Hello from the other side

It was 9 pm. I entered a dark room and sat on a three-seater sofa to my right. The room is the most ‘affected’ part of the house, a ground floor flat on the fringes of Kolkata. I started the stopwatch on my phone and kept it upside down to spend 300 seconds in the room alone.

. I knew I was being watched, not by one pair of eyes but many, not from inside the room but outside it. A team of paranormal investigators was monitoring me on their phone, which was being fed by visuals from an infra-red camera placed inside the room I was in. Rajan* whose house I was doing this experiment in was beside them, anxiously waiting for some ‘proof’. His father had gone on an evening walk.

. The room was so still and silent that I could hear the team talking faintly. I knew I had signed up for a 300-second challenge, for five minutes, that is, but it felt terribly longer. I needed to kill time.

. I picked up a doll from the sofa and placed it on the bed in front of me. This doll had once mysteriously tilted on the side and fell late at night, Rajan claims. Then I turned to an internal monologue. “Darkness is frightening but we are biological entities, we are programmed so,” I started. “I have never come across a ‘ghost’ but I have experienced unsettling ‘signs’. Sometimes I have discarded them with scientific reasoning. Other times, I have been clueless,” I engaged myself.

. Also Read — These 'detectives of the dark' investigate the ‘paranormal’

. I hadn’t experienced anything eerie — no touches, no whispers, no palpitations, or anyone sitting next to me on the sofa, which Rajan told me, was a favourite spot of the ‘energy’. Not sure why but I suddenly felt slightly cold at the back of my neck. Before I could process what was happening, my stopwatch started ringing. It was over. I knocked on the door and came out.

. Meet the team

. I had tagged along with the Detectives of Supernatural, Team-DOS in short, who Rajan had called over to investigate mysterious things that have been happening at his place for the past five years. Let me tell you about the team first.

. For starters, don’t call them ghost-hunters. They neither subscribe to the terms ‘ghosts’ and ‘bhoot, pret, aatma’ nor do they cleanse ‘haunted houses’ with holy water or prescribe pendants and rings to families. They are in pursuit of what they call an “invisible intelligent entity”.

. They are investigators “who detect reasons of any claimed paranormal or supernatural activity” using scientific reasoning and modern instruments, says member Devraj Sanyal. These could be claims of ghosts, haunted sites, black magic, parapsychology, aliens, and unidentified flying or submerged objects.

. They encourage clients to think rationally and they also bust superstitions and blind beliefs. And so, of the 200-plus cases they have investigated across India since 2010, they have detected an abnormal ‘presence’ only in 1%, a commentary on how cultural practices and folklore have moulded our beliefs in life after death. For people caught in these 1% cases, they have recommended counselling, they claim.

. Paranormal investigation is not their real job. It is their passion. In their 30s, this group of six is engaged in the family business, web designing, and content production and writing. They put on their detective caps as and when an SOS call comes — mostly from the educated and the elderly living in cities. They make Rs 5,000-Rs 20,000 per case and even more. This depends on the location and duration of the investigation.

. Rajan is their latest case. He had called the team in 2019 but Covid-19 kept on pushing the team’s visit.

. House of secrets

. As far as Rajan’s stance is concerned, he says “if we believe in god, then such (paranormal) energy can also exist outside us.” He is a 30-something BCA graduate, running a family business now. His father is the exact opposite — he neither believes in ghosts nor was he curious about the investigation.

. It was Rajan’s wife who first felt something “strange” in this house. It was soon after their marriage in 2017. In the room where I spent 300 seconds, a living room-cum-bedroom used by Rajan, she had sensed the presence of a woman, sitting on the sofa and pointing a finger as if saying ‘no’ to something.

. Some of Rajan’s observations include: A dog would often bark at a window of the same room at 3.15 am. A ‘shadow’ would walk past it. Their pet cat would stare blankly in one direction. Whistling, crying, the sound of someone sitting on the bed, getting off it and jumping on it, he heard these many times. Once when he stepped out of the washroom, he felt a soft touch of something on his legs. Incidentally, these odd things would happen after the dark set in.

. On the advice of Team-DOS, Rajan first installed a night-vision camera. A video recording he shared with the team this February, I was told, shows a doll kept on the sofa tilt and fall on the side. This fired up the team to visit the house one-and-a-half hours away from their base in Kolkata. Four members set out, namely Devraj and his wife Ishita Sanyal, Somanjan Mukherjee, and Anindam Ghosal.

. On their arrival, Rajan showed them the sofa, the bed, the kitchen, the washroom and all corners he felt uneasy about. The team examined them one by one.

. They listened to Rajan’s paranormal claims and offered counter-arguments. To check if the footsteps of people climbing up and down this G+4 building were audible inside Rajan’s house, and perhaps was the source of the thumping sounds, two members of DOS went to the first floor. They walked with heavy steps but the other two members who stayed back at Rajan’s house could hear nothing. To alleviate the fear of shadow on the window, they told him the house faces a lane, so people’s movement can’t be ruled out.

