July 16 , 2014Scary Stories , Short Stories Leave a comment It was his first time in Karachi . The coastal city seemed to sprawl on forever , and for a little while he was concerned about getting lost there . But , fortunately he had a lot of friends accompanying him . One look at his them as they stood gathered there outside the bus station and he felt neither alone , nor afraid . He looked back down at the whistle and then to everyone else slowly forming groups of different sizes . He was the only one travelling alone ; Since he had a few relatives he wanted to meet , and a few traders he had to discuss terms with . ' I had best get going ' he thought . It was all a very boring affair . He wanted to finish his visits as quickly as possible so he could meet up with his friends and maybe go around the city seeing the sights . The British had left only a few years ago and the city had since become a model city for development and growth . It was called ' the city of light ' and he wanted to see exactly why it was so . It took him five minutes to toil to get to her house and he was grateful for it not being any farther . She offered him food as he sat on the threshold of her tiny house , trying to catch his breath . He tried to refuse , thinking he should probably be joining his friends soon , but she insisted . " I really can 't let you go , son . You have helped this old woman . Besides , I have a real treat for you if you can do me just one more favour . " she said earnestly . " I 'll get you some food first . You will need your strength " she said , bringing him a tray full of pilaf rice . " Let me know when you 're done " she said , and left him to go elsewhere . He was grateful for the food . His stomach had been aching for a while now and some Pilaf was just the thing he needed . So , he dug in eagerly , searching the rice for some meat . He found a finger . His body gave a shudder and he immediately spat out the rice he had been chewing . He held up the finger he had found to the light and realized beyond doubt that it really was a human finger . That woman was a cannibal . The horrifying realization hit him like a hammer and he dropped the finger out of shock . He looked around him , searching for a way to escape . The woman was waiting outside , he knew , and he did not want to risk running through her . She could be carrying any number of weapons and he needed to be very , very careful about how he dealt with the situation from then on . One wrong move , and he could be the next guy to be made into pilaf rice . She led him out back to a courtyard , where a dead body was indeed placed , covered by a large white sheet on a wooden bed . He wondered if that was really her son . Did she intend to eat her own son as well ? Perhaps , the body was simply another one of her victims , and he was actually helping her clean him up for her next meal . The thought was chilling . He was treading in dangerous territory he knew , so his senses became extremely alert to every single move the woman made . She was carrying an oil lantern and went over to stand by the body 's head holding up the lantern for light . He brought some water in a large steel bucket , and began to bathe the body , keeping an eye on the woman as best as he could . The first thing he noticed was that the body was not very cold to the touch . Fresh kill , perhaps , he thought . Though a cold shiver ran through his spine , he concentrated on not letting any emotion show on his face . He required every single bit of concentration he could muster to stay in control of the situation , pouring water over the body slowly , and trying to adjust his eyes to the dark . He quickly became aware of an advantage he had . With the woman standing at the head of the body , she cast a very sharp shadow across the walls and he could see if she moved slightly even with his back turned to her . He thought about it a bit and decided that if the woman really wanted to kill him then he might as well try to lure her into an attack . He saw what happened next quite clearly as shadows started to shift . The woman 's left arm slowly drew out something from within the folds of her clothes and raised it high to attack . At the same time something else happened just as slowly though . Something he had not been expecting . It felt like terror creeping up his limbs as he saw the body 's right arm move as well , drawing out something long and blunt from under the shroud . He jumped away from them reflexively . Fortunately for him the old woman chose to strike at the same moment ; her iron rod missed him by mere inches as she brought it down . Her son , who had sat up to reach him , was not so lucky . Her full - blooded swing hit him to the side of his skull and he was knocked out immediately from the hit . He could not let her recover , either . He jumped right at her and delivered a kick straight into her chest . She was lifted clean off her feet and flew back into the wall . That was it . He did not check to see if either of them was still conscious . He ran out of the house as quickly as he could , covered in cold sweat and short of breath as he was . And