Humans are scared of paranormal activities, not because they happen at night or we are alone (which is usually the case), but because some things cannot be explained, even by the wittiest of minds. Although people think these happen at certain places at certain times, my experience will make you rethink about such sayings. I think, it doesn’t matter where you are, or at what time you are there, some things are bound to happen. This is famously called Murphy’s law.
Without further ado, I will go forth with my narrative. So, it was a winter dawn and three of my college friends Dinesh, Raj and Vipul had agreed to go to Dinesh’s native place in Konkan (it is a coastal region which spans across the western coast of Maharashtra and Goa). I do not remember the exact location of the village, but it is somewhere near Chiplun. This was almost a decade ago, so Chiplun itself was a very remote location.
So, as I was saying, it was quite chilly at dawn and as the sea was relatively calm, we had decided to go fishing. Since we four had almost no experience, Dinesh’s uncle Janardhan decided to accompany us. Now, there were us five, going for a fishing expedition.
The beach was just a few metres behind Dinesh’s property, so they used to keep the boat in their yard itself. Uncle prepped the fishing nets, the buckets and what was left for us was to drag the boat towards the shore.
We tied two ropes to the stern and pulled the boat towards the water. The sun wasn’t still up but we could discern water from land. Finally, we were in the water headed for the deep blue. The land kept getting smaller and smaller and eventually, the only thing except for the sea which we could see was a distant lighthouse.
Uncle cut the engines and anchored the boat to the sea bed and gently entered the water with his scuba equipment. He had a long rope, one end bound around his chest while the other end in the boat with us. He had told us to keep tugging each minute. After this, he went underwater to set up the fishing nets.
Now, the sun was behind our backs, the water glistening under its light. A minute passed and we gave our first tug. Uncle tugged back.
We kept repeating this ritual for sometime. Since we could see the buoys of the fishing net floating above the water, we stopped tugging, partly because of reassurance and partly due to boredom.
But, an hour passed by and uncle had still not returned. So, I tugged. No response from uncle. I tugged thrice, still no response. We looked at each other and decided to pull uncle out of the water.
What followed was spine-chilling. Uncle was not there, but there was still a knot at the end of the rope!!! So, I decided to dive and inspect, but to no avail.
If we returned home like this, I didn’t know what the elders would infer from this. So we searched the surrounding waters. But realising our limited maritime experience, we thought wise to return ashore. On the way, we informed the coast guard about the incident.
We were on the beach, dragging the boat towards Dinesh’s yard when Dinesh stood dead in his own tracks.
“What happened?”, I asked.
Without answering my question, he dashed towards the lighthouse and ascended the stairs. At the top was uncle, crawled into a ball, dry as a bone and staring perplexed at us. He had caught a very high fever.
Eventually, uncle recovered but scores of questions raced my mind like: “How did he disappear?”, “How did he end up dry, in a lighthouse miles away from the fishing spot?”, etc.
At midnight when everyone was asleep, we asked Dinesh why he hurried off towards the lighthouse. He told us, “A few years back when we were in college, uncle’s father (Dinesh’s grandfather) died during fishing the same spot where uncle had disappeared and when uncle used to return from fishing, as he used to haul the boat up the beach, he always heard grandfather luring him towards the lighthouse.”
I still try to get a grip to the logic behind this incident. I would like to know about some theories since Dinesh’s relatives refrain from taking up this topic ever again.