The Freakiest Shit I Overheard at ScareCon 2018

Back in my school days, sharing ghost stories was like a heated gossip session. I still remember that at exactly 11:11 AM on November 11, 2011, I was murmuring approvingly of a story that my classmate had told me about witnessing an exorcism. I was wondering what being possessed might feel like, when the realisation of what I was contemplating froze my veins in fear. That night, I had a recurring dream, each time sensing something unfamiliar pulling my feet, while the rest of me lay involuntarily still. It was probably just the power of suggestion paired with sleep paralysis, in retrospect. But even my spine-tingling terror wasn’t enough to deny the incredible high that those intense discussions and ghost story exchanges brought. So to relive it, I attended ScareCon 2018 on October 28, in Mumbai.

Essentially a first-time gathering of ‘ghost hunters’ powered by the Parapsychology And Investigations Research Society (PAIRS) in Mumbai, ScareCon set out to define and debate the Indian paranormal investigation landscape. The convention included a live stream session with Allan Tiller from the TV show Haunting Australia, panel discussions on the sixth sense amongst other unsettling things, and my favourite— an exchange of some seriously scary stories. Amidst fervent talks that dismissed tantric babas and busted myths about creepy women in white saris, I felt a surge of my childhood excitement, further heightened by the anecdotes of professionally certified paranormal investigators recounting nights spent on walkie-talkies amid whispers in the dark. From a poltergeist wreaking havoc in a building in Churchgate, Mumbai, to a spooky soft toy in Bhubaneshwar that responded very positively to the Electromagnetic Field Meter that’s used to detect spectral energy, here are some of the most spine-tingling tales we picked up from ScareCon 2018.

Sarbajeet Mohanty, PAIRS Co-founder, Paranormal Investigator and Certified Demonologist
“We were called in by an old lady living in a government colony in Bhubaneshwar, who lived with her grandchildren. She spoke of a lady wearing a red sari who would constantly visit their place and jump off from the terrace, without leaving behind a dead body. The neighbours, a family living on the first floor, claimed they saw an unseen force snatch away their dinner plates once. When the lady’s oldest grandson started to record with his iPad on the terrace, he heard something call out his name, and was suddenly pushed and injured by an unusual black mass. This forced them to call us. The lady believed that the spirit haunting the place had killed her son and daughter-in-law.

We shared the photograph with the psychic, who said she was getting a choking feeling and was seeing ropes. When I heard that the case had a violent past, I got excited, because that’s when you know you can collect proper evidence. We did a lockdown on the place and asked someone to keep watch to confirm if the incidents were true.

When we finally reached the place, just as we entered one of the rooms, we saw a pink cotton doll—I like to call it the ‘Annabelle of India’. It was a cotton teddy bear with no batteries, but the EMF sensor started blinking when I took it towards it, something that would never normally happen. We had someone standing outside with walkie-talkies and he confirmed hearing footsteps even though we could see the terrace was absolutely empty.

When we started communicating, one of the guys recording sounds started coughing. EMF machines were still sensing a presence, but nothing much was happening, so I picked up the doll to try to provoke it. The guy who had been coughing fell to the ground saying he was feeling choked, which is what the psychic had predicted. Since I was responsible for everyone’s safety, I tried to shout and distract the attention towards myself as I was holding the doll. I threw the doll in a corner but the EMF readings continued abruptly. That’s when another crew member who was handling the camera suddenly started shouting for help. We saw his leg being pulled by something unseen and noticed five dark finger marks on his leg. This is the kind of evidence we live for, so it felt amazing having collected so much of it.

By now everyone was tired and anxious. We gathered in the kitchen and tried to make sense of this tornado of energy. When we re-entered the room, the doll was back in its original position and even the finger marks had disappeared. While editing the footage, we slowed down the frames down and saw a white mass like an apparition emerging from a cupboard in the room. The lady haunting the place had been choked and killed, so she probably didn’t even realise that she was seeking revenge. We had to let them know it was not their place [to do so]. Sometimes, these spirits end up in our world and don’t even realise it, so just telling them that they don’t belong here usually works in the cleansing process.”

Meghna Porwal and Rith Deb, Paranormal Investigators, Indian Paranormal Society (IPS)
“People have visions or feel like they are being contacted, and it’s up to us to break it down further and check how real that is. It always helps if we are given a complete history and necessary details. We were once called to Kandivali, Mumbai on a case where there was a small baby involved. That made it a priority because children are innocent and are therefore more susceptible to such presences. The family called us, saying the baby was developing mysterious marks and scratches and so they were scared. After we investigated their family history, we realised that they had a family history of women committing suicide under pressure, something we had not been informed about before. When we tried to connect the dots, there were a lot of gaps. That’s when one of our investigators isolated himself in a room in that house for some time and tried to communicate with whatever was there. Until then we had just received hints of some kind of energy. But, later there was an instance where I asked whatever was there if it was trying to get in touch with the baby or harm it. We received a clear ‘yes’ on the recorder in a husky voice that was only recorded on the device. The lady responded to us in Bengali, which Rith understood, and so we changed our entire communication process and tried to empathise with them about their situation. We concluded that it was the ghost of the client’s sister-in-law who used to live in Kolkata, and was taking revenge for being mistreated and worried that her child, who was still alive and living with the client’s family, would suffer the same. We passed on the message to the client that the lady’s child should be sent back to her hometown and properly taken care of, after which the haunting stopped.”

Siddharth Bantval, Paranormal Investigator, IPS
“We were approached by a family who reported some paranormal activity at their Churchgate residence in Mumbai. Multiple people had multiple accounts of the story, so we couldn’t figure out what was actually happening. Our equipment was tampered with and moved about by a poltergeist. It was the scariest situation I’d been in as an investigator and it truly made me question everything. We believe that the son of the family who approached us, who used to disrespect his parents and never listened to them, acted as a trigger because every argument in their house led to some [paranormal] activity.

Sometimes these conscious energies have a greater purpose—perhaps whatever is causing the activity was unable to do something in their past life, and now they were using the opportunity to mend things. We investigate, document, and then analyse our findings—which goes on for a month—and then ask other researchers for their views on it. At this point, it is either debunked or if no one can explain it is confirmed as evidence of paranormal activity. We then follow a cleansing process, where we communicate with that energy, empathise with it and try to help it move on, while also providing counselling to the families involved because they might still live in fear and need help overcoming it.”

Pooja Vijay, PAIRS Co-Founder, Psychic Counsellor and Past Life Regression Therapist
“From a young age, I have shown psychic abilities and been able to predict things before they happen. Even though some people may call it man ka vehem (misconceptions of your mind), it was confirmed when I got a strange and inexplicably uncomfortable feeling that my mother was about to get into an accident. I warned her of it. Even though she promised to be careful, she ended up getting into a severe accident where she almost lost her life. The incident shook me, but also motivated me to do a course in Psychic Development at the Institute of Metaphysical Science in Florida, which in turn has helped me investigate many cases. I even experienced intense paranormal activity in my own house in Panvel, probably because I could sense them. It caused my AC to catch fire without any reason, made my younger son wake up screaming every night, and even made my housemaid fall terribly sick, so I had to call a team of experts to take care of it. Thereafter, I decided to lend my psychic abilities to help such investigations. Once, in West Bengal’s Kacheri Baari (the ruins of a courthouse known to be a place of former debauchery and sin), I sensed female spirits with heavy emotions, and I could tell that terrible things like rape and murder had occurred there. When the place was properly investigated, we actually found a well nearby where women, including prostitutes and young girls who were kidnapped, were held captive and tortured, because of which they had even committed suicide. We had sensed their energy and helped them cleanse the place.”