F Fancies Fear

Back in college we were suckers for horror flicks. When someone rented a DVD from the DVD rental store outside our campus, the entire hostel knew about it. We then gathered in one room, everyone together and then watched those A, B, C grade movies in those old-age desktop computers that we had!

One of those days someone rented the movie Ju-On (the famous Japanese horror film?) and the words spread like a wild forest fire in the hostel that it was the scariest movie we had seen so far. Since we were so many and there was just this one DVD, we divided into groups. Girls who claimed themselves very courageous agreed to watch the film late at night. Others watched it in the afternoon after classes were over. So that night, a cold foggy one in mid-January, around 20 girls gathered in our room around twelve o’clock. We screamed, closed our ears and eyes several times, bit our nails half their size and were gathered too close to each other! But then something happened.Just as the scene where the protagonist was readying to open the door following a knock played, there was a loud knock on our door too! We paused the movie but hesitated to open the door. It was past midnight and all our nerves were frayed enough.  Whoever was outside knocked again – louder this time. The one sitting closest to the door had no other way but to get up and open the door. And then in our room entered the ghost from the movie Ju On. White as death, with long black hair hanging all around, white dead hands extended and making the typical bizarre sound. The one who had opened the door was already fainting and while some screamed at the top of their lungs, most of us had only our mouths open in silent screams. Somehow we had moved even closer, almost on top of each other!And then something even more amazing happened! The ghost dropped its bizarre sound and started pleading us to stop screaming and waking others up in a perfectly normal human voice. We stopped screaming, of course, but we were still too nerve wrecked to register the fact that she was just another student dressed as the ghost with the sole purpose of scaring us. It took us many moments to collect ourselves. But it was only next morning when we could laugh about it and appreciate the girl for having it in her to get made up exactly like the ghost in the movie and leaning on our door listening through the movie waiting for the right moment to knock!

Anyway, that was the start. This prank became an instant hit amongst all the students. Sometimes it achieved the desired effect but sometimes it became a farce. Like the incident that finally termed this trick too old to continue – when someone in the final year boys’ hostel entered another’s room dressed as a ghost in the dead of the night, a shoe was thrown square at him causing a big red bump which he sported on his forehead for at least a week!Love,

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