Real Life Haunted House Stories: The Police Training Hall in Itahar

I am Ganesh Goswami, writing from Bankura district in West Bengal. I am currently studying forensic science at Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology. I have listened to every email story of your Bhoot FM since 2019. After a break of some days, I am again a loyal listener of Bhoot FM’s horror stories on YouTube. Every time I sat down to listen to the emails you read, I thought I should send some incident I had heard to Bhoot FM. Because I could not write in an organised way, it did not happen. Still, today I am trying to tell it as it is, keeping the incident unchanged as much as possible. This is one of the real life haunted house stories I know.

This incident happened in the life of someone very close to me. I heard it from him about ten years ago. The person who witnessed it is now serving in the West Bengal Police. For certain reasons I am not giving his name.

The Training Hall at Itahar

After joining the police he went for training to a place called Itahar in North Dinajpur, to a police training centre. After training had been going on for quite a few days, this incident began. The building where he was given a place to stay was a fairly big hall, with beds side by side. At the very end of the hall was a window, and beside that window, on one bed, a woman lived. I heard that her home was in North Bengal. With her lived her infant of a few months and her mother, to look after the baby. As I said, beside her bed was a window which, for certain reasons, was forbidden to be opened.

When training was on, it was close to the month of Chaitra. Even though the hall was big, because the bed was at the very end, the fan’s air did not reach it enough. In the end the woman’s mother opened the window in spite of the prohibition. That night in the middle of the night several people sleeping on other beds in the hall heard an indistinct groaning sound. Quickly the room light was switched on. It was seen that the groaning was coming from the woman lying on the bed beside the window. Everyone ran. The woman seemed to be trying desperately with both hands to push off something heavy from on top of her. Her mother lying beside her, seeing her daughter in this state, did not know what to do. Everyone went close to the woman and gave her water on her face. Someone said perhaps she had epilepsy, someone said she was possessed. Although she became somewhat normal, for a long time the woman could not speak.

An officer on duty at the centre was called, and he called a doctor. The doctor came and found nothing much. He told her to rest, and to take a break from training for some days. She was given sleeping medicine and put to sleep that night. The next day, when the woman had recovered, she was asked about the previous night’s incident. She said that in the middle of the night something became a cause of unease for her. As she was about to get up, she saw a woman in a black burqa sitting beside her baby’s head. In fear she was about to scream when that woman gripped her throat. She said she was trying to free herself from the grip of that hand around her neck.

Read more: [LINK: Real Haunted House Story: The Sreemangal Tea Bungalow]

The Bulb and the Guards

Some days after this incident, a bulb that was burning in the hall would burn out every night. It was changed several times, but the same thing happened. Everyone living in the hall became quite afraid now. In parallel, another thing was going on in that hall, which many people had forbidden telling, fearing it would frighten people. At the main door of that training centre building, several members of the force stood guard. From them it was heard that sometimes while standing guard, some people had seen that at one or one-thirty in the night a woman, sometimes in a black burqa, sometimes in a white sari, walked about in the corridor on the ground floor of the building. None of the guards dared to go near that woman.

The Pir and the Graveyard

After this, these matters were reported to the higher authorities. One of them brought a Muslim pir sadhak from a local village, who was quite skilled in such matters. He came, walked through the whole hall scattering something like powdered spices. At last he went to that window, understood something, and tied the window with a black thread. As he left he said that beside this training centre building, at one time the people of the local village used to bury their dead, that is, give them graves. Later this training camp was built right beside it. I have tried to write as best I could in an organised way.