Illusion of a Ghost

Last couple of weeks there has been quite a few interactions with my college batch mates on newly formed WhatsApp group and memories of those care free days being exchanged now has regaled nearly 100 of us on the group.

One interesting incident that happened during the college stay does crop up on my mind is of a ghost scare running around the hostel block while I was in my 3^rd year of engineering. During the hot summer months few students would sleep in the terrace of the hostel and on one such moonless night a fellow student woke up with a start massaging his sleepy eyes and it was then he noticed a hazy figure in white as though hovering above the terrace floor at parapet level. He then let out a scream in fright and hearing this the white clad figure dashed towards the staircase and vanished into the hostel. The noise woke up most students on the terrace and they started chasing behind the figure that had an ample start from these sleepy fellows. By the time they had reached the stairwell the mysterious figure had vanished and most of us in the hostel were now awake due to all this commotion and the boy who had started all this said that he saw a ghost floating in the air and it vanished because of his scream. On hearing these all of us armed with hockey sticks and whatever we could grab in our arms went about the entire hostel in search of this figure which had vanished without a trace.

Similar incident kept happening on and off during the semester and in spite of making all attempts to apprehend the culprit proved futile. The buzz in the hostel was that this mysterious person is a ghost since it was seen shrouded in white all times. Finally after few days one of the students (unable to recollect the name of the student) admitted that the figure is him and not a ghost. He was in fact standing on the water tank which is in level with the parapet with his dhoti over his head and was urinating and the scream by the boy and others waking up made him run back to his room.When questioned as to why he did not admit this earlier, he replied that he was worried that all of us would thrash him before even he could state his story so he kept quiet and joined the other students in search of this elusive person. 

All of us had huge laugh with relief for there was no ghost in the hostel and this incident remains etched in memory though the names have been forgotten for it happened nearly 38 years back.