as soon he reached the street , he found the whistle his friend had given him and started blowing as hard as he could . It did not take very long for him to gather a crowd . Some of his friends arrived as well , and he quickly told them what had happened . The police arrived soon after , and began searching the house for the the woman and her son . The search resulted in a few shocking discoveries as bones of over 50 people were found from the basement of the house . The woman , and her son were arrested . Apparently they had been luring people to the house and eating them for quite a while . Also , according to them , they were not the only ones . Not by a long shot . July 13 , 2014Scary Stories Leave a comment There is a very popular hill - station in Pakistan called ' Murree ' , located to the north of the capital , Islamabad . It remains the most popular getaway for people during the hot summer months and even when my father was in his late teens ( some 30 - 35 years ago ) his entire family used to spend their summers there , usually renting a large guest - house to accommodate everyone . All of memories of green , pleasant - weathered Murree are wonderful to hear about . All , except one . The incident , or rather a series of incidents , occurred in the summers soon after he had his intermediate exams ( comparable to ' A ' levels , or High school ) . Afterwards , he went to Murree for the break , waiting for his results to come out . Most of his family was already there , except my granddad who had to stay back in Lahore a little while longer , due to work . Also , that particular summer they could not rent their usual guest - house and had to rent a different place that was quite like a mansion or rather a haveli . I should probably say something about the haveli first . My dad took me there a few years ago , and only after seeing it did I realize how apt its name ' Peeli Haveli ' ( translates to Yellow Mansion ) was . Its bright yellow colour was a sharp contrast to most of the dull and grey dwellings around Murree , and makes the place instantly recognizable , even though it lies mostly in ruins now . It is located right on the edge of a cliff - face with a sheer drop of a few hundred feet , and the way it has collapsed makes it look like it is slowly slipping over the edge . There is also a graveyard around 200 feet from the haveli , and my dad developed a most unfortunate habit of spending a lot of time there at night , smoking and listening to a transistor radio sitting on one of the graves . With hindsight , it is possible he ' disturbed ' something there , but it is difficult to say for sure , since nothing ever happened in the graveyard itself . As previously mentioned , he had been waiting for his results to come out and when they did , he had obtained a high enough grade to win a scholarship and a prize . It was a very proud moment for him so he decided to treat his family to something with the prize money . My dad 's younger siblings begged to be taken to a movie at the cinema , and he obliged . But , since he did not much like going to the movies himself , he decided to simply pay for everyone else , and stay at home reading books . It was the middle of the afternoon and he was alone at home , lying in his room reading a popular magazine series called ' Three women , three stories ' when he felt as if the room had gotten considerably darker quite quickly . It was the sort of dark that comes when someone casts a shade on you , so he looked up from the magazine to the door leading to the veranda to see if someone had decided to come back early from the movie . It was not someone from his family . It was probably not even something human . ' She ' was tall , and had long hair that reached down to the floor all around her . Her face was human , except that she had really long fangs . Her wide , bloodshot eyes were staring at him with unbridled malice in them . As she began to move towards him he was frozen in place by terror of her gaze , and could do nothing but scream . He fainted soon after , overcome by fear . His family came back home to find all the lights in the house turned off . They searched the house for him , wondering where he was and found lying mostly unconscious and feverish . They called a doctor who tried and failed to improve his condition but from his occasional hysterical mutterings they surmised that he was terrified of something . It did not take him long after that to regain consciousness and everyone was quite interested in finding out exactly what had happened to him . His description of what he saw did not convince everyone , and some even suggested that perhaps one of the village women had simply been trespassing and the shock of the seeing her there had warped his memory . Nevertheless , from that very night things started to happen in the haveli which could not be put down to coincidence , shock or confusion for long . At first , after most of them were in bed to sleep at night , the doors started to open and then close all on their own . This happened slowly at first , and was dismissed as wind , since strong winds are common in Murree , being