Haunted House Experiences: The Bachelor Flat in Mirpur

Ripon had just finished university life and come back to Dhaka with a job. To him this neon-lit city was quite unfamiliar. He had come for work a few times, but this was the first time he would live here permanently. For the past month, every bit of time left after his job went into looking for a bachelor flat. In that time he stayed in the hall of his childhood friend Rahat. From the experience of flat-hunting in Dhaka, it felt to him that looking for a flat as a bachelor in this city was a kind of crime. He and Rahat had combed the lanes of Dhaka a lot, but finding a place he liked became the biggest challenge. These haunted house experiences began with that search.

A Cheap Flat in Mirpur

At last, one night, lying in Rahat’s hall room scrolling Facebook on his mobile, Ripon’s eyes fell on a to-let advertisement. The rent was very tempting, but there was no photo of the flat. He messaged the advertiser’s inbox for details. The reply was that he should come and see the flat himself, and if he liked it they could talk about the rent.

The next day Ripon and Rahat went to the address of that flat in Mirpur. When they reached the front, they saw the outside was quite shiny like every other building around. At the gate the doorman asked who they were, and Ripon said they had come to rent a flat on the third floor. Hearing this, the doorman looked at the two of them with a strange sort of curiosity, then opened the gate and told them to go in. He phoned the owner. The owner came and took them upstairs. Inside, both liked the flat very much. There were two units on each floor. Since he liked it at first sight, Ripon paid the advance and confirmed the flat.

After finishing the day’s work at the new office, Ripon would come home tired. Mostly he brought food from a hotel, ate and fell asleep. About fifteen days passed like this. He lived alone in the whole flat. But he noticed one thing: whenever he left or entered the building, the doorman looked at him in a strange way, as if he wanted to say something.

Water in the Night

The events began after those fifteen days. One Thursday Ripon came home after office. Lying on the bed pressing his phone, he fell asleep from tiredness. Suddenly the sound of water running from a bathroom tap woke him. It seemed that someone was bathing in the common bathroom outside his room. A little surprised, Ripon walked that way. It felt as if a thin voice was humming a song from inside the bathroom, mostly covered by the sound of the tap. Ripon had been a bit timid since childhood. Having such an experience alone in a big flat at night worried him a great deal. Still he gathered courage, went to the bathroom and knocked on the door. The moment he knocked, the humming stopped, but the sound of the tap went on. Strangely, even when he pushed hard the door did not open, as if someone was stuck inside. After a few seconds of banging, the door suddenly opened. There was nobody inside the bathroom, but water was running nonstop from the tap. Thinking he had left it on by mistake, Ripon turned the tap off and closed the door, and the tap turned on again. This time he was quite frightened. He turned the tap off again, ran back to his bed and lay down, stiff with fear, and somehow fell asleep.

In the middle of the night a faint sound of anklets woke him. It felt as if the sound came from the dining room, slowly reached near his room, and faded into some corner of the room. As he switched on the phone flash by his head, everything went silent. Looking carefully he saw in one corner of the room a clotted darkness that the phone’s flash could not light. His throat dried up. He picked up the glass of water kept beside the bed. As he brought it to his mouth, in the faint light of the flash he saw blood-red water in the glass and was startled. The glass fell from his hand. He got out of bed and switched on the light. With the light on, everything in the room was normal. Ripon thought, it must be because he had come home from office and fallen asleep without bathing that these strange things were happening. After a bath everything would be fine.

Read more: [LINK: Real Haunted House Story: Three Cousins on a Rajshahi Rooftop]

The Mirror and the Dark

With these thoughts he went to the bathroom to bathe. Hanging his towel and clothes on the hanger, he stood before the bathroom mirror in the middle of the night. As he looked in the mirror, it seemed that from behind, the shape of a girl covered in black hair crossed from one side of his shoulder to the other for a moment, and two eyes peeped out from within the hair and vanished. In fear Ripon leapt back several steps. In one flash he had seen a strange look in that girl’s eyes. His hands and feet went numb with fear, and he began to sweat in that midnight bathroom. Gathering the last of his courage he walked toward the basin. He turned on the tap to splash water on his face, and instead of water, fresh blood began to fall on his hands. At once the bathroom bulb flickered several times and went out. Ripon ran out of the bathroom in one dash. As he came into the room, the room light broke and fell to the floor, and the room filled with pitch-black darkness.

