The Creepy Old Man

        This is a most haunting  incident that ever took place  in my life. There was small bridge in my native place. The bridge was so small and narrow that two huge vehicles,or one huge vehicle and another small vehicle were not able to pass from both the sides of the bridge together. During Navratri, I and my cousins visited a small temple a little far away from that bridge. During that time if we were crossing the bridge and if huge bus came we had no other option than waiting to cross the bridge until  the bus passed sway. So the people of our village called the bridge as " Pottu Sanka" which means " Spoilt bridge" .Today after a lot of discussion in village Panchayat the bridge has been widened but this incident took place when the bridge was narrow.

            One half moon night I was walking towards the bridge along  with my two friends. We went to the north Thottam in the morning due to some work and were returning back in the midnight. As we were walking towards the bridge we could see an old man sitting in the one of stands of the bridge and creepily putting his fishing rod to the pond beneath again and again and pulling the rod. We could clearly see it from far away due to moon's light. As we approached closer and closer to bridge we could clearly see the old man swirling the rod and throwing the trap towards the pond downside and pulling the trap.We came closer to the old man and he was repeating the process silently. We felt funny at the old man since he was catching fish in midnight. I told to one of my friends , " what is this Grandpa doing in such a dark night.?"

" Exactly is this a time to catch fish" my friend replied me.

" Let's see how many fishes Grandpa has caught. " My other friend said sarcastically and we all decided to see if grandpa had caught any fish.We had a torch in our hands and we put the torch light inside the plastic bag which was lying down but surprisingly there wasn't any fish there. And when we were enquiring the grandpa was busy  repeating his actions.

  So we put torch into the pond and were even more surprised!! The pond had no water. We looked at each other's face. We felt strange and all of us decided to call grandpa.

" Grandpa . grandpa " we called him slowly but he was busy repeating the process.

We called 3 to 4 times yet grandpa didn't reply us. So one of my friend who had torch in his hand put the torch light on grandpa's face  and aaaahhhh!!!!!

      Grandpa's face was not visible!!!!. We could see trees far away from inside his face but his hands and legs were moving .He was continuing the fish catching process!!!!!!!!

         My friend screamed loudly and we all ran away . Runningly when I turned back grandpa was still continuing his actions and actually when my friend removed torch from his face his face was visible once again. This was the creepiest incident that took place in my life . The next day my friend who held torch light on grandpa's face had got high fever due to fear. That day running and running we reached one of our relatives  home and stayed there whole night . There they told us that the place was haunted and there everyday after 7 they heard weird crying sounds and sound of anklets. They even said perhaps it was because the pond was connected to the sea and the deadbodies from sea might have reached the pond or it could be due to those weird people who came at night and threw some mysterious things to the pond.After that even today me and my friends are scared of the dark!!!

                   Rashmi R Kotian "Raashmir"   

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