The Trapped Shadow

Do spirits exist? Yes they do. My son Vishnu’s and my uncanny experiences made us believe that spirits do exist. This weird incident happened long ago, soon after my wife’s death. 

  We were returning to Hyderabad after performing the final rites to my wife on the banks of river Krishna at Vijayawada.

  My little son Vishnu and myself returned to Hyderabad with a heavy heart. Both of us were grief-stricken. We alighted at the Secunderabad Railway Station and were walking on the platform towards the exit door. 

  When we were approaching the parking slot where auto-rickshaws and cabs were parked, I found my son, who was till then holding my hand, missing. I briskly walked back to the platform where we alighted the Vijayawada express. The platform was already sparse with a few passengers as most of the passengers left. There my son Vishnu stood alone calling ‘mummy’. He was gasping for breath.

  I put down the luggage and gathered him into my arms. I tried to reason with him that his mother was no more and it was futile calling her.

  But Vishnu was adamant. “No dad,”he said. I saw mummy here itself. She was walking a few steps ahead of me. I could not catch up with her however fast I walked. I kept calling out “mummy” again and again. But she didn’t turn back.”

  I told him gently that a dead person would live in the presence of God and take care of her family from up above.

  My son sobbed thinking of his mother and accompanied me. We both reached home, tears welling up in our eyes.

  The same weird incident happened to me a few days later.

  That day I was returning home from my office on my scooter around seven o'clock in the night. Then the rain which started as a drizzle, soon turned into a heavy downpour. 

 I put on a raincoat and cap and was driving through the Lower Tank Bund Road. As I turned right and reached towards the Praga Tools Factory, the traffic dead slowed and moved inch by inch in the Kavadiguda. There I saw my wife in flesh and blood at a bus stop, holding an umbrella. As I looked at her, she gazed at me intently.  I was aghast at the sight. Many thoughts crossed my mind simultaneously. “Only a few days ago I consigned the dead body of my wife to flames. Then how was it possible that she stood there in flesh and blood? Could it be the ghost of my wife? Maybe or maybe not. I became emotional and wanted to run to her and hug her.

  But the horns of the vehicles around me blared and the drivers of the vehicles yelled at me to move on. I moved a little further, turned to extreme left and parked my scooter. I went back with brisk steps to see my wife. My mind refused to believe that it was my illusion purely. 

  But she was not to be seen at the spot.

  Being an avid reader of paranormal literature, I was convinced that it was my wife’s ghost. But what my little son Vishnu saw at the railway platform was a trapped shadow of the ghost of my wife. Though the ghost of a dead person leaves for the astral planet after cutting its links with its kith and kin on the earth, its shadow is trapped here for sometime.

  It was the first and last time my wife’s ghost appeared before me. 

  I do not wish that my wife’s soul should rest in peace. I do wish her soul should prepare for an even better birth next time.