Paranormal activity of the plastic kind

I don’t know why but I always manage to find myself in the middle of stuff like this. If nothing else, then it makes for good writing at least. I had seen the movie “Paranormal activity” a few weeks ago in the middle of a power outage at midnight. Since I was watching it with a couple of my room mates, we only suffered serious moments of fright towards the last quarter of the movie when the reclusive ghost finally decides to come out of his shell and socialize with the girl he had been haunting since her childhood and her unfortunate boyfriend. The ghost was surely not at blame here as he was just responding to the boyfriend’s efforts of communication which is very essential to maintain a healthy relationship and God knows the ghost and the girl had been having troubles since her childhood. However, the spirit can be at fault for maybe being a bit too aggressive and trying to possess the girl. That could be the cause for their relations to hit a ‘dead’ end. Anyways, I can safely say that usually I don’t watch horror movies because of the excessive wastage of fake blood and this one I watched because this movie’s scare to blood/gore ratio was maximum. A similar experience however happened to me recently and I am still behind the wall of sweet denial so would be narrating it as it happened in Ravi’s life.

It was a nice, cosy and cold night in Pune and the lights were dark in every apartment. Even the dogs had decided to take a break from their nightly orchestra. But something else had not.

Ravi was sleeping comfortably covered with his blanket and bed sheet oblivious to everything else around him. His room mate, Adi, who was soon to move out, was also asleep comfortably. Both of them were unaware of the 3^rd living entity present in their room. At 4:45 am, Aditya got up to switch off the fan as it had become very cold. The thing ignored him for the time being.

To those of you who might not know, the fan is an essential commodity for Ravi. Even if he is suffering from fever and it is a cold morning, he needs the fan to continue his sleep. Today was no different. His sleep was disturbed because of two factors – one of them being the fan while the other was the constant out of tune humming of mosquitoes near his ears. He checked the clock and realised he still had 2 hours left before he had to wake up. Suddenly he heard a noise. It came from the left near where Adi was asleep. First he thought that it might be Adi’s snores but this sound was different. Sounded like a plastic bag. That was puzzling since the fan was switched off and there was no wind also. Whatever it was seemed to be moving fast and coming toward him.

Scenes of Paranormal activity flashed through his mind sending shivers down his spine. Such scenes are the last thing one would want to think about especially in the dead of the night when the only thing that seems to be moving is you and that unknown thing in your room. He looked toward his legs and was scared that anytime now something would rush up and pull him by the feet toward the unknown darkness in the corridor beyond the door that was just a few feet away. He pulled up his feet into his bed sheet which suddenly seemed a lot smaller. However the noise seemed to have subsided and Ravi heaved a sigh of relief.

Suddenly it started again, this time very close to Ravi’s feet (Who knows why ghosts have been obsessed with feet!) and he was terrified beyond his wits. He was literally rooted to his bed. Finally mustering up some courage he got up and went near the source of the noise. It seemed to be coming from the plastic bag near his luggage which was strewn there. He went near the bag and picked up the bag as fast as they show in those Hollywood movies where the hero suspiciously picks up some suspicious stuff on a suspicious table in a suspicious place and finds … well… nothing suspicious at all.

In this case, Ravi saw a cockroach whose expression seemed to be a mixture of surprise and embarrassment like one of those fat people who have been put on a strict diet by their wives but have been caught by the same wife trying to steal food from the fridge in the middle of the night. For the record Ravi and the cockroach had not met each other any time earlier. For a minute, both of them looked at one another, unsure of what their next move should be. Barring the unearthly hour and the difference in species, the scenario seemed like the middle of the first date between two people(any gender would suffice nowadays) when all the niceties in the conversation have been exhausted and both of them are wondering what the opposite person’s next move would be. The cockroach was the first to recover and his first move was to run like his life depended on it. I guess it actually did. Ravi also, released from the minute long spell, ran after the cockroach, hell bent on teaching the arthropod a lesson for giving him the scare of his life, but then lost it within a second thanks to the combined effects of the pitch black darkness and him not wearing his thick glasses.

With no chance of finding the cockroach and no intention of going out in the dark corridor, Ravi lay down to sleep, all the while watching the door and wondering whether the movie was scarier or this incident was.

P.S.: All characters mentioned are real including the stray dogs and the cockroach.

P.P.S: In my opinion, this was scarier since I … I mean … he experienced it alone!!!