way.
It’s hard to find reports on this, as it seems these catastrophic events were not documented in papers at the time. One report does say however, that there was a furnace that exploded at the top of the mine in 1990, killing about 50 workers. Perhaps the legend has grown and been embellished over time, but it doesn’t change the fact that many people died here in an accident, and the locals swear that echos of the event can still be felt in the area.
And they all agree that it was the doing of the witch. One sighting that people have not been able to explain is a strange blue glow that emanates from inside the tunnels. Some have tried to say that the glow is from radium, but scientists have argued against this, they say that there’s nothing radioactive at the mines, and radium cant be the culprit.
Others have tried to explain away the strange noises and sights at the mine as well. Some say that the mine leaks methane gas which causes visitors to hallucinate, but again, scientists have argued against this.
That night, Jay and the broker took ghost hunting equipment into the mines and decided that yes, there was paranormal activity happening in the area. Though it was unclear exactly what happened there, the energy was still lingering.
No matter how people try to explain it away, nothing ever sticks, and residents swear the terror of the lands history can still be heard today, booming throughout the hills until the witch gets her land back.
Our last story takes us south again, 330 miles 530 km south east of Delhi, in the eastern indian city of Mirzapur, which is in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Uttar Pradesh is the most populated state in India and is where you can find the Taj Mahal. Mirzapur is in the southern most part of Uttar Pradesh and is home to thick jungles and majestic waterfalls. This is where one of the strangest unsolved mysteries I’ve read about occurred.
In August of 2002, the BBC reported that 10,000 residents of Mirzapur gathered outside of a police precinct in a growing mob. As their shouts of anger grow, gunshots ring out, and a man falls to the ground, sending the crowd around him running.
If you were to ask anyone in the mob, this was yet another casualty of the strange phenomena attacking their community. The reason they were at the police station in the first place. They had been complaining to police for months now that someone or someTHING was attacking them, only to be shrugged off. It’s all in your mind, the police would say. But for the people of Mirzapur, it was real.
For the last few months, there had been sightings of strange balls of light that would attack people and leave them with welts on their faces. It started when people who slept outside in the region to escape the heat would wake up with mysterious scratches and red marks on their faces, but soon, people started seeing what they thought was the culprit.
It was a circular object that floated through the air and emitted beams of red and green light. Some people reported that this object was the size of a hawk, but others swore it was as big as an aircraft.They said it would approach them and scratch their face, earning it hte name of Muhnochwa, or face scratcher
As word spread of the cryptid, residents in the area started panicking. They stopped sleeping outside despite the oppressive heat, and made sure that clubs and other weapons in their home were never far from reach.
Though there’s no official reports of people dying from the strange glowing orb, people swore that it was killing their neighbors. There are, however, reported deaths from the panic
Kumar Barai of Jamalpur had a cardiac stroke just hearing stories about the object
There was the man who was killed by police when the mob formed at the station, and a few days later another man was shot by police when the town of Barabanki started to mob at their police station.
People were losing sleep, families would stay up in shifts to make sure the object didn’t invade their home while they slept. Some people even patrolled the streets by banging big drums to scare off any invaders.
One man woke in the middle of the night and started beating his own father, mistaking him for the Muhnochwa. Another accidentally killed his pet dog when he felt something lick his face while he slept.
And since the police wouldn’t do anything, the community took it upon themselves to figure out what was causing it. At first, they thought maybe it was something electrical attracted to the antennas on their roofs, so they took those down to no avail.
Some reports even say that terrified villagers were killing other community members they suspected of being a Muhnochwa
One night, the lights were seen traveling near a parked car that had a person sitting in the front seat, this lead some people to believe it could have been a drone someone was operating.
Someone else suggested that it was some sort of strange insect released into India by a foreign adversary. A police officer captured a weird looking bug he thought may be the culprit, a three and a half inch long winged insect. Police decided that this must be the offender, and KP Sign, a superintendent of police made a statement saying that this kind of bug leaves rashes and superficial wounds on peoples faces. The villagers did not believe this for a second.
Other wild theories included extra terrestrials, or a robot that glows and was brought to Uttar Pradesh by foreign attackers.
It got so desperate that the state government even asked the Indian Institute of Technology to help them solve this mystery. Their explanation? Balls of lightning.
They said that the area was extremely dry before monsoon season and the atmosphere was causing a phenomenon where balls of lightning appear out of nowhere. These types of lightning balls were really common in New Zealand but could be found in different parts of Europe and the US. They travel sideways quickly, which may account for the appearance of them flying. They dissipate after they hit an object and should disappear once the monsoons arrive.
So sure, maybe people in the community were being hit in the face with balls of lightning while they slept. Or Maybe it was a mysterious insect sent by a foreign country. To this day those may be the best guesses we have. The students didn’t actually observe the Muhnochwa to see if that’s what it was .
But there is one other theory, and this is based on something that happened in
Delhi just a few years earlier. There’s the theory this was a shared delusion, an instance of mass hysteria. And the reason some psychologists believe that is because of the Monkey Man of Delhi
In mid-2001, people reported seeing a four foot, monkey-like creature around the streets of Delhi.
Reports varied, but from what people said, it sounded terrifying. It had a metal helmet on and metal claws, glowing red eyes, three buttons on its chest and was covered in thick, black hair.
