Real Haunted House Story: Three Cousins on a Rajshahi Rooftop

My name is Mohammad Sabit Alam, and I am speaking from Mymensingh division. The story I am going to tell today is from the life of Ubaid Sahib, and it is a real haunted house story. It happened quite a few years ago. It was told to me by Aslam Nana.

An Aunt’s Half-Built House

Ubaid Sahib, his paternal cousin Adil and his other cousin Yasir had just finished their intermediate exams. They belonged to a large joint family in the Upashahar area of Rajshahi. After the pressure of the exams ended, they spent a couple of days in peace. Then their phupu arrived with some good news and some bad news. The good news was that her son Mokarram bhai’s wedding had been fixed, within a month. It was a big wedding in the family after a long time, so everyone was very excited. But the second piece of news was not pleasant for Ubaid at all. It was this: the boys’ free time should be put to use.

A new room was being built on the roof for Mokarram bhai. There was already an empty room on one side of the roof. Masons had been called to build an attached washroom there. After that the whole room still had to be painted. The problem was that nobody lived in Phupu’s house except Phupu. Her only married daughter, Humayra Apa, lived in Bogura. Humayra’s husband, Hamid bhai, was very angry about something. To calm him down, Phupu had to leave for Bogura that day. Mokarram bhai went with her. But the masons were working, and it was impossible for Phupu to leave the house empty. Convincing her son-in-law and bringing her daughter home would take four or five days at least.

Phupu painted such a pitiful picture of the situation in front of Ubaid’s father and uncles that they agreed at once. They said Ubaid and Adil would go and stay at Phupu’s house. The uncle even said there would be no problem about food.

Ubaid and Adil looked at each other. They were a bit fond of comfort. Even when the elders mentioned an ordinary job like shopping, they felt a fever coming on. And now standing over the masons and getting work done was very hard for them. Although the house was nearby, they had never spent a night at Phupu’s house before. They only went in the daytime, because Phupu came to their Upashahar house almost every day. They did not know themselves what they would do there for a week.

In the evening everyone put in a little money. They sent Yasir to bring bun kababs and cold drinks from a famous shop in town. It turned into a small party. At night it was decided that the next morning they would bring the famous chickpea dal from the same shop for breakfast.

The Room Under the Jamun Tree

The layout of Phupu’s house is a little unusual. Their sleeping arrangements were on the roof. On the roof were two rooms side by side. The main rooms on the ground floor were completely locked. The room they stayed in had only one cot, with something spread on the floor. It was basically a storeroom. There were lots of old things, trunks, mattresses and all sorts of household items. The room had one huge window, which opened on the opposite side of the roof. Looking down from the window you could see countless ripe jamuns lying on the ground. The roof was built so that going around past the window you could come back to the side of the roof where the main rooms were. It was a fairly open place.

The room right next to the storeroom was being built for Mokarram bhai. It was now completely empty, with only some empty paint tins and wooden stools. Just outside that empty room a small washroom was being built. At that point it was only a half-wall, three feet high. The floor inside had just been poured with fresh cement.

In the room where Ubaid and the others stayed, Mokarram bhai probably sometimes slept. Because on a nail in the front wall hung an old kurta of his. Ubaid put his bike key into the pocket of that kurta, so it would not get lost among all the stuff. There was also a small television in the room. Yasir and Adil switched on the TV and sat down. At that time a famous horror drama series was on TV. Ubaid did not like these frightening things at all. He was a little timid by nature, though he did not show it in front of his friends.

I have said a lot. Why I said all this is relevant to the story. Let us go to the rest of it.

Ubaid’s bed was on the floor, right under that window through which the shadow of the jamun tree fell inside. But he simply could not sleep. The background music and strange sounds of the TV drama were putting pressure on his nerves. To escape this uncomfortable noise, he pressed a pillow over his face. Slowly, at some point, his eyes closed. It was already quite deep night.

The Night on the Roof

While watching the drama, Adil suddenly needed to use the washroom. The roof washroom was not ready, only freshly cemented, so he would have to go to the washroom on the ground floor. The downstairs washroom was down the stairs and to the right. Rather than go alone, Adil asked Yasir to come along. Yasir made it clear that he would not go downstairs, but would stand halfway down the stairs. They turned off the TV and went outside. Adil thought this was enough and went down. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, he called Yasir again, so that he would come all the way down. Yasir pretended not to hear and stayed on the stairs. Adil did not argue and went into the washroom.