He tiptoed to the kitchen and tried the switch, but there was no electricity in the flat. Groping around the kitchen he found a lighter, lit it and came back to the room. The lighter kept going out, and he kept lighting it again. In the trembling dim light of the lighter he saw, lying face-down on his bed, a shadowy figure wrapped in white cloth. As he bravely stepped forward the figure quickly rose, came toward him and vanished again. Ripon leapt onto the bed in one jump. The lighter in his hand went out with a puff. He pulled aside the curtain of the window by the bed. The faint light of the sodium lamp on the road outside fell into the room. His body could not take any more, and from tiredness and fear he let himself drop on the bed. For a moment everything was silent. Then suddenly something caught his foot and with one pull dragged him off the bed. Fallen on the floor, in the faint light he saw something under the bed. He screamed and ran toward the door of the room. Groping in the dark he opened the main door and in a moment was flung outside. At once everything was silent, as if nothing had happened a moment ago.

He did not know what to do. He had little acquaintance with the people of the neighbouring flat, and it was not right to wake them. For a moment he thought of going to the doorman’s room. But then he thought, what would he say if he woke him up at this hour. With no way out, he simply sat down on the stairs. How long he sat there, he does not know. Suddenly the Fajr adhan reached his ears. After a while he slowly opened the door and went in. Everything was normal, and the flat even had electricity. The bulb in the kitchen was glowing faintly. He switched on the dining room light too, and in that light peeped very carefully into the bedroom. No, everything was normal. Only the lighter lay on the floor, and a little way off, his phone. Taking the phone in hand he searched all around the room carefully, and nothing was wrong anywhere. For the rest of the night sleep did not come to him, and he passed the time until morning lying in bed holding his phone.

Rahat and Three Friends

In the morning he went to the bathroom again. The towel and clothes he had hung on the hanger were just as before. Bravely he turned on the tap, and everything was fine, no problem. After freshening up he went out and straight to his friend’s hall. Rahat was quite surprised to see Ripon turn up at the hall on a holiday without any call. Looking at him he saw tiredness on Ripon’s face. When he asked for the reason, Ripon told him what had happened to him the night before. Hearing it Rahat grew quite worried. He said, “A new flat, you live alone, and on top of that the pressure of a whole day’s work at the office, perhaps from tiredness a fear has settled in your mind.” They decided that Rahat would stay that night with Ripon at his new flat, to see whether there was really any serious problem.

Ripon spent that afternoon sleeping in his friend’s hall. When evening came, Rahat and two other friends went to Ripon’s flat. That night a new light was bought for Ripon’s room. After eating outside they went up. After a long time they all sat down to play cards together. With light snacks, cards and adda, almost midnight passed, but nothing unusual happened or came to notice. After midnight everyone fell asleep in one room. In the morning when he woke, Rahat said to Ripon, “Listen, all this is because of your tiredness. If there were something in this flat, then all four of us were here, somebody would have seen it, at least felt something. Nothing like that happened, everything was normal. And if you feel too afraid alone, rent the other room from next month. If one person stays with you, all your fear will go away.”

The Dining Room Tap

A few more days passed like this. Nothing notable happened in the meantime. As every day he came home from office, cooked for himself at night, ate, and fell asleep on his mobile. He was slowly almost forgetting the earlier incident. But after some days he noticed a strange thing. He has a bad habit: whenever he goes out, he changes the clothes he wore at home and leaves them on the bed. Coming back he would see his clothes scattered on the floor. The first day he thought he had probably forgotten and dropped them on the floor. But seeing it for several days in a row, he became afraid and worried. After this some more problems began. His necessary things began to go missing from the flat, and after some days they would be found on the bed or on the dining room floor. As this went on, Ripon decided in his mind that even if one month’s rent was lost, he would not stay in this house from next month, and would look for a new flat and move.

After some more days passed, one night he came home tired again. That day he did not feel like cooking, so he brought a beef tehari from outside. Coming in he saw that today too the tap of the dining room basin was running. He had grown quite used to this by now. He went close and turned off the tap, then went to the bathroom to bathe. Soon after turning on the shower he felt that something went whispering very fast past his ear and vanished. He startled for a moment. He quickly turned off the shower and tried to work out whether he had really heard any unusual sound. But nothing could be made out. Ripon thought it was the sound of the water from the shower that he was hearing as whispers. He finished bathing well and came out.