at an altitude of around 3000 meters . But then a few people saw a door handle being twisted and the door opened violently . My uncles checked the house over and over again for possible intruders but they only managed to confirm that they were alone . And the doors continued to open and close throughout the night . After evening the next day , they were sitting together , discussing all that had happened the night before when they heard a distinctly strong * click * . A light went out . Another * click * . The light came back on . The clicking sound had come from the copper plated light switches used in the house , and that kind of light switches take a considerable amount of force to be turned on or off . And yet , right in front of them the switch turned off again , and then turned back on . Soon , it was happening all over the house , and most of my dad 's family simply sat huddled in one room , afraid of the things that were happening around them . The next day they decided to contact my granddad about the situation who responded with a firm ' Don 't be stupid . You are all imagining things ' . My grandfather was a very strong - willed and rational man . But he still decided to join them in Murree soon after . That evening , they sat together having dinner in the dining hall . It was a large room with a long window right on the cliff - edge and though it was dark outside , the light right outside on the ceiling enabled them to see around a hundred feet in each direction , albeit faintly . My dad , granddad and my eldest uncle were sitting at the dining table facing the window when all three of them saw someone walking across the window . Amazed and shocked , the three of them ran to the window , and opened it to see who it was . Granddad used to keep a powerful torch at hand and tried to use it to find who it had been , but they knew they would not find anyone . Not unless there was someone who could walk on thin air . That was it for my granddad as well . The very next day they were packed and out of the haveli for good . The haveli itself gained a very nasty reputation for being haunted in the years that followed . It currently lies in a state of disuse and disrepair . This story comes from my dad and he was around 18 at the time of this particular incident . It was summer time so he went visiting relatives in a city called Sialkot . His maternal family was based there , living in a few houses in a small cluster . A few of his cousins and one of his uncles , Uncle Arshad , who was also quite young ( being around 25 at the time ) , also joined him there . During their stay they heard a few stories of a house their family owned . It was located two houses down the street and was unoccupied house at the time . Its only utility was that the courtyard ( which was open to the sky ) was used as a gym of sorts by the local bodybuilders during daytime . One of the stories they were told was that of a local bodybuilder named Manna . Manna was alone lifting weights there one day , and one time after getting up to stretch after lifting something particularly heavy he was patted on the back and told ' Well done ' . Only , he knew there was no one else in the room . He had stopped being there alone after that . My dad and his uncle were quite excited after hearing all that and being ' Young and foolish ' they decided to spend a night there . They were warned against it , a few of the elders including their maternal grandfather calling them fools for meddling in ' things you do not understand ' but their minds were set . In the end , they decided that they would enter the house after dark , a little before midnight , and sleep there leaving just after daybreak . Since the house was not in use they decided to sleep on the roof on charpai 's ( which is a traditional woven bed in the Indian subcontinent ) . They also instructed their watchman to lock the main door after they had entered to ensure no one else could enter after them and to come open the door immediately after daybreak . Apparently the watchman laughed after hearing this and told them he would keep the key ready because they would be calling him long before that . The next night before they were supposed to go to the house one of their elders told them to try something . He told them to set up a carom board in the courtyard and just leave it there , untouched , and check it sometime after . They set it up in the house as instructed , and carried their charpai 's to the roof after that . It was difficult doing all of it in the dark , since they house did not have an electric supply . Their only source of light was an oil lantern , and the light it cast was dim and yellow , but they were still happy for the lack of ghost sightings . They spent the first hour playing cards and nothing seemed to happen . Much more relaxed about the house , they began to wonder what everyone was on about . And then , during one of the rounds , they heard the unmistakeable sound of the hand - pump in the courtyard being worked , and the sound of water flowing . They were four floors up , on the roof , but that sound still sent a shiver through them . They