The Haunted House
I and my parents left our old house and came to an apartment to stay. The previous family left the house within two days. It was actually a very strange house. The lights got turned off. There were patches of blood. But we stayed there anyways. After some days, I and my parents were taking dinner. The lights suddenly got turned off. My father checked and then the lights got turned on. After two minutes it again went off. It happened for ten minutes continuously. But we did not pay much attention to it. After some days when I was getting dressed up, I saw an old man inside the mirror. My parents also saw that. But later we thought it was our imagination. Then when I came back, I again saw that old man. I thought I was getting old that’s why I was imagining such things. But it was nothing like that. That night we all again saw that old man. This time he was calling us near him. He was making strange sounds. We got scared and ran away. In the morning he was calling us near him and was looking like a ghost. His body had some patches of blood. After that, we all decided to order pizza. We ordered it and after some time the doorbell rang and I opened the door. I was very shocked to see the delivery boy. He was the same old man who was coming and making strange sounds. After some days I went to the market. There I heard people talking about that old man in the apartment. ‘One old man died and his soul still moved here and scared people’ said the paanwala. They said that now he appears as a pizza delivery boy. I was so scared that I immediately came and told my parents about it. We decided to leave the apartment. That day my friend Supriya came to meet me. When my parents were packing their luggage, we thought of playing. While playing we saw a small tunnel near the garage. We went inside it and discovered a door. Unlocking the door, we entered the passage to the rest of the house. I rushed downstairs to find a big godown. It was quite dark inside. Supriya followed me carrying candles and saw a ghostly apparition inside the room. She screamed loudly. I fell short of breath when we heard the ghostly figure say, ‘Do not run away. Do not be afraid of me.’ He was the old man, the same old man who seemed like a ghost. He told us that the demon of Covid pandemic had snatched away his near and dear ones. Now he was left all alone. The sobbing old man narrated how cruel Covid had been to him. He had nobody to whom he could tell his sorrow. He stayed all alone in the godown shut off from the world of noise and feeling. It was because of his love for children, he came out at night to distribute pizza among them as ‘A Pizza delivery man’. Telling this he burst into tears. His voice was full of pain and remorse. We were unable to comfort him. We came to know that people were making stories about this old man. Nothing was true. We were sorry for him. I came and told my parents about the incident. We decided not to leave the house.
I came to know that ghosts do not exist. It’s all about our imagination, a creation of one’s fear. Today, the ‘Ghost of Covid’ haunts us everywhere. We are possessed and obsessed by it. Let us overcome it with a ‘tinge of humanity. There is light at the end of every tunnel. We planned to show the old man light of a new life amidst covid. We made him a part of our family.
‘Let humanity bloom amid COVID gloom.
