Haunting of a High-Rise Building

The city, which had been home to many single storey houses, had given way to seven storey buildings a few years ago. The metropolis with increasing needs of residential units and limited availability of land needed to find ways to expand further. As horizontal expansion started becoming very expensive, builders decided to go for twenty-six storey buildings. But locating the vacant space was still a problem. The solution was simple. The builder wondered why it had not occurred to him earlier.

There was a cluster of shanties occupying a prime piece of land. The builder bought the piece of land at very cheap rates as getting the land vacated had become almost impossible for the owner. The Government had been of no help.

Once the land was acquired by the builder, he started working on his plan. The cluster of shanties was engulfed in fire in the wee hours of one Saturday night. Since most of the residents were deep asleep, the fire could not be put down immediately. Soon, the colony was reduced to ashes. Fortunately, most of the people could come out, but there were about ten persons who could not be saved.

The incident was forgotten in a city which was quite used to disasters, some of them man-made, like this one. The space was now available to the builder to build a high-rise building on the piece of land.

The work proceeded at a fast pace and the building was complete in slightly more than two years. Many rich people had booked apartments in the building. However, not many had plans to immediately shift to the building as they already had houses in other parts of the city. Some of them planned to use their flats as weekend getaways.

….

Gopal’s father was a rich man, not in a hurry to occupy the new dwelling unit. He owned a penthouse on the top floor of the building. Gopal planned to spend one weekend in the flat with his friends. They had nice time; eating and drinking till late into the night. The view from the terrace was breath-taking. They could identify many landmarks from the terrace.

As midnight approached, most of the friends felt sleepy. Gopal was not feeling sleepy at all, rather he was excited to enjoy his stay in the penthouse.

In spite of his determination, he must have dozed off, for his slumber was disturbed by some movement. He looked around through sleepy eyes, but could not see anything which might have disturbed his sleep. He went to washroom and splashed some water on his face and eyes. That made him wide awake.

He quietly went out of the flat to see what was causing the sound. The sound was that of many people running as if trying to escape from something. He stood in front of his main door. He saw many people rushing, but they did not notice him. Gopal tried talking to them, but they completely ignored him as if he was not there.

Gopal tried moving his limbs trying to follow those people, but his feet refused to move. Then he carefully looked at those people. As his gaze swept up to their faces, he noticed that their faces and bodies were badly burnt.

Gopal did not know for how much time he was standing in front of his door watching the people rushing out. It seemed as if it was endless stream of people, badly burnt, was rushing to escape from the building.

….

The first indication of early morning light led to the disappearance of the scene. Gopal regained his senses and walked back inside the flat. All the time since coming out of main door, he had stood rooted to the ground.

Gopal did not want to stay here any longer, but he had to wait for other friends to wake up. As soon as all his friends were up, Gopal noticed that all his friends were also in hurry to leave the place. He wondered if they had also seen something.

Back in the car, all his friends shared their experiences. While none had seen the spectacle which Gopal had seen, but all of them had bad dreams of the place being on fire.

Gopal never went back to the place again. Often, he heard the accounts of people who had dared to spend the night in that building. Those accounts were not very different from his own and his friends’ experience.

….

Till date that building stays uninhabited.