Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Entertainment | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Scary nights on campus

It was pitch dark and silent except for the rustling of leaves.

When I joined the American College as a student, and moved into the Washburn Hall, the seniors told us that a couple of corridors in the hall were haunted, and that we shouldn't get scared if we saw the ghost. According to them, a student called Srinivasan had committed suicide in his room some years ago, and since then his ghost roamed the corridors late at night.

Ghostly noises

Nothing happened though, and no ghosts manifested themselves. But when there was a power failure at nights, all kinds of weird sounds erupted from all corners of the hall.

Some intoned "Srinivasa. Srinivasa" in sepulchral voices. Others ran about producing eerie sounds. Though we knew that the whole thing was a hoax, we did feel a chill down our spine. The more timid amongst us were scared out of their wits, and sighed with relief when the power was restored. But this fear was nothing compared to the frights we had to experience later in Madras Christian College. On my first day in Bishop Heber Hall, the warden, Chandran Devanesan told me that the gate rules did not apply to PG students like me. I was free to come and go as I liked.

I took full advantage of this and loafed around till late in the night. The economical season ticket I had (procured under the pretext of attending intercollegiate classes) enabled me to travel by electric train any number of times.

The dancing ghost

Walking into the campus at night was a bit scary. The MCC campus was full of lush green bushes, dense shrubs and richly foliated trees. With typical Scottish frugality, the administration switched off all outside lights in the campus at 9 p.m. So when I came back to the campus it was pitch dark and silent except for the rustling of leaves. It was an eerie walk from the gate to the Heber Hall.

One night as I was walking past the main building and taking the dark road to Heber, I saw a whitish figure floating gently waving its arms a few yards away from me. The hair on the nape of my neck stood erect. But I forced myself forward. When I came close to the `ghost', I discovered it was an old shirt somebody had thrown on a bush, which was just swaying in the breeze. When I went to the Hall, I pretended I had really seen a ghost, and dramatized the incident. The boys perhaps took my story with a pinch of salt. But the next day a girl walking that way suddenly gave a scream and said she had seen something lurking in the bushes. And so the boy with her concluded that my story must have been true. The whole Hall started believing this. Some boys who went early in the morning to Guindy for horse riding classes avoided this route and took a big detour. When I heard about this, I told them I had just bluffed. But this time they wouldn't believe me, and stuck to the roundabout route.

A Leopard On The Loose

One day Prof. Phanuel of Zoology department went about specimen hunting on campus. He spotted what was obviously a pug mark of a big cat - perhaps a leopard. He moved the grass to check the pug mark more closely, not realizing that the leopard was just behind him. Then the leopard growled, sending the professor to the nearest building in record time.

That evening notices were put up in all the Halls and other buildings saying that a leopard had strayed into the campus from the nearby hills, and warning people not to walk alone at night. They were advised to go about in groups. A few nights later, forgetting this warning, I came back to the campus late at night and all alone. Some animal stepped out of the bushes and stood in my way. I couldn't make out what animal it was, because it was pitch dark.

And then I remembered the leopard, and panic seized me. I thought of climbing a tree and then realized that leopards could climb too, perhaps much better than I could. Meanwhile the animal started moving closer to me. In a reflex action I raised my arm and shouted "shoo". And the animal ran off. It was the cowardly Alsatian belonging to a professor who lived on campus. This story too did the rounds in the Hall with dramatic exaggerations. The leopard vanished from the campus in a few days, even before a police team came to look for it. In retrospect, one realizes that the frights we went through were also good fun.

J.VASANTHAN

(e-mail: jvasanthan@sancharnet. in)

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail