Ghost in the Ladies Hostel

The news spread like wildfire from room to room. Some of the girls took it with their eyes wide open when some others just giggled in mockery. By nightfall, every inmate of the hostel learnt about it – there was a ghost roaming around in our hostel premises.

The girl who had first seen the apparition was from my class. A very practical,no-nonsense kind of girl and no one had any reason to disbelieve her.Her account was simple and straightforward. It happened on the Friday when we had the informal Farewell party for the graduating seniors.The venue of the function was our mess hall and the party had run well into the early hours of saturday morning.

Around 1 am, the girl in question happened to see a female form with long flowing hair ,wearing a white dress , walk down the path to the back hostel.The ladies hostel compound has a front hostel and a back hostel in the same gated compound.The main gate gets locked at 6pm and the respective grills of the front back hostels get closed at around 9 pm.So it is technically impossible for a girl to be seen outside the front/back hostel buildings after 9pm.

The story was received with great enthusiasm. It led to many heated arguments and interesting exchanges of stories.The late night talks in the following days solely revolved around non human existence and super natural beings.Each and every one of us racked our brains to find any old forgotten tale that we had heard at some point of our life about ghosts and related beings. I must admit that it was quite fun listening to spooky stories during the odd hours at night.But what was not funny was having to face the night alone after getting bombarded with such accounts. A lonely trip to bath room in the middle of the night, going to the mess room to get a bottle of water etc started seeming a little risky.Yeah, all these kinda felt funny in the glorious light of the day, but at night the old hostel building and the odd shadows around started giving us creeps.

Yes, there were more sightings in the following days. One girl reported that she had gone to the bathroom at night and heard some sound from the neighboring bathroom.Of course, when she opened the door, the bathroom was empty and she had definitely felt a presence behind her. Another girl insisted that she felt as if someone passed through her body while she was walking in the hostel corridor. Somebody else experienced sleep paralysis, she vividly remembered how she felt the weight of another person on her body. Yet another girl was sitting alone in the mess hall at night writing her assignment , when she heard a banging noise,she had fled the room when the noises became more prominent.

The news soon travelled from hostel rooms to the college class rooms. Few of the fellow students started recounting some historical facts(?).If the rumors were to be believed, the very place where our college and hostel stands belonged to Shaktan Thampuraan, the king who had reigned the region ,which is now called Thrissur ,during late 16th century.The very spot where the men’s and women’s hostel stands was used as execution points and burial grounds respectively.

The scary ambience and the whispered talks continued for about a week. That was when the whole saga of the Ghost Stories was debunked! Few last year architecture students ,staying in the back hostel,had returned from their class trip around 1 am on that fateful friday.Since they had the permission letter signed by the hostel warden and the Principal ,our watch man had let them in. My class mate had seen one of those girls while she was walking towards the back hostel building. Yes she had long hair and she was wearing a light pink(not white) salwar.The girl had seen the ghost in a flash ,definitely not long enough to register the hand bag and the suitcase that she was carrying! All these girls had left for their homes the next day and had returned only the next week, because of which we had full seven days to speculate and develop exotic theories!