tried to ignore it the best they could , but the hand - pump continued pumping water on its own . Much quieter now , they tried to keep playing cards but around 1 am they just gave up and decided to sleep instead . My dad slept on one of the charpai 's on the edge , and slept like a rock till he was woken up by someone shaking him . He got up to the frightened face of one of his cousins . He pointed to Uncle Arshad who had been sleeping in his boxers on the far edge . It was then that he noticed that he seemed to be writhing in pain , clutching his throat . They tried to shake him awake , but it took a whole minute filled with the fear of what was happening to wake him up . Uncle Arshad woke up breathing heavily and still clutching his throat . He looked at them and said , " We need to leave this place , now ! " They were even more frightened after that . They decided to leave but remembered that the house entrance was still locked . So , they started shouting to get the watchman 's attention . Soon enough though , they got the attention of my dad 's grandfather instead who had been sleeping on the roof of his house anticipating something of the sort . After a few choice curses he sent for the watchman and told them that he would be waiting for them downstairs . They still had to climb down the stairs though . Four flights of stairs , in pitch black darkness , with nothing but the dim light of the lantern to guide them . They climbed down slowly and with much arguing about who would climb down first , and who would be at the rear . They kept their eyes nearly shut and tried not to look around them , since they kept imagining things in the dark , looking back at them , or perhaps one of them being dragged off . And Uncle Arshad was still clutching his throat ; the image of him writhing still fresh in all of their heads . When they finally got to the courtyard they went past the carom board , and all of them noticed that all the pieces were now in the pockets . When they finally got to the door the watchman was waiting for them , with a large smile on his face . " So are all you young ones done here ? Has your warm blood run cold yet ? " he said , laughing at them . After they were out of the house , they asked Uncle Arshad what had happened , but he refused to tell them anything till he was out of the darkness . So they took him to a street lamp and they sat under it till he calmed down and stopped shivering with fear . And then he told them his story : " As I fell asleep I dreamt that I was in the house . I walked down to the courtyard and in my dream I started urinating there . Just then , an old man with a long beard and terrifying eyes came and grabbed me by the throat . He shouted ' How dare you defile this sacred place ? ! ' and lifted my up in the air with one hand . I was helpless , kicking and gasping for air when all of you woke me " Writer 's note : This particular story comes from my father and has always been one that took my imagination to places I did not want to visit . I could have taken my father for his word but for the sake of keeping this account ' factual ' I tried to confirm its details from two different people . During my attempt to validate it I found that not only is this incident and the haunting of the building in question real , but there are people living in that house today who deal with this sort of phenomenon on a regular basis . Hello again . Firstly , I wish to apologize for the delay . Managing to visit the house hit a snag as the owner of the house was not completely willing to let us visit the empty house . This did not surprise me much as I thought a house under construction was hardly a safe place to be . But as we tried to talk our way into convincing him to let us see for ourselves we realized that his reason for not allowing us in kept changing . At first it was " There might be open connections about , and I cannot allow young lives to be endangered like this " . After a little while it changed to " The construction workers might have left some dangerous materials about " . It took a little bit of talking to get him to finally admit that he was genuinely worried for our safety , but in a supernatural and spiritual sense , rather than a physical one . At that point we were more interested than ever to be allowed to enter and he was refusing us entry outright . It was after a lot more convincing that we managed to get his permission to view the house from within the boundary , on the condition that we do not physically enter any of the rooms , and that the watchman supervises our tour . I went with a lot of other excited volunteers . But for all the excitement , I was rather disappointed … for the most part . I did not see any shadows . I did not see even one ghost , let alone an entire family of them . No shadows flitting across our view , no moving chairs . I said ' for the most part ' , though , because I did see , or rather heard a few things which the rest of my fellow ghost - hunters failed to see and hear . They were too busy being excited and calling out the ghosts , while I was silently and meticulously capturing all angles in the house . I