It is an attractive, three-storey, 22-year-old corner house in Delhi and as buildings in olden days went, not very old. However it is old in the context of construction activity in recent years where almost everywhere old houses were and are being demolished to be replaced by modern buildings with four floors and very often a basement and a car parking floor as well. But what does the age of a building have to do with the supernatural? A lot and often everything. Both the age and history of a building are of prime importance when exploring the supernatural. In the case of the twenty two year old three-floor corner house, they provided the vital leads that led to unravelling the mystery behind so many unnatural deaths, so much that had been going wrong in the lives of the residents.
All the deaths in that three-floor building were sudden. All the individuals who died had been healthy and active till the time of death. The first death was that of a fifty two year old man who lived with his family on the first floor. The cause of death: a brain hemorrhage. Then followed two deaths in quick succession, less than a month apart, on the second floor. The cause of death: a brain hemorrhage in both cases. About a month later, a woman in her thirties died on the ground floor. The cause of death: a brain hemorrhage.
The following month, there was another death on the first floor. The cause of death: a brain hemorrhage. On the second floor and ground floor, there was a death each within a few weeks of each other. Once again, in each case, the cause of death was a brain hemorrhage. Stranger still, in each case the brain hemorrhage had occurred due to the head getting hit. Now, brain hemorrhage as a cause of death due to the head getting hit in all seven cases was mystifying and puzzled everyone as did the time frame — seven deaths in a span of just ten months. They lived in the same building, but it wasn’t as if the families occupying the building were even remotely related to each other, so pre-disposition could be ruled out.
Delving into the building’s past led to the startling discovery, thanks to an old-timer in the locality, that around 24 years ago, the original owner’s wife had also died of a brain hemorrhage.
And though the cause of death was the same, it wasn’t as if they had all suffered hits on the head in the same manner. For instance, one had hit his head on the floor while watching TV and lost his balance and fell off the rocking chair. One had been hit on the head by a pressure cooker that inexplicably fell off the shelf and so on. Neither was there any similarity between the ground floor, the first floor and the second floor in terms of any discernible flaw that would cause deaths through a brain hemorrhage.
But yes, ever since each family had moved into their respective floors, they had all experienced a down slide because of financial constraints that would pop up unexpectedly. They also felt a heaviness and deep sadness descending on each of their floors after sundown. After exchanging notes, they decided to consult both a vaastu expert and a priest.
Amongst various solutions, getting the building purified through a hawan — a ritual burning of offerings accompanied by chanting — was suggested by both the vaastu expert and the priest. So the residents pooled money and had the building purified through a hawan. Strangely, it was this hawan which seemed to have triggered the sequence of deaths from brain hemorrhage. What could be the reason?
Delving into the building’s past led to the startling discovery, thanks to an old timer in the locality, that around twenty four years ago, the original owner’s wife had also died of a brain hemorrhage. Tragically, in her case, the rumour had been that she didn’t want her husband to sell out to a builder. It seems her husband, enraged at her resistance to make a sale and pocket a substantial amount of money, banged her head against a wall and that apparently resulted a few days later in a brain hemorrhage that caused her death.
But in the few days before she died, she told — prophetically as it turned out — whoever in the neighbourhood came to commiserate with her, that the sale would bring sorrow in its wake no matter who stayed in the house after it was demolished and re-built. It was because of her disconsolate spirit that residents felt that heaviness and deep sadness descending on each of their floors after sundown. The hawan, aimed at purifying the building had disturbed her already troubled, earth bound soul and she vented her anger by taking one life after another in the same way that she had lost her life — through a brain hemorrhage.
This is in fact often the pattern in a majority of cases where a spirit takes a life. If a person has died from drowning, the dead person’s spirit will usually kill a living being through the drowning mode. Hearing of accidents that take place at the same spot in almost the same manner is fairly commonplace. There are countless examples of spirits replicating their own manner of dying when killing someone. Actually, the broader equations are very simple yet very specific.
If a person dies peacefully, there will be peace for the departed soul in the other world, there will be peace for those left behind in the world of the living. If a person dies an unnatural or troubled death and special rituals are not correctly performed to ensure smooth passage to the other world, the person’s spirit will haunt its earthly environs and cause problems for those in the living world. That is part of the reason why in all cultures around the world there is a special time every year to pray for the souls of the dead. Just as remembering and paying homage to the dead is an integral and important part of life, it is equally important to seek release and end the unhappiness of those who died a sudden or troubled death and find themselves trapped on earth, unable to ascend to the higher realms.