Ghost Hunter Gaurav Tiwari: Free Chapter Read: Indian Paranormal Society

The Haunted Apartment in Delhi

The ‘survival hypothesis’ is a theory that states a person’s
personality and consciousness survive the physical death
of the body. That means we will have the same emotions,
same pain, anger, love, hatred, etc., even after death. That
being said, a good person in life will be a good person after
death. A bully in life will be a bully after his death.
– gaurav tiwari

June 2016 (one month before Gaurav’s death)

Some people revel in the sensory calm that being alone brings. Gaurav was one such person for sure; he found himself at his creative best when in solitude. But this was a phase when being all by himself was probably his worst nightmare. He didn’t really say this to anyone explicitly. That wasn’t his style. Gaurav kept a lot of things to himself, and even the person closest to him wouldn’t know what was going on in his mind. He sometimes took solace in his imagination; a fort that only he could enter. He kept himself tremendously busy with cases so that an idle mind did not become the devil’s workshop. But spirits were real—both
good ones and bad ones. It’s all in the mind who you let win at the end of the day. Gaurav’s battle was real too, and nobody could really comprehend it; nobody could read
his mind. He had always been unpredictable and this very attribute of his made it difficult for his family and friends to guess what was in store for all of them. During this time, Gaurav—quite unusually for him—used to prefer investigating cases on his own. He had
stopped travelling to other locations, but even in Delhi, there were times when he would not accompany Raj for cases. He told him that it was important that he spend more time at home than he had earlier. ‘I guess it’s important to balance personal and professional lives,’ he had told him once. Siddharth was in Delhi then for a few months to learn from hismentor, and he noted that Gaurav was busy with work as usual. The only difference was that he would visit places alone. Also, there were days when he spent more time with Siddharth at the office than with Raj, who was a very close friend. Raj himself had become busier than usual. The number of requests for investigations had shot up over the years. This was when IPS was actually at its peak. In fact, many people, mostly youngsters, inspired
by Gaurav, took a cue and began their own investigation teams. Some of these groups didn’t meet standards though, and damaged the reputation of legitimate investigators. It irked Gaurav, but when he was asked to comment on this by news channels, he refrained from being too vocal.
‘Your work will speak for itself. Nothing else matters. The good, bad, ugly part will be exposed over the years,’ he had said once. It had been over a fortnight since Raj had met Gaurav because he had travelled to Bhopal for work related to his business. He called him one evening. ‘Bhai, bahut din ho gaye.
Milte hain (Brother, it’s been many days since we have met.
Let’s meet)?’
‘Haan, bade log! Aap ke paas samay kaha hain hum se
milne ke liye (You are a busy man! Why will you meet me)?’
Gaurav had teased.
‘Okay, okay. Don’t pull my leg now. I’ll pick you up
tomorrow afternoon. Let’s catch up over some snacks and
drinks. What say?’
‘Yeah. Drinks like Thums Up for me.’
The night before the much-awaited get-together, Raj
had a case to investigate. He would be going alone. Little
did he know that it would turn out to be one of his most
spine-chilling cases …
Malti was a single mother living with her son and daughter in Ghaziabad. She had moved there from Greater Kailash after divorcing her husband. Property rates were cheaper there, and though the place was infamous for not being safe after dusk, she had decided to take the risk. It was a posh apartment that she had bought at quite an affordable price. Also, her office in Noida was not too far away from there, so she felt it was a good decision. Along with the three of them, there was a full-time maid in the house who helped take care of her children—sixyear-old Ratul and two-year-old Tiasha. It was a spacious 3 BHK flat—well-planned, modern and very cool. Nothing could ever have hinted at any sort of a haunting.