was left alone in each part of the house , as they moved forward to the next part , leaving me to see , feel and hear the house in clarity . The first I felt was a gentle push to the side . I looked right and left expecting to find my brother - in - law , Ruffi , there but saw no one . I was alarmed , but looked down to notice that I had managed to avoid stepping on an upturned nail . I moved on , slowly now , still taking pictures . I will attribute this push to tense muscles and nothing else though . The next , and more solid piece of evidence came from what I heard . Taps would open as I went past each of the toilets in the house , and close as I moved further away . I am frankly surprised no one else noticed , but perhaps there was enough wind to cover the sound . Perhaps , I was just hearing things . And finally , it was the terrified face of the watchman as my tour - fellows called out the ghosts . He was convinced , completely convinced , that the Ghosts would hear us and come out . He kept telling me not to lag behind . Once he came to me and asked to ' Please tell these children not to call them out to see you . What if they follow you home ? … ' I am writing this post to let you guys know something interesting I heard recently . My family home is in the suburbs of Lahore , and since it a part of Lahore that was only plotted maybe 10 - 11 years ago , there is a lot of land that has still not been developed . When we started building our house around 7 years ago there was a half - finished house on the other side of the road . 7 years on , we have been living in our house for 6 years now but the house has never been built completely and to my knowledge has never been occupied by a family . A while ago we started seeing a watchman taking care of it , but apart from that the house has stayed there in exactly the same condition . Two days ago I was out looking at my lawn when our maid came and related this story to me . We have been noticing some odd phenomenon in our home as well , including our maid being called by someone in my mother 's voice in the middle of the night , and our maid happened to discuss it with the watchman from the house I mentioned . He heard her tale and laughed it off . He said , " You are afraid of a single ghost when I have an entire family of them haunting me for the last year ! " . He then proceeded to tell her how he had been seeing shadows drifting in the house , hearing children laugh , and also hearing weird sounds in the house . Paato was once invited to attend a wedding in another village once . He travelled to that village on foot during the day , and unfortunately due to some delays it was already getting dark by the time he was only midway back to his own village . The path was a narrow one , winding through thick jungle and travelling on it after dark was quite dangerous . So Paato was getting quite nervous , and becoming aware of his surroundings more and more by the moment . Robbers and highwaymen were about the best he could hope to meet on the road , since tigers and other beasts often come out to hunt in the dark . He could not even run properly if that were to happen , since the dress he was wearing had pants that would surely trip him over ( a ' Dhoti ' ) . Paato was fed a fair meal and the woman seemed to be friendly enough . The food and the warmth of the night put him at ease , so he started to become quite drowsy . The woman made a bed for him on the floor , choosing to sleep on the farther end of the fairly large room herself . Paato 's bed was made right up against a table on which rested the only source of light in the dark : A brightly burning candle . As he lay down he felt much too exhausted from the day to even get up and blow out the candle himself . He tried covering his face under the sheets , but that still did not help since there were tiny holes in his sheets through which he could still see the candle . He could also see the woman sitting down on her bed through a similar hole , still sitting up , so he asked her to kindly blow out the candle for him . His eye grew larger under the sheets as he saw the woman , sitting down stretch her arm slowly , steadily to cover the distance from her bed to his bed to the candle above it , and smother the flame . If the sight of the snake - like stretched out arm had not been frightening enough , the last view of the woman 's face as the light went out definitely was . Her face was twisted , terrible , with wide hungry eyes under which her wild hair that gave her the impression of a wild animal . She was looking right at him lying with as he lay there when the lights went out , with a wry smile curled on her face . It was the face of his death . Paato lay there in utter shock for a little while , at loss of what to do . He could not simply run . He would never make it out of the house . The creature would be onto him in an instant with its stretching limbs . He could also not lay there for much longer . Who knew how long it would be before the creature did whatever it had lured him there for ? So Paato thought up a plan ; the best plan he could come up with given his situation . He