Yasir stood on the dim stairs. All around was unnaturally quiet. To tell the truth, he himself had started to feel afraid. He was wondering whether to go down to Adil, or go back to the room on the roof. Just then his eyes fell on that half-built washroom at one side of the roof. He clearly felt that someone was standing behind that three-foot wall, and the moment it saw Yasir, it ducked quickly behind the wall like a shadow. A cold current ran down his spine. He told himself it must be his imagination. For two minutes he looked away. He had a water bottle in his hand. To calm himself, he stood and slowly began to drink water.

Meanwhile, inside the room, Ubaid Sahib was still lying with the pillow pressed over his face. Suddenly someone pulled the pillow off his face quite hard. Ubaid Sahib sat up, very irritated, muttering, “What a nuisance, brother!” He thought Yasir or Adil must be joking. But when he opened his eyes and looked around the whole room, his blood ran cold. There was nobody in the room. He was lying alone in a completely empty, silent room.

He should have been alert then. But in his sleep-fogged state perhaps his brain was not working properly. He knew his brothers’ nature very well. If they could not sleep themselves, they let nobody sleep in peace. He decided in his mind that if anyone disturbed him this time, he would get up and spare nobody. Thinking this, he suddenly felt someone poke a finger out from under the cot and give him a light prod on his back, near the spine.

Ubaid Sahib jumped. But he did not let on that he was afraid. Silently, without a sound, he slowly reached out and picked up the empty glass cold drink bottle that was lying nearby. The plan was to hit with the bottle if the poke came again. Then came a third poke, this time near the shoulder. Ubaid Sahib did not wait any longer. He hung half his body off the bed, lowered his head and looked under the cot. The moment he looked, the bottle dropped from his hand and clattered on the floor. Under the cot there was nobody, it was completely empty. A chilling cold wind seemed to pass through the room.

Ubaid Sahib did not wait a moment more. He leapt away from the cot and in four big jumps landed outside the room. His heart was pounding like a hammer. Panting, he came out, feeling that he might have a heart attack at any moment. He looked to the right, where there was pin-drop silence. Then he turned left, toward that half-built washroom. The moment his eyes fell on it, an inhuman scream burst from his throat.

Just beyond that three-foot wall, two human legs were sticking up into the air and thrashing unnaturally. After the scream, Ubaid Sahib looked closely and saw that the shoes on those floating legs were his own. In a second he understood. The person was certainly Yasir. First, he wore blue jeans, which were Yasir’s. Second, Yasir had a bad habit. Whenever he went somewhere and found Ubaid’s shoes in front of him, he would wear them. This always irritated Ubaid.

Even in this moment of extreme terror, Ubaid Sahib forgot why he had run out of the room. He ran to the half-wall. “What are you doing here?” he said, gripped Yasir’s floating legs firmly and, with great force, pulled him upward and out. When Yasir came out, Ubaid would have laughed at the sight of him at any other time. Yasir’s whole body was smeared with the wet, stiffening cement, and he was shaking violently. Ubaid took the water bottle from beside him and washed Yasir’s hands and face a little.

Yasir was only mumbling, “Brother, something very bad has happened, something very bad has happened.” Ubaid thought, bad indeed. Yasir had sunk right into the freshly poured wet floor of the washroom. How badly the floor was ruined could not be known until morning. Suddenly Ubaid remembered Adil. In alarm he asked, “Where is Adil? And what were you doing here in this state?”

At Ubaid’s words Yasir came back to his senses a little and said, “He went to the washroom, he hasn’t come back yet.” The two of them looked at each other in fear. So Adil too must be in some big trouble. Though they were afraid, love for their brother and a sense of duty were stronger than the fear. Ubaid decided to go downstairs and see. “Let’s go,” he said. “But first give me my shoes back, I won’t go barefoot.”

Yasir held his hand and said, “Do one thing, go and get the bike key from the room first. We will take Adil and go straight home from here. I won’t stay here another moment. There is a lot in Phupu’s house, who knows what.” In the heat of emotion, standing in a place of danger and cursing the danger. It was as if Yasir was provoking the danger further.

While they were saying all this, Adil came up the stairs. He looked as if he was seething with anger. As soon as he got to the top, he looked at Yasir in fury and said, “Is it your death time? Why were you banging on the washroom door every minute? And why were you making strange noises like those in a horror drama? Is your head all right? Are you pranking me at this hour of the night? What kind of thing is that?”

Saying this, Adil looked on proudly. In his anger he did not even notice Yasir’s pitiful state. Adil still did not know what terrible things had happened upstairs. At last, when his eyes fell on Yasir’s cement-covered body, he was startled. “Hey, what is this state? How did it happen? You have ruined Phupu’s whole job! What is going on, brother?”