Everything was okay for the first few days after they moved in, until one night …
Malti was working on her laptop. She had a presentation to make for a client the next morning, and she had not been able to work on it at the office as there had been backto-back meetings and conference calls. It must have been around 11 p.m. Her kids had gone to sleep and so had the maid, Dolly. Malti heard some noises coming from the dining
room, which was where Dolly preferred to sleep at night as she found it comfortable. Malti saved the PowerPoint presentation she was working on and, quite sleepily, walked
towards where the noises were getting louder. She saw the fridge door was open, and in the light emitting from it, she could see someone sitting near it.
‘Dolly, is that you?’ she asked.
The noises stopped.
‘Dolly—’ Malti stopped short. She was staring at
someone who looked exactly like her, with uncooked meat
in her hands that she had been devouring. The person who
looked like Malti smiled devilishly at her.
‘Look, we have enough food out here.’ She pointed at the
fridge stocked with human flesh—someone’s decapitated
head lay on the upper tray, other body parts elsewhere and
fresh blood dripped from the meat. ‘No, no. Stay. I’m here. You need not worry at all.’ He
unpacked his equipment, educating her about the use of
each of the gadgets as he did so.
‘Seems genuine,’ she said.
‘Absolutely. There is no room for manipulation in our
approach. By the end of this session, you will understand.
It’s all scientific and I’ll even document the same and mail
it to you.’
Raj switched on the EVP recorder and picked up the
full-spectrum camera.
‘You hold this,’ he told Malti, handing her an EMF
meter which had already begun spiking.
There had been no breeze outside when he had entered the building. Nor were any of the windows in the flat open. Yet, once Raj entered and the door heaved to a close, there
was a howl, soft and whining. Given the lingering heat of summer, the drawing room was surprisingly cold, enough to raise the hair on his arms. As Raj moved through the door
to one of the bedrooms, he thought he heard laughter—not
a happy laugh though, more of a snigger.
‘Are your children inside?’ he asked.
‘No, I didn’t want to take that chance. They are at a
neighbour’s place.’
‘Do you hear what I hear? Do you feel what I feel?’
‘I … I don’t quite get you. What …’
‘Never mind. I’ll explain later.’
Once they were over the threshold of Malti’s bedroom
where the incident had occurred, Raj stood for a moment and looked at the mirror. ‘Do you know mirrors are never to be placed opposite where you sleep?’ he asked Malti.
‘No. But why?’
‘It is believed that mirrors are portals to the other world.’
‘The other world?’
‘Yes. In simple words, the world of the dead.’
The very next second, the door slammed shut behind
them. They jerked around. There was no breeze that could
have caused that. Then the lock clicked. The windows
transformed into a solid wall and, with their disappearance,
Raj felt his head spinning. The lights went out and he could
see nothing now. Before he could say anything, he felt his
mouth seal shut. Eyes appeared in the blackness with no
form and then the apparition of a gaunt man appeared
before him, first faint and then almost as solid as a flesh and
blood person. He smiled and rubbed his hands together.
‘You are at the wrong place,’ he snarled.
Raj remembered he had a lighter in his pocket. He lit it.‘Ms Malti, are you there?’ he asked. But there was nobody there. His voice echoed. Was he even in the same apartment he had come to investigate? It certainly didn’t feel like it. Raj strained his eyes and tried to locate where the switches were. When he spotted them, he walked there slowly. He was almost near it when someone blew out the flame of the lighter.
‘Get the hell out of here,’ someone whispered in both his ears. The sound of a child screaming emerged from the momentary silence after the whisper. At first it was distant but it came steadily closer, all the while becoming more intense, more distressed, until it was undeniably in the house itself. Then it all stopped and there was an eerie silence. The clicking of locks could be heard. The windows that had disappeared a while ago were now replaced by a view of gallows on a starlit night. The lights came on, then flickered and went out. Then, from the gloom, there stepped the same gaunt man, rubbing his hands together,
his white frozen lips pulled tight over broken teeth. Taking a step forward, he opened his crooked mouth to speak. ‘I have a son who is dependent on me. Please spare me.’
‘Your appeal is denied. You will be hanged till death at sunrise,’ someone said.