quickly took off his pants - his dhoti to allow himself to sprint , quietly slipped out of the bush and started running as fast as he could . The thing realized what had happened though and came after him quickly enough . But Paato kept running , never looking back once even though the thing kept shouting at him to stop and come back . Finally , just as he seemed he would give up himself , the thing stopped chasing him . But it shouted something at him which re - froze Paato 's insides just before he was out of its earshot : This however was not true . Paato ran for what seemed like hours to him , but , there was no ' sister ' lying in ambush on the path ahead . He made it back home just as the roosters were screeching . He was breathless , feverish and quite delirious . I would like to say that it ended well for Paato , but it did not . He is said to have died of the fever he got that night , never recovering from the terror . But not before letting his family , and the village , know of the terrifying danger lying in wait for them in the dark jungles . It was a huge house with a gigantic lounge on both the upper and lower floors , with a circular staircase right in the middle of the house . I remember quite clearly that the upper floor was always rather creepy . It was usually quite dark , and we only ever really went upstairs when we needed to sleep . I always tried to pass through the dimly lit lounge as quickly as possible and I would run to and from the staircase whenever I needed to sneak downstairs for food , or to go to his room . The lounge racked my nerves for some reason , though I am sure the fear was very irrational . Nevertheless I would never spend too much time there , quite like how we run out of a basement after switching its light off . It was late one night and ' B ' and I were in his room deciding if we should watch a movie , or play games . I wanted to watch a horror movie , and ' B ' , who had always been a horror movie buff as far as I knew , simply kept shaking his head telling me he couldn 't watch a horror movie . He did not really offer me a reason for this sudden change in tastes so I got curious and asked him why he didn 't want to watch one . He simply said " Because I am scared . " I looked at him , puzzled . As the silence stretched over a few seconds he understood that my silence meant that I needed more of an explanation than that , so he sighed , looked around edgily , and said " Things happened … In this room … recently " . " It was a little before you came to visit . I was sleeping in my room one night when I was suddenly woken up by the weight of someone sitting on my chest . In the dim light I made out the face of a woman … a beautiful woman . She had beautiful black hair and had I not been scared to death by a stranger sitting on my chest , I would have found her quite attractive . She was staring at me hungrily , and though I tried to shout at her to let me go , I could not make a sound . I tried to struggle out of her hold , but she held on with a beastly might and slowly started undoing my trousers . I was afraid of what she might do to me , but I was certainly not expecting what happened after . Before I knew what was going on , she was straddling me , with the same greedy and hungry eyes , and as I looked at her , she slowly turned into a terrifyingly scary old woman straight out of a nightmare . Her hair grew white from black and her face aged rapidly in front of my eyes . Her eyes , though hollow , became hungrier , and even more horrifying than before . I do not know where I found the strength from , but I was scared so much that I managed to kick the old hag in the chest , at which she flew - or floated into the wall in front of my bed , leaving a smudgy imprint of her face on the wall as she dissolved inside it . I expected her to return any moment from the wall , but she didn 't . When I finally managed to muster enough courage to get up , the first thing I did was to take my shirt off and wipe the imprint of her face from the wall . I felt considerably better after the imprint was gone , but I went back to the bed as quickly as I could , hiding myself under the sheets . I lay there till I fell asleep " By this point of the story I was turning around to look at the wall where the smudge was supposed to have appeared , and indeed , the wall was somewhat marked . But his story was not quite convincing . I felt that he could have , and must have dreamt it all . It happens to all teenage boys . So I told him just that , at which he shook his head knowingly and said " Yes , I know what you mean . But the thing is , that I know it definitely happened . " " Because when I woke up the next morning , I was not wearing my shirt , and it was lying crumpled exactly where I had left it the night before , smudged , and dirty … And … because … " He grew quite hesitant . I am still not quite sure whether I believe his story or not . All I know is that we made sure we stayed awake till the sun came out every night after that till I went away . He never mentioned if he saw her again . But I 'm not sure it is something he would tell anyone , in any case .