He went to the kitchen, took the tehari he had brought, and ate it sitting on the bed. While eating he was watching videos on his mobile. Suddenly it seemed that something like a shadow whooshed past in front of the bed. He startled. A cold current of fear ran down his body. He switched off the mobile and finished eating quickly. After that he noticed nothing much. Getting off the bed he put things more or less in order, and lay down with the room light left on. Watching his mobile, he did not notice when he fell asleep.

The Presence Above the Bed

From far away in the silent night a dog’s sad cry floated in. With that cry, the stench of rotting meat suddenly woke him. The whole room had a terrible stench, such as meat left rotting for many days would give, and it kept growing. Opening his eyes he saw that the room light was off. Looking toward the switchboard he saw there was no electricity in the flat. The smell kept growing in step with time. Groping beside the bed he looked for his mobile, but could not find it anywhere. His eyes had grown a little used to the dark. Lying there he stretched out a hand and moved the window curtain a little. But afterwards he felt it would perhaps have been better not to move the curtain. Because in the faint light coming through the window he saw, right above him, a shape clinging to the fan. The face of that shape was covered by long, tangled hair, and through the gaps in the hair two burning eyes like fire could be seen. His body froze with fear, and he had no strength to speak or move from the bed. It felt as if someone had chanted a spell and tied him to the bed. Suddenly he felt something cold on his body. By now he noticed that down the leg of that shape clinging above, a thin clotted blood was coming down. In that little light from the window the blood turned blackish and spread over his chest, with a terrible stench. He felt he would faint now.

But the final fear was still waiting for him. In the dark room he had not understood this before. Before he could understand anything, the thing that had been clinging above him fell with a thud onto his body. Its head fell onto Ripon’s chest. In fear all the blood in his body turned cold. Thinking this was the last attempt of his life, he screamed “Allah!” and leapt up, pushing it off. It rolled off his body. At once, in one jolt, he got up from the bed and ran toward the main door. Opening the door by guess he jumped onto the stairs in one leap. Then there was no time to look back. In one dash he went down to the doorman’s room. Banging on the doorman’s door a few times, he lost consciousness and fell on the floor.

What the Doorman Said

When he next opened his eyes, he saw that he was lying in a hospital bed. His body had terrible pain, and his chest felt strangely heavy. Even moving put terrible pressure on his chest. Looking around he noticed his friend Rahat sitting beside him. Rahat told him that since that night he had needed something and had tried to call Ripon many times, but the phone kept showing off, and he could not be reached by message either. In the morning he called again and found it off, so he came straight to the flat. Reaching there he learned from the doorman that at night Ripon had banged on his door a few times and lost consciousness. Then the doorman and the flat’s owner together had brought him to the hospital. So Rahat had come from the flat straight to the hospital. The doctor had said it would take some time for him to regain consciousness.

After recovering fully, two days later Ripon went back to that flat with Rahat. From the doorman he learned that a few months earlier a bachelor girl had started living in this flat. From the start her behaviour had been strange. Probably because of a personal quarrel with someone close to her, she ended her life in that room one night. But nobody knew anything. Suddenly two days later a strange stench began to come from that room. Later police came and broke the door, recovered her body and took it away. From her family it was learned that someone had had kufri kalam done on her, and because of it that girl could hardly move about normally. Since then many people had come to this flat, but had been unable to stay. Whoever came would stay a few days and give up the flat without giving any reason.

The doorman added that it is commonly said that when someone on whom black magic has been done dies like this, her spirit wanders there, and with anyone’s intrusion that spirit grows reckless. All who had stayed in this flat before Ripon had been families. Ripon was the first bachelor to live alone. Most probably the restless spirit had chosen Ripon to vent its anger. The flat’s owner earnestly asked him not to tell anyone about this incident, and for that reason also returned the advance Ripon had paid. He said he would very soon call a good hujur (Islamic scholar) and arrange a milad in that flat. The same day Ripon took some of his necessary things and went to Rahat.

Even now, sometimes at night, when Ripon lies in a dark room with his eyes closed, he suddenly feels something. When he opens his eyes he sometimes sees that shape above his face. It seems to want to tell him something in a whispering voice. And within a few seconds it vanishes into the air.