The man screamed, the noise accompanied by the highpitched cry of his child … it grew louder with every second!
Raj stood there unable to move even an eyelid, as if he was paralysed. He heard their pain, felt it; felt it in his heart. A ghost is but an emotion—be it happy, sad, angry—twisted out of shape. It wants to make its presence felt and there are times when it also wants you to feel what it feels, to undo what wrong might have happened when it breathed.
‘Mr Raj … Mr Raj …’ Malti woke him up with a nudge. ‘What …’ Raj sat up and looked around. He heard the clock ticking and realised he was sweating profusely.
‘What time …’ he tried hard to be audible, but he was still not completely in his senses. He understood he’d had a vision and the entity or entities in the apartment had
communicated to him via it.‘It’s 3.35. ‘I don’t … remember …’ He noticed he was in a different
room than the one he’d been in, and there was another woman with Malti.
‘She is my maid, Dolly,’ Malti said. She told him they had brought him to the guest room when he’d been unconscious.
Raj stood up, asked the ladies to follow him out of the apartment and hurried to take the lift downstairs. ‘Mr Raj … is everything okay?’ Malti said as they sat on a bench in the lawn.‘This place is one of the creepiest I’ve come across,
really. But the presence has a purpose and I’ll calm it,’
Raj said and collected his equipment from Dolly who had
brought it downstairs.
‘We will need to cleanse your house soon and I’m hoping
things will be fine then.’
The visions Raj had had were real. They were basically a visit to the other world through his astral body which had wandered off to find out about the place and its curse.
‘What is your flat number, Malti?’
‘B-602. Why?’
‘I did some research about this place before I came. Did you know that your flat number and the house number of the property that was sold to the real estate developers are the same?’
She shook her head. ‘No. But why is that important?’
‘I had a vision back up there … and let me tell you it
was malefic.’ He told the two of them what he’d seen and
continued with his findings, joining the dots of whatever he
had seen or heard in the vision. Google also helped. Sometime in the early 1990s, a man was supposedly falsely accused of a murder and hanged to death. He had pleaded not guilty and said he was being framed by some influential people. But nothing had helped. A few
days after his execution, his only child, a six-year-old boy, was found dead outside the house. Apparently, he was run over by a truck. Some said the man’s younger brother had something to do with what had happened as he had wanted to sell the property and move abroad with his family. But there was no evidence to back this theory. After the deaths, the brother and his family had shifted to South Delhi and lived there for a few years in a rented
place. When the property was sold off for a hefty amount of money, they had moved abroad. House number B-602 was soon demolished and the construction of an upscale
complex of two high-rises had begun in 2005. There were a few paranormal incidents during this period too, but the developers and promoters obviously didn’t mention them
to anyone to avoid any sort of issue while selling the flats. If a few labourers who workedthere are to be believed, a coworker had died there due to an unexplained occurrence.
His family was bribed and asked to keep quiet about it. No FIR was ever lodged. The man and his son’s spirits haunted the place and it could be ascertained why activities were probably more where Malti resided. Her flat was the house number. B-602!
The next day, Raj woke up a little late, sent an official mail to Malti about his findings and his suggestions, took a shower and drove straight to Dwarka where Gaurav lived. He would go over to Malti’s house on the weekend for a cleansing.
‘I’ll be there in a jiffy,’ Gaurav said over the phone as Raj waited in his car, listening to one of his favourite songs. He loved (and still enjoys) humming along to romantic numbers and was in a mood to unwind with his best friend.
‘Bhai, aapke to darshan durlabh ho gaye (Rarely do I get
to see you these days, brother)!’ Raj said as Gaurav got into
his car.
‘Shaadi to kar beta, phir samjhega (You will know when you
get married)!’
‘Find me a girl. I will.’
‘That will be tough, man! Wonder who will marry a blunt
guy like you!’ Gaurav joked.
‘Why are you keeping so much to yourself these days?’
Raj asked him as they ordered snacks at their favourite
hangout.