To calm the situation Ubaid said, “We will talk about that later. You go and get the bike key from the room.” Adil looked at Ubaid with suspicion. “You go, go.” Ubaid pressed again. But Adil was not stupid. He made it clear, “I will not go to the room alone. Both of you will come with me, or I will not go.” They had to go with Adil. Because without the key there was no way to escape from there. The distance from Upashahar to Phupu’s house is not great, but in between there is an old graveyard. Crossing the graveyard road on foot at this hour of the night would not have been wise in any way.

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

The three of them moved in a group, tiptoeing toward the room on the roof. Peeping from outside the door, they saw something that chilled their blood even more. Mokarram bhai’s old kurta, hung on the nail on the wall, was swinging with no wind at all, as if it were on the body of some unseen person walking about inside the room. They stood frozen like stones for quite some time. After a while the swinging of the kurta stopped, and everything seemed normal again. They entered the room carefully. After entering, some courage returned.

Ubaid said, “I think we should wait until morning.” Because his mind was warning him that leaving the house at this moment could be even more dangerous. Before his eyes the lonely dark graveyard road kept appearing. Hearing Ubaid, Adil and Yasir sat huddled on the cot. Ubaid sat carefully on the bed spread out below, and kept watching the dark space under the cot. There were at least six more hours until dawn.

To break the silence, Ubaid asked Yasir, “Did you fall upside down on the other side of that washroom wall? I saw you lying there, but how?” Adil looked from one face to another in surprise, because he knew nothing of this. Then Ubaid told him in detail what had happened to him under the cot and how Yasir was rescued. After that, Yasir began to tell what had happened to him.

When he was standing on the stairs drinking water, he had clearly felt that someone was peeking at him from above that three-foot wall of the washroom. Instead of getting afraid, he walked slowly toward the wall to check. When he reached close to the wall and tried to peep over, at that very moment someone from behind pushed him hard with an ice-cold hand. The push was so sudden and so powerful that Yasir could not resist at all. He flipped over and crashed into the wet cement on the other side of the wall. Not a sound came from his throat. He only thrashed in the cement. Just then Ubaid saw him.

Hearing Yasir, Adil said loudly, “So you weren’t at the washroom door downstairs?” Ubaid and Yasir shook their heads hard together, no, they were not. Adil’s face turned white as paper. He immediately pulled up his legs that were hanging off the cot. In a shaking voice he asked Ubaid, “So when you were alone upstairs, something happened to you too?” Hearing Ubaid’s story, Yasir pulled up his legs too. Now Adil fully agreed that going outside in this darkness was not safe in any way. They decided that one way or another they would sit together in this room and get through the night. As soon as the morning light came, they would leave.

To get over the fear, they turned up the TV volume a little and put on Cartoon Network, so that no frightening sounds would reach their ears. All three of them sat huddled together on the bed spread under the cot. But the unseen danger that Yasir had cursed and called from the stairs was not willing to leave them so easily. For the first half hour they sat as stiff as statues. When nothing else happened, their bodies relaxed a little. Ubaid, keeping a little distance, leaned on a pillow, half lying, and closed his eyes. The TV volume was lowered a little. Adil and Yasir were whispering and watching the cartoon.

What the Kurta Did Before Dawn

Suddenly from the neighbouring empty room, where the paint tins and stools were kept, came the loud sound of a stool being dragged across the floor. Ubaid opened his eyes at once and looked at the two of them. But they were so absorbed in their talk that perhaps they had not noticed the sound. Before Ubaid could say anything, from the next room came the sound of empty paint tins crashing loudly to the floor, and again the sound of the stool being dragged. This time nobody was in any doubt. Adil and Yasir leapt over to Ubaid. The three of them sat clutching one another. Their eyes kept going to the door. Ubaid felt all his strength gone. Just then, very close to Ubaid’s ear, from under the cot, someone said something in a cold whisper.

Every hair on Ubaid’s body stood up. With a trembling neck he turned toward the wall. His gaze was caught on that nail. Mokarram bhai’s kurta had begun to sway in the air again. But this time it was not only swaying. The sleeves of the kurta were moving as if there were a human presence inside it, looking at them and waving a hand in mockery, warning them.

Ubaid could not bear it any longer. He closed his eyes and began to recite verses of the Quran and dua in a loud voice. Seeing him, Adil and Yasir also began to recite dua aloud. It felt as if time had stopped. Every second felt like a year. But however hard a time is, in time it passes.

When the sweet sound of the Fajr adhan echoed all around, the three of them felt as if they had been given new life. They let out a sigh of relief. As soon as the adhan ended, Adil leapt up, took the key out of the pocket of the kurta, and did not feel the need to turn off the fan or lights or close the door. He ran down the stairs like a madman. They rode away on the bike as if the angel of death was chasing them. The only courtesy they paid was to pull Phupu’s main gate shut as they left.

When they reached their own home in Upashahar, it was morning. Seeing their wrecked faces and disordered state, everyone was very worried. Ubaid’s father and uncles at first thought the boys were making up these stories to avoid work and to avoid staying in an empty house. They got quite a scolding. But luckily their bara ma understood the situation and took firm charge. She told the father and uncles plainly, “Look, the children are terrified. They will not go to that house again under any circumstances.”

That morning Ubaid’s father sent his uncle to Phupu’s house to see to the masons’ work. Meanwhile Yasir came down with a terrible fever from fear. Adil and Ubaid lay covered with quilts. All day they did not go out of the house at all. In the evening the uncle came back in great anger. At Phupu’s new washroom, the exact impression of Yasir’s body in the cement had astonished the masons, and the uncle too. The whole of that floor pour had to be broken up and poured again.

That night Ubaid’s father and uncle decided that they themselves would spend the night at Phupu’s house and hand over the jobs. The next morning, just after the adhan, the doorbell rang at the Upashahar house. When the door was opened, Ubaid’s father and uncle were both standing there, worn out, with pale faces. From their faces it was clear that they too had spent the night with great difficulty. They told nobody about their experience. But after a while, they sat the three boys down and affectionately asked for details of that night. After Ubaid and the others told them everything, though the father and uncles said nothing, the boys understood clearly that there was something in that house that was not normal. The next day it was learned that the washroom floor had had to be made all over again. After a little asking around, Ubaid and the others learned that this time too an impression of the uncle’s body had formed in the cement of the washroom. But what had happened and how, they did not have the courage to ask.

After this, the father and uncles decided that they would only have the masons work during the day, and at dusk they would padlock the main gate and everyone would come home. This decision lifted a huge burden from Ubaid’s shoulders. Phupu was also phoned and firmly told to come back as soon as possible. Phupu came back quickly. But when these events were told to her, she denied everything. She said there was no such thing in her house at all.

Ubaid and his brothers then called Mokarram bhai aside and pressed him. They made it clear that if he did not tell the truth, they would take no part in the wedding work. Mokarram bhai was forced to admit the truth. He said that the huge jamun tree in the yard was the centre of the trouble. From there some unseen beings often came into the house and tried to cause trouble or frighten people. But Mokarram bhai claimed that for the past few years these disturbances had stopped entirely, so they had felt safe. Ubaid and the others told him plainly that they would do all the wedding work during the day, but would not stay in that house a moment after sunset.

Phupu and Mokarram bhai perhaps found some lasting solution. Because after that the wedding ceremony went off in peace. Perhaps Phupu cleverly arranged to rent a room in a neighbouring house for the male guests to stay during the wedding. Ubaid and the others spent their nights in that neighbouring house. But during the wedding celebrations one more strange thing happened. Phupu tried to hush it up completely, but Ubaid and the others found out the inside story.

It went like this. On the day of the bou-bhat, the reception, there was a meal for everyone when the new bride was brought home. With so many people in the house and so much cooking, the yard and kitchen were in some disorder. After dinner at night, someone had mistakenly gathered all the leftover chicken and beef bones into a corner of the kitchen beside the stove. One of their aunts, a chachi, had a bad habit of drinking tea or coffee in the middle of the night. That night of the wedding she could not sleep at all and felt very restless. It was nearly four in the morning. She went to the kitchen to make tea. The kitchen door was open, and inside a yellowish bulb was probably burning. The moment Chachi stepped into the doorway, she stopped. She clearly saw that on a wooden stool right beside the stove on the ground, a very old man was sitting hunched. He wore only ordinary old-fashioned village clothes. His eyes were fixed on the pile of leftover bones.

At first Chachi took it quite normally. She thought he must be an old relative from Phupu’s side from Bogura, perhaps come for tea. She did not go in, and quietly went back to her room. The next morning Chachi asked Phupu about the old relative, and everyone present looked at one another. Because no old relative matching that description had come from Bogura or anywhere else. Phupu then very cleverly turned the conversation and brushed the matter aside. But Ubaid had no doubt left about what it was.

After the wedding, Ubaid and his brothers never spent a night at Phupu’s house again, not even by mistake.

This was today’s story that I collected for you.