When we moved to Bangladesh for five years, we never imagined our new home would become a place of fear. The apartment was grand—tall, gleaming, and completely empty for the past five years. It was beautiful, luxurious even, and when we first stepped inside, it felt like a fresh start. We took it without hesitation.
But within the first two months, strange things began to happen.
My mother fell ill first. It wasn’t just a passing sickness—she became bedridden, wracked with pain she couldn’t describe. We took her to doctors, ran tests, and everything came back normal. Yet, she grew weaker each day, her body deteriorating before our eyes.
My brother, only five at the time, started whispering that he felt someone else was in the house. But no one wanted to alarm me—I was just eleven—so they kept their fears to themselves. I only knew that Ma was sick, too sick to eat, too weak to even sit up some days.
Then came the nightmares. She would wake up screaming, trembling, saying she had dreamt of people trying to kill her. The panic in the house grew, but we still had no answers.
At the same time, my father traveled to Kolkata for work and visited our family’s jyotish—a priest we had seen many times before. As soon as my father stepped inside, the man looked at him, his expression turning grave.
“You must leave that house immediately,” he said. “They will kill your wife.”
My father was stunned. No one had told the jyotish anything, yet he had seen our nightmare unfold.
But breaking the lease was nearly impossible. We were bound by contract, and the landlords weren’t the kind to make exceptions. Desperate, the jyotish gave my father a small container of Ganga Jal, sacred water from the Ganges.
“This will help calm your wife’s spirit,” he said. “Place it by her bed.”
Back home, we did as he instructed. And for a while, my mother’s condition improved—just slightly, but enough to give us hope.
Then the water came.
It started in the bedroom I shared with my brother. One night, a dark patch appeared in the corner of the room—dampness creeping along the floor. At first, we thought it was a plumbing issue, but the water kept spreading, inching closer to my bed. We called engineers, plumbers, anyone who could explain it.
They inspected the walls, the floors, the pipes, but in the end, they just looked unsettled.
“There’s no water source here,” one of them said. “This… shouldn’t be happening.”
Meanwhile, our housemaid, Aalo, started experiencing something even more terrifying. At night, she would hear my mother’s voice calling her—softly at first, then more urgently.
“Aalo… Aalo…”
But when she looked, my mother was asleep.
Her quarters were near the kitchen, far from where Ma rested, yet the whispers came every night. She was so afraid that she refused to be alone after dark.
The water in my room continued to spread, forming a slow-moving puddle, creeping closer and closer to my bed over the course of two months. At the same time, my mother remained weak, trapped in an unexplainable illness.
We couldn’t take it anymore.
My father fought to break the lease, citing health concerns and the standing water. The landlords were furious, demanding we leave within two weeks. It was a blessing in disguise.
The moment we signed the lease for a new place, the water—this eerie, unexplained presence—disappeared.
By the time the movers arrived, the room was completely dry.
As we packed our things, the workers looked around the apartment in confusion.
“Why are you leaving?” one of them asked. “This is such a beautiful home.”
We didn’t answer.
We moved, and my mother recovered almost instantly. Whatever had haunted that apartment, whatever had been feeding off our fear, was left behind.
Even now, I wonder—who had been calling Aalo’s name in my mother’s voice? And why had the water only appeared when we lived there… and vanished the moment we decided to leave?
Some things are never meant to be understood.
Narrated by: Deboleena
Year: 2001
Location: Bangladesh
Credit: http://www.youtube.com/@Hoezaay