‘But I’ve always been like this, no?’ Gaurav smiled.
Raj studied his friend’s eyes, which were very expressive.
They spoke then too. There was something bothering
Gaurav for sure, but he wouldn’t tell.
‘Allen called,’ Gaurav said, changing the subject. Allen and Gaurav were like brothers.
‘The other day we chatted on Facebook Messenger.
Cool guy. I have to meet him one day.’
‘So he wants me to pay a visit to Australia again, but this
time, not to investigate for Haunting: Australia.’
‘Then?’
‘There is a Ted Talk-styled lecture tour that will be held
there next month. ‘Ah, you are already a speaker at Ted Talk.’
‘Yeah. But there is more to it. He wants us to collaborate
and write a book together.’
‘Whoa! That’s nice. You want to?’
‘Yes, yes. Why not? I want more and more people to
know about us, about Indian Paranormal Society. He was
also talking about a new television show.’
‘You should go.’
‘Let’s see …’ Gaurav said and paused for a while. Raj
looked at his friend. He seemed oddly distrait.
‘All good, buddy? You can tell me if there is anything
… Look—’
‘All good, all good. A lot to do! Come on, let’s have some
beer today.’
‘Great! Cheers!’
They had a good time, a very good time—and it was the
last time really that Gaurav and Raj spent time together.
Raj did meet him once more before Gaurav passed away,
but it was for a very brief time.
‘It’s been so many years since 2009 and IPS still remains … a primary resource recognised in India as a frontrunner in the anomalous research field by providing online training,
resources, a forum and a database of credible paranormal and anomalous evidence. Have I quoted you right there?
Got that from a few notes I made. Here, you can have a look.’ I showed them a part of my research notes.Meghna and Siddharth looked at my notes and nodded.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Meghna said. ‘So tell me, I want to hear from the pioneers of
paranormal investigation in India. What keeps you relevant after so many years, even after Gaurav’s untimely demise?’ ‘Hmm, I guess it’s our passion to unearth the truth and
nothing but the truth using the most genuine methods, and
all of them scientific.’
‘Great. Let me make a note of this too. I want the book to be authentic, and here’s hoping I can do justice to your journey and Gaurav Tiwari.’ I paused and then continued. ‘There’s one thing I wanted to ask … Can I accompany you on an investigation, or maybe I could join you to call spirits of the departed someday? It’s been a childhood wish! As much as I’m
fascinated by ghosts, I’ve not seen one yet. I’ve tried—
but alas!’ ‘They are everywhere, Abhirup. Even now, as we speak, they must be here. Their world and ours run parallel to each other. Sure, we will involve you when possible!’ Meghna
said with a smile and asked Siddharth to get some tea from a nearby vendor.‘Let’s hope he has opened his shop after the night’s rain!’ Siddharth said and walked out of the room.
I looked out of the window. It had stopped raining. I wondered for a moment how often we people see the dawn and take the sun for granted, we see the blackness become a vista, the world we love, our home—yet after that, do we think of the light and how it brings our world to life? Do we think about how it shows us colour instead of only grey, and warms us from our skin to our core, ignites our thoughts to beauty, inviting that light and warmth to enter our hearts, before respectfully giving us time to dream, giving us the moon and the stars? As the sky changes from charcoal to soft dove grey and you happen to see it, cherish the blue
that is to come. For the dawn is the invitation to the day, to the gift that is the present, if we live and love well with gratitude. It is the proof that after every darkness, there is
light; along with evil, good exists in the same world.
I switched off my laptop, put my notebook in my bag and stood up. ‘I’ll take your leave, Meghna.’
‘Wait for tea …’
‘Some other day. I need to get working on the book now.
Like NOW!’ I said and left.
I knew that once Siddharth returned, he and Meghna would probably talk about their next case. The work would go on. It always did, with Gaurav guiding them when he had
been alive, as well as now, from the afterlife. He continues to live through his team and the work they do.