. A thorough investigation began. They placed the infra-red camera in Rajan’s father’s room, came outside, and watched the output on a software connected to the phone. The camera sensed some ‘movement’. It could have perhaps detected some air-borne particle but Devraj at once went to the room. He sat on one edge of the bed, facing away from the camera, but then a pillow on the other end got slightly pressed, the recording showed. Could it be the mattress’ response to Devraj sitting down? A technical glitch? Something else? They looked at each other silently.

. Two hours were over. Over the next 60 minutes, Somanjan sat inside the washroom with an electromagnetic field detector to uncover some or any ‘energy’. Anindam focused on the kitchen. They got nothing.

. The final call

. Now it was time for the last experiment of the day in the most ‘affected’ part of the house, Rajan’s room. Called the balloon experiment, it required the room to be airtight, so its doors and windows were shut and air conditioning turned off. A printed balloon was hung from the ceiling fan. Tubelight was put out, candles were lit at the corners and a laser grid was set up. This was done to see the projection of the balloon on the wall and if it drifted in the absence of airflow.

. This was a preparation to ‘call’ the ‘energy’ (spirit in layperson’s term) and communicate with it. Ishita and Arindam went outside the room. Rajan, Somanjan, and I stayed back. “If there is any energy that wants us to know its presence, then you may please move the balloon,” Rajan made the call. He tried this several times — no one came, the balloon did not flicker.

. Also Read — Group claims it detects ghosts

. Somanjan made a final attempt. He clicked open EchoVox on his mobile phone. It is a software used by paranormal investigators to capture responses from ‘energies’ who are somewhat forthcoming. But their answers have to be consistent, Somanjan told me and got down to the job. He threw questions into the thin air and it generated a cacophony on the software. His questions ranged from ‘What colour is my T-shirt?’ to ‘Can you tell my name?’. But at the end of the interrogation, he was not “satisfied with the responses”.

. The team concluded five hours of their investigation without making any breakthrough. Sometimes, one field visit is not enough, they said. In this case, two loose ends remain. One, how did the doll fall? Two, whose shadow was that? Both were captured on the night-vision camera in a week’s gap a month before our visit. This calls for a second visit to the ‘haunted’ house, the team told me on the way back.

. *Name changed to protect identity

. What does their toolkit comprise?

. Electromagnetic field detector: To detect energy variations, which can be because of manmade causes, the waxing and waning moon, solar flares, earth’s geomagnetism, etc. Once a fluctuation is recorded, they start the paranormal investigation. Sound recorder: To capture sounds, even in the infra and ultra range. Motion sensor: To detect any movement in a purported 'haunted' area. Laser grid: To capture shadows or ghostly apparitions as alleged by people. Thermometer: They use an external thermometer to record the ambient temperature. The parabolic thermometer and thermal camera are used to track cold or hot spots as some people report a drastic drop in temperature in claimed 'haunted' areas. Powder experiment: They spray chalk powder in ‘affected areas’ and check for deformities a few hours later to verify the claims of footsteps. Balloon experiment: They suspend a balloon in an air-tight room to check if the 'invisible intelligent entity' can move it. Candles: To observe whether the candle flame flickers, a way to confirm if the room is air-tight. Echovox: An app that consistently scans radio frequencies to 'detect the presence of 'spirits'. Team DOS doesn't find the software fully reliable.

. What does the law say?

. According to Somnath Bhattacharjee, an advocate in the Calcutta High Court, our law condemns practices like witch-hunting or the advertisement of talismans to cure diseases. On the other hand, Tarique Quasimuddin, advocate in the same court, says Article 51(A)(h) of the Constitution of India says it shall be the duty of every citizen of India to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of enquiry and reform. “Using scientific equipment, paranormal investigators are trying to uncover facts and reveal it to the interested party. They are not promoting any superstition (or to the public at large),” he shares his personal views on the growing interest in parapsychology in India. It is the study of paranormal phenomena.

. They are not promoting any superstition (or to the public at large),” he shares his personal views on the growing interest in parapsychology in India. It is the study of paranormal phenomena.

. Rationalists speak

. Narendra Nayak, president of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations, finds the premise of paranormal investigations pointless. “What’s the point in giving a scientific angle to things that don’t exist? The ‘spirit’ is all in the mind. I don’t see any purpose served,” he explains.

. Dr Debiprosad Duari, scientist and former director (research & academic), M P Birla Planetarium, Kolkata, is of the same view. “Till now there is no definitive proof of supernatural things or events or ‘ghosts’ as you call it. To me, these are mental experiences and should be treated from that point of view.” Likewise, he is sceptical of the instruments used for such investigations. “A lot of unseen and unknown factors can yield readings, which can be misunderstood and misinterpreted,” he feels.

. Disclaimer: The article is an attempt to understand how individuals and groups try to investigate claims of activities bundled as paranormal. The journalist and the publication neither subscribe to nor propagate the idea.

. Watch the latest DH Videos here:

Hello from the other side

Follow us on :

Follow Us