Ghosts in Sainik School Goalpara

Daytime and nighttime in Sainik School Goalpara are very different and contrasting. The activities of the students die down as lights go out and the grumbling of the generator dies down by 10 pm. The only audible sound that rings are the howling of the jackals and the foxes that inhabits in the shrubs and forest that surrounded the campus. Many stories made rounds about ghosts being sighted here and sometimes there. I haven’t seen any, but let me tell you, have felt many.

Unlike the senior houses, where seniors took the illegal liberty to keep awake for several reasons, junior houses didn’t enjoy such liberties and hence were always eerily silent after 10 pm. It was my first year in school and I was in my VIth standard.

A warm summer night, and the whistle from outside the reading room (room number 5) went off, marking the lights-out time. We quickly tied our respective mosquito nets and lay there in darkness, silent, according to the ‘rules’. I don’t remember for how long did I lay there like that on my bed, until the sound of the creaking door brought me back to my senses. Those days, I dint have a mobile phone to inspect the sound and neither an indiglo watch to check the time. My flash light lay dead for want of battery replacements, which I couldn’t get done as the CSD canteen was always occupied, every time I went there on Sundays.

My bed was at a slight distance from the door and three beds stood between mine and the door. The darkness was absolute and not even a faint shade of light existed. All I could hear was the distinct sound of an unhurried dragging walk. It paused momentarily somewhere between the door and my bed. Scared I was and could never know if there was anyone else in the room, awake and listening to what I was. A sound of a match stick striking came from where it stood…and then a long drag…of what seemed like someone smoking a cigarette. But no lights emerged from it. The dragging of the feet resumed.

I could not gather the courage to scream, lest I attracted this invisible visitor’s attention without being able to wake my roommates. The sound crossed towards the other half of the room, away from the door. A sound of fluttering pages came out. I perspired and still I wished I had a blanket to cover myself and hide. The sound became indistinct and the next thing I saw was the morning light and the familiar sound of our matron…”Utha Utha” (get up, get up).

Many of my fellow friends experienced the same. Some say, it was a prank. Might be prank it was. But a lot many things happened during those seven years, to me and to many others. All of them couldn’t be prank.