Some people said it was much taller, some people said it wore roller skates, but almost everyone described it as looking like a terrifying monkey.
Over 350 people reported seeing this creature in Delhi, and around 60 of those sightings resulted in injuries. Two people were said to have fallen off of the tops of buildings when they were running away from the Monkey Man who they thought was chasing them.
Though so many people were reporting seeing this creature, police never caught anything, and the whole ordeal is now looked back on as an instance of mass hysteria.
Eventually, sightings of the Muhnochwa stopped, maybe it was the heavy storms of monsoon season that made them disappear, or maybe the cultural hysteria died down and people just forgot about them. But maybe it was something else. Maybe it was bugs sent by a foreign adversary, or crazier yet, aliens. We may never know.
We’re going to take another quick break, and when we get back, I have one more little treat for you. I’m going to read you a spooky listener tale from Mumbai, someone who experienced something unexplainable in India themselves.
Our final tale comes from Amanat in Mumbai. Amanat had a strange and unexplainable sighting in India some years back and wanted to share what she saw. And heads up, parts of this are a little intense, so beware. She Writes:
Hello from Mumbai, India. I found your podcast a few weeks ago and I've been addicted ever since. I wanted to share my story with you, it might not be extremely terrifying but it quite honestly changed my take on the supernatural and actually led me here.
So it's 2017 and I'm volunteering to take a batch of children (I was an alumni of the school) to Delhi & Agra to see the Taj Mahal. We checked into a hostel which had 2 wings, both connected by a simple yet long corridor. I was assigned a dorm with 7 girls, who after a long day of sightseeing were exhausted. After completing some chores, I went off to bed in the lower bunker too. It was quiet, a little too quiet and there was ample moonlight. Something woke me up and as I turned, I saw a figure that walked passed me. It was a short woman in a long skirt but she was not human. She had a head of a goat with long horns and hands that looked like sticks. I brushed it off and slept as I was so tired but I noticed the time was 3:03 am. I had a feeling I saw something supernatural but I had never been scared of ghosts so I let slide.
Fast forward to the next night when a boy from the other wing fell sick and I was called in to attend to him. The corridor had a light green tone on the walls, it was dimly lit and very very quiet. As I walked to the other side, I glanced at the paintings and photos hung on either side. And there she was. The Goat Lady. A massive chill ran down my spine and I had goosebumps. I panicked and broke out into a sweat. I didn't sleep that night, or any other other night for the following 2 weeks to come. I would wait until it was past 4 am and then get a few hours in. I can still recall so vividly how she looked. She was transperent-ish but her features were stark.
On the same trip, a few days after this incident, we visited a mosque that had a stepwell, notoriously famous for black magic and exorcisms. While we only wanted to show the children the beautiful mosque, I happened to witness a live exorcism that was rather traumatic and extremely scary. A presumably possessed woman lay tied to the ground with ropes while her family sat in front of her chanting prayers and performing rituals. The exorcist (or peer baba as the Muslims call it) started banging her head with a stone till blood would drip on the ground. She was screeching and changing voices, trying to break free and in complete distress. The entire scene lasted about 30 seconds before I could comprehend what was happening, and bolted to the opposite direction. But that scene stayed with me.
For weeks after the trip, I would be mortified by everything supernatural. I would start crying in fear of my house or me getting haunted. I couldn't see horror shows or movies anymore. I would change the topic if it was ever brought up and for 2 years I was extremely scared of everything related to spirits and ghosts. The anxiety was crippling.
But then something snapped in me. I had a Masters In Psychology and I wanted to use some techniques to help myself as it was affecting me mentally. I chose systematic desensitization as it felt most fitting. I slowly began seeing some horror shows and movies but never crossed the first few minutes. I felt seeing would invite something from beyond. Then slowly I started reading about haunted houses in my city and other short stories. It would be 2 paragraphs max. I continued on this path for a year or so but trod lightly as I would still get easily scared and would immediately have a panic attack. I gave myself some time to understand, accept and respect the supernatural. It took me a long time and I do still get scared sometimes but it's easier for me to deal with it now.
So I'm here now, ironically finding comfort in your podcast among other spooky shows and movies. It's helping me understand the other world better and embrace it.
I'm not a great writer and I don't know if this would be enough to share on your podcast but thank you so much for taking the time to read and allowing me to share. This is the first time I've actually put all of this into words.
Amanat, I think you’re writing is just fine and I’m glad the podcast has acted like a type of exposure therapy for you. For as scary as the goat headed monster was, I can’t imagine experiencing someone going through an exorcism like that, but unfortunately that’s still practiced in some parts of the world. But the blend of horror, both of our world and another, and hope just felt really symbolic of this episode as a whole.
She ended up writing a follow up email to me, explaining that this experience made her feel more empathy towards people, and made her more receptive to challenges in her life. So even though the experience was terrifying, she was able to find a little good in it. I think that’s really amazing.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of heart starts pounding, and maybe learned something a little terrifying about India. I will say, though the research was, yes, terrifying, it also really illuminated for me how beautiful the landscape of India is. The beautiful waterfalls of Mirzapur, the enchanted water in Dehradun, the hills of Mussoorie. And there is nothing I love more than something beautiful with a dark story.