I am Abhishek from Hyderabad. Basically, I am from Haryana. This is from January 2015. So, I am originally from a place called Rohtak in Haryana.

In our area, every Makar Sankranti, which comes around 13th January every year, we have a tradition of gifting something to our aunts things like fruits, sweets, etc. What happened is, at that time, I didn’t really believe in any of the supernatural stuff. I used to stay in Hyderabad and was studying in my fourth year of engineering.

Those were the holidays, and I had come back to my native home in Haryana.

I used to visit my Bhua ji (Father’s sister) to take care of this tradition. I used to love visiting her. So, in Rohtak, there’s a really remote village where she lives. I was driving an Alto 800, and the whole route is very deserted. You’d find a streetlight only every half a kilometre or so mostly dark and cold, January weather, full of fog.

So I was driving, and I saw four people standing towards the left of the road asking for a lift. I could clearly see them. Now again, I wasn’t a believer, I was a very realistic guy. Nothing supernatural was on my mind at the time, and I used to make fun of people who believed in ghosts and all.

So what happened is, I could see those four people basically two men and two women. The women were dressed in totally traditional wear, like sarees, and they had a ghunghat (veil) up to their noses. You could only see the tip of their nose and lips, that’s it.

I am 5 ft 11 inches (182 cm), and I could see that those two men were really tall around 6 ft 5 inches or something. One of the men sat next to me in the front, and the other three sat in the back seats.

It was around 9–10 PM on the 13th of January. I was moving ahead on an 11-kilometre stretch, which usually takes me about 20 minutes to drive. As I was driving, I noticed in the rear-view mirror that only two people were sitting in the back one of the men was missing. I started thinking, earlier they were tightly packed, so how come now there’s space and they look relaxed?

Because there wasn’t much light and it was all foggy, I was conscious that if I looked back properly, I might end up having an accident. So I kept driving.

As we moved further, I started feeling like the lady’s nose had grown a bit bigger. Not only that, but when I looked at the guy sitting next to me, I noticed something weird going on with his nose and ears they looked odd.

As we kept moving, I looked in the rear-view mirror again now, one of the ladies was also gone. Only one lady was sitting in the back, and one man was next to me. At this point, I started doubting myself. Did I stop the car somewhere? Am I forgetting something?

And you wouldn’t believe it — the person sitting next to me also disappeared.

At that moment, I thought No. I need to do something. Either fight this remaining lady or confront her, or jump out of the car. Shout. Do something. But my body temperature was so high even though the weather was 2°C, I was sweating like a pig.

I gathered some courage and looked back and asked in my native language, “Where do you want to get off?” She just waved her hand as if to say, “Just keep going.”

By now, I had almost reached my destination near my aunt’s house. I looked again she was gone. She was not there anymore. Nobody was in the car with me.

I stopped the car. I wasn’t feeling okay. And the reason I felt disappointed was why would there ever be a situation where I could explain this to anybody? I knew I would be made fun of. All these thoughts were racing through my mind.

I got out of the car. People were there to receive me, but the moment I stepped out, I passed out and landed face-first on a brick. I got injured right on my forehead.

Within a short time, around 6–7 people had gathered. They took my bag from the car and helped me inside. I was shivering and very weak when I reached my aunt’s house. She gave me water. After drinking it, I went back to sleep. Everyone in the family was really worried.

After an hour, I woke up, had dinner, and then I told them everything — “This is what happened to me, and I’m not lying. It actually happened. Please trust me, guys.”

They said, “Tomorrow, we will definitely call a pandit or a tantrik” — someone who deals with supernatural things. He was more like a normal working person but had knowledge of these weird things.

The next morning, he came. I still had a fever and was very weak. He asked me to narrate the whole incident, and I did. Then he said, “Let’s establish one fact right now whoever those things were, they didn’t want to harm you. Because they didn’t.”

Still, they gave me a scar for life.

In the next few months, many people came forward saying, “This has happened to us too, on the same route.” The only difference was that they never gave those people a lift they just saw them standing on the side of the road.

To this day, I don’t know what I encountered on that road. Maybe it was something supernatural, maybe my mind played tricks on me. But what I do know is, that night changed how I see the world and no matter how logical or skeptical you are, some things just can’t be explained.

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