Real Haunted House Story: The Tea Garden Bungalow of Sreemangal

Assalamu alaikum. My name is Sumaiya. This is a real haunted house story from my own life, and it is quite an old one. I was a teenager then, and still very young.

A Bride and an Old Bungalow

I had a cousin, my khala’s daughter, whom I called Apu. She was much older than me. When Apu reached marriageable age, proposals came from many places, but she did not like any of them. Later we learned that Apu already liked someone. They had been in a relationship for several years. Apu told the whole family about the boy. But nobody in our family was willing to accept the relationship. There were reasons. The boy’s family and Apu’s family were very different. Their way of life and customs were all a little different. And above all, our family was very conservative. So the elders would not agree at all.

But Apu was completely stubborn. She dug in her heels. There were many arguments with the whole family, and a lot of bad feeling. You know what happens in our society in such cases. In the end everyone had to give way to Apu’s stubbornness. Her family had no choice but to marry her to that boy.

After the wedding, Apu went to her in-laws’ home. Their house was far away, a good distance outside the noise of the town. It was in the tea garden neighbourhood of Sreemangal upazila in Moulvibazar district.

The house was no ordinary house. It was very old, built in the British era, a huge bungalow. There were big trees on every side. Inside the compound were several large gardens. In the middle of one garden stood an old fountain, with some patterns of white stone around it. You could tell at a glance that the house was very old. The whole house was a single storey, but its vastness was striking. After the wedding, Apu began living in this house.

A little while after Apu’s wedding, my school was on holiday and I went to visit her in-laws’ house. From the very first day, the atmosphere felt strange to me. Apu’s mother-in-law, the elderly lady of the house, had a slightly different nature. She treated everyone well enough, but she was extremely strict, and she had certain rules that everybody in the house had to follow. For example, after a certain time it was forbidden to go near her. Nobody could speak to her. Even the servants could not come near her. In one corner of that huge house she had a separate room. Nobody but she was allowed to enter it.

Apu had warned me in advance not to go near that room, not even by mistake. One day I asked Apu what she does alone in that room. Apu said her mother-in-law sits there alone and worships. She is absorbed in meditation on Allah, so she does not want anyone to disturb her. Hearing this, I said nothing more. It is perfectly natural for an elderly person to pray in some privacy. But I had no idea then what a terrible truth lay hidden behind this ordinary thing.

Let me give you some idea of the layout of the house. Entering through the main door, you came into a huge hall. So big that I cannot describe it. Those who have seen big old houses may get some idea. In the middle of the hall stood an enormous dining table, so long that many people could sit and eat together. On one side of the hall was an old-fashioned fireplace. The floor tiles were checked in black and white. The ceiling was very high. Apu told me that whenever the family had a big function or many guests came, everyone was served at this very table. The whole house felt to me like an old zamindar house in some other country. Around the hall there were several bedrooms. On one side was the kitchen, and from the kitchen a separate path led outside.

The Dinner Party at Three in the Morning

Let me tell you about the first night I went to that house. I was sleeping in a guest room. The door of my room opened directly onto that big hall. I do not remember exactly what time it was, perhaps two or two-thirty. Suddenly I woke up. A very loud sound was reaching my ears. I sat up in bed and listened carefully to work out what the sound was. It was coming from that huge hall. It sounded as if many people were talking and laughing together. I could hear the clink of spoons and plates. The sound of water being poured into glasses, of people eating with forks and spoons. All together it felt as if a huge dinner party was going on outside.

I was completely astonished. A party at this hour of the night? And where had so many people come from? I slowly got out of bed. I tiptoed to the door. My heart was thumping. I gently turned the door knob and opened the door a little. What I saw when I peeped out nearly made my eyes pop. The whole hall was pitch dark. There was nobody anywhere, complete pin-drop silence. Only the faint bluish light of night was coming through the window glass and falling inside.

I was stunned. Only a few seconds earlier I had clearly heard the voices of many people and the sound of plates and spoons. Where had it all gone? I stood near the door for a few minutes. But no, there was no more sound. I thought maybe I had been dreaming in my sleep, or it was a trick of the mind. With that thought I closed the door, came back and lay down. After quite a while sleep came.

But a little later, perhaps an hour or a bit more, I woke up again. This time the sound was even clearer. Now it was not only the sound of plates and spoons, I could also hear people whispering to each other. It felt as if many people were sitting together, discussing among themselves very softly. Now and then came the sound of suppressed laughter.

This time I could not stay in the room. A strange curiosity was working inside me. I opened the door and went straight out. Believe me, the moment I opened the door, every sound stopped at once. The whole hall was empty and echoing. I went and stood in the middle of the hall and listened carefully. No sound. I looked at the rooms all around. All the doors were shut, and everyone was in deep sleep. I began to feel quite afraid. I hurried back to my room and bolted the door. I did not close my eyes all night.

When morning came, I did not say anything to Apu. I thought it was a new place, and perhaps my mind was playing tricks. We spent the day wandering here and there and chatting. At night I went back to my room alone to sleep.

The second night. I was quite tired, so I fell asleep almost as soon as I lay down. But just like the night before, at about three o’clock, I woke up again. And again that same sound. This time I could not brush it off as a trick of the mind. I quickly got out of bed and went straight to Apu’s room. I knocked on her door. After a while Apu came out, rubbing her eyes. Seeing me she said, “What is it, why are you here at this hour? What happened to you?” I said in a low voice, “Can you hear anything? What is all that noise outside? It sounds as if many people are sitting at the dining table and eating.” Apu smiled a little at my words. “What nonsense! Where? What noise? The whole house is completely quiet, everyone is asleep. You must have had a bad dream. Go to sleep.”

I tried hard to explain to Apu. I had heard it with my own ears, but Apu would not believe me. Instead she said that perhaps the watchman or someone at the back of the house was sitting in his room playing a radio, and I had heard that and got scared. Hearing Apu I felt a little deflated. But I knew what I had heard. I said to Apu, “All right, you don’t believe me today. Tomorrow night you will sleep in my room with me. Then you will hear it all with your own ears.” Seeing how determined I was, Apu agreed.

The next night Apu came to my room. We two sisters lay on the bed talking. The night grew deep, and the hands of the clock ticked forward. Apu and I stayed awake. Just when it was a quarter to four, suddenly that sound began. This time Apu’s eyes grew wide. Afraid, she gripped my hand tightly. She whispered, “You were right. I can hear it too. It sounds as if many people outside are talking and eating. But who would come to this house at this hour of the night?”

Apu and I, both very afraid, got out of bed. We tiptoed to the door. I opened it slowly. Just as before, the moment the door opened, every sound vanished. The whole hall was empty, nobody anywhere. Apu was terrified at the sight, her face went pale. We could not sleep again all night.

In the morning I returned to my own home, because it was time for my school to reopen. As I left, I told Apu to be careful.

Read more: [LINK: Real Ghost Encounters: The Fake Millat of Khilgaon]

The Man Over the Cradle

About two years after I left, a little child came to fill Apu’s lap, a gift from Allah. Alhamdulillah. I was at our own home then. Suddenly one day there was a phone call from Apu. From her voice it felt as if she was crying hard and shaking with fear. I got very alarmed and asked what had happened. What Apu told me then made my own hands and feet go cold.

Apu began, “Last night my husband went to do his night shift. At home there was nobody but me and my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law had been sitting with her room closed since evening. I was sleeping in my room with my little baby. It must have been two-thirty or three. Suddenly someone began knocking very softly on my door. At first I thought my husband had perhaps come back early from duty. I got up and opened the door. Nobody was outside. The whole hall was dark. I thought maybe it was my imagination. I came and lay down again. But a little later came that knocking sound again. This time the sound was very loud. I opened the door again. Again nobody.

“By now I was getting very afraid. I thought perhaps someone was knocking at the main door. I crossed the hall and went to the main door. There I clearly heard someone calling my name in a low, heavy voice. The voice did not belong to anyone inside the house, it was a completely unfamiliar voice. Fearfully I opened the main door a little and looked outside. But outside there was nothing but the trees of the tea garden and pitch darkness. I quickly shut the door. Then I remembered that our baby was alone in the room. I ran toward my room. What I saw when I went in, I was not at all ready to see.

“I saw that my baby’s cradle had moved quite a way from its place into the middle of the room. And beside the cradle a man was standing. He was no ordinary man. He wore a huge pitch-black cloak, with a head full of wild, tangled hair. And around his neck hung several big necklaces of stone or bone. The man was leaning over my baby’s cradle. It seemed he was bringing his face very close to the baby’s face, trying to do something. I could not control myself any more. I screamed with all my strength, as loudly as I could. Hearing my scream, the man looked at me once. His eyes were red. In terror I screamed and ran toward the main door, calling the watchman outside. The watchman ran in when he heard my scream. I took him to the room. But when I went in, the man in the cloak was no longer there. My baby was crying hard in the cradle in terror. I ran and took the baby in my arms. I could not understand where the man had gone. Because there was only one door to enter or leave that room, and even the window grilles were shut.”

Hearing these words from Apu, I was practically shaking. Apu told me more. In the morning she told her mother-in-law about this. But her mother-in-law only scolded her a lot. She said Apu was exaggerating things from her own mind. She had lived in this house all her life and never seen anything like this. She said Apu stays up too late and reads odd books, which is why such nonsense goes round in her head. When Apu’s husband came back from duty, she told him everything too. But her husband took his mother’s side. He said perhaps Apu had some mental problem, or had had a nightmare. Apu then became completely alone. Nobody believed her. Weeping, Apu asked me to come to her house for a few days. Seeing her state, I could not say no. The very next day I went and arrived at her in-laws’ house. After I came, Apu hugged me and cried for a long time.

The Locked Room

The two of us sisters talked a lot. A suspicion kept peeping into both our minds. Why was Apu’s mother-in-law so strict? Why had she got so angry at what Apu said? And what exactly was inside that closed room of hers? We decided that, one way or another, we had to get inside that room and see.

The chance came very soon. One morning Apu’s mother-in-law went out of the house for some special errand. Apu’s husband had also gone to work. In the house there were only me and Apu. We did not want to let this chance slip. Very carefully we went to the door of that room. There was no lock on the door, but it was shut tightly. Apu and I together pushed the door and went in.

Around her mother-in-law’s room, a foul smell, like dead rats or rotting animals, could often be noticed. Apu had asked her mother-in-law a few times, and she always brushed it off. She said perhaps something had died on the roof or in the garden. Apu had not worried much about it. But that day, the moment we stepped inside the room, that foul smell hit our noses in a blast. It felt as if countless dead animals, rotting for a long time, had been kept together in that room. All the windows were shut, and it was pitch dark all around. We switched on our mobile phone flashlights and looked at the inside.

Believe me, the sight made goosebumps rise all over my body. I had never imagined I would see such a scene inside the room of a woman who prayed. On the floor all around, strange designs were drawn. They were made with some kind of red marks. In one corner of the room, several clay pots were kept. Ash and bones peeped out of the pots. All around the room hung strange kinds of amulets. The most terrifying thing I saw in the middle of the room. There was a small wooden box. With fear we opened the box. Inside it were several bird feathers, small scraps of bloodstained cloth, and a tuft of human hair. The hair looked as if it had been picked from a comb and smeared with something.

At once we understood this was no place of worship. This was a den of disbelief and black magic. Apu’s mother-in-law had been sitting inside this room for days on end doing terrible acts of kufr. And the cloaked man Apu had seen was in fact no human. He was a very evil jinn, whom that woman had either trapped in this house or called here through her kufr. We did not stand in that room another moment. We hurried out and shut the door as before. Apu was trembling all over with fear. She said, “I will not stay in this house another day. This woman is no human, she is a witch. For her own sinful work she wanted to harm my baby.”

The Uncle’s Secret

That evening, when Apu’s husband came home, Apu told him everything. At first Apu’s husband was very angry. He would not believe at all that his mother could do such a thing. He scolded Apu a lot. But this time Apu did not keep quiet. She forced him to go into that room. Seeing for himself this terrible state of his own mother’s room, Apu’s husband was stunned. It was as if the sky had fallen on his head. He understood that everything Apu had said all along was true. Without a word he came out of the room.

Apu’s husband had an uncle, older in age, who knew a lot about the old history of the family. Apu’s husband went straight to his uncle and told him everything about this house and his mother’s room. After hearing it all, the uncle sighed deeply. Then he revealed a truth that nearly pulled the ground from under all our feet.

The uncle began, “I knew that one day this truth would come out. The history of this house is very dark, very terrible. Long before you bought it, this was known as a cursed place. In the British era, a very oppressive zamindar lived in this region. This house was his. He was an extremely cruel man. He carried out unspeakable torture on the people of the area. Fed up with his oppression, some of the local people rose against him. One day that zamindar arranged a dinner party at his bungalow. About ten or fifteen of his closest friends and a few specific British officials came to the party. In that huge hall, on that dining table, expensive food was arranged for them all. But the zamindar’s enemies secretly mixed terrible poison into that food. Everyone who ate at the dinner party that day died in the hall itself, writhing in the effects of the poison. That night, those ten to fifteen special guests of the zamindar all died together in great agony.

“Wherever so many people die together in an unnatural way, that place no longer remains pure. Do not think that it is the souls of those dead people that wander around that hall. Rather, in such an impure place, evil jinn and devilish forces begin to come and go. Those very jinn copy the voices of the dead, laugh as they did, and frighten people. After this incident the house became cursed. Many people at night used to hear from that hall the sounds of screaming, weeping and the clatter of plates and spoons.”

The uncle paused. Then he looked at Apu’s husband and said, “Your mother was always a little different. She secretly used to learn all kinds of forbidden knowledge. When you were thinking of buying a new house, it was your mother who chose this house. I forbade it many times, but she would not listen. In truth, your mother bought this house knowing exactly what it was. Because for doing kufr, you need just such an impure place, full of evil jinn. She wanted to use the power of this house’s bad jinn to strengthen her forbidden knowledge. And the man your wife is talking about is the oldest and most terrible jinn of this house. Your mother, for her own ends, had sent that jinn to your baby.”

After hearing the history from his uncle, Apu’s husband did not waste another moment. He understood that if they stayed in this house, all their lives would be ruined, and especially the little baby could be badly harmed. He came back home and decided at once to leave the house with Apu. Apu’s mother-in-law tried hard to stop them and made a great deal of noise. But Apu’s husband did not listen to a word she said. He took Apu and the baby and left the house that very night and moved into a rented house. After that, they never went back to that cursed house.

Apu’s mother-in-law stayed on in that house. What finally became of her, I never learned. Because Apu’s family kept no more contact with that area.

Today, many years later, whenever I remember this incident, I shiver. I often think that if Apu and I had not gone toward the hall that night, or if Apu had not reached her baby in time, perhaps her baby would not have lived. By Allah’s endless mercy, He saved us from a terrible danger. This was the most terrifying experience we have seen in our lives. If you liked this story, I will consider myself blessed. Dear listeners